Writer – Denny O’Neil, Len Wein
Artist – Mike Kaluta

Bliss runs a criminal organization that aims to help criminals like himself. While on one hand, one could say that he has the best of intentions of assisting others to get out of the business by faking their deaths so that they might fade away into obscurity, he goes about it in the worst of ways and The Shadow does not like that one single bit. So it is that The Shadow is going to take Bliss down and to do so he will need to call on those who serve him like Margo Lane and Harry Vincent. The problem is that once they go sniffing around, they manage to get themselves caught and if there is one thing that Bliss cannot have, it is a couple of do-gooders going to the cops and bringing his organization down. The weed of crime bears bitter fruit though and The Shadow is going to make sure that Bliss is put out of business permanently. This was a decent issue when compared to the last couple but nowhere near as good. There seemed to be something missing, perhaps the darker atmosphere presented in them and the choice of subject matter. Where they sported something of the fantastical and a bit of the outlandish, this was more down to earth and played it a little more safe. Despite having Denny O’Neil and Len Wein both at the helm, the dialogue and the story also failed to flow as smoothly as it did in the past and for whatever reason, it felt like little bits were missing, not to mention the story breezing by in no time at all. If the story had been fleshed out a bit more, was a little longer and the pace cut down just a hair, it might have read far better than it did. It was not a bad book by any means, it simply could have been better as it has in the past and is sure to be again. As for the artwork, it is once again provided by the one and only Mike Kaluta and it looks incredible, unlike any of the books published at the time in 1974 which truly makes it stand out to this day. With Kaluta, the scummy streets always seem dirtier, the bad guys more evil and The Shadow a true force to be reckoned with and if there is one thing that makes this book more than any other, it is Kaluta. Altogether, while this story could have been less generic and far more interesting than it was, it was entertaining nonetheless and hopefully, things pick back up again in the following issues.

3 out of 5