Walter Brown Gibson was born September 12, 1897 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1920 he graduated from Colgate University, after which he began to edit crossword puzzles and write articles about magic tricks for The Philadelphia Evening Ledger.
In 1923 he married Charlotte Sarah Wagner(1899-1985). They had one child, Robert Wagner Gibson (1924-2014).
In 1923 he began to write stories about magicians for pulp magazines published by Hugo Gernsback. He also wrote stories for pulp magazines Brief Stories, Tales of Magic and Mystery, and Ghost Stories.
By 1930 his marriage ended in divorce, after which his wife married her second husband, Dr. Russell Wesley Locher, a dental surgeon of Lansdowne, PA.
In 1930 Walter Gibson wrote several mystery stories for Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine. In 1931 Street & Smith produced a radio show from scripts of Detective Story with an announce known only as "The Shadow," whose popularity spawned a new pulp magazine called The Shadow. Walter Gibson wrote The Shadow under the pen name “Maxwell Grant.". The magazine was so popular Street & Smith produced a radio show called "The Shadow." Walter Gbson eventually wrote over 300 stories for The Shadow Magazine.
In 1940 he created "The Shadow" as a Ledger Syndicate newspaper comic strip drawn by Vernon Greene. It ran for two years. In 1941 Street & Smith repackaged the first year of the comic strip in a new format as The Shadow Comic, which included back-up stories that featured other heroic characters Doc Savage, Nick Carter, Frank Merriwell and Bill Barnes, all of whom were title characters in their own pulp magazines from the same publisher. Walter Gibson wrote the stories while the art was supplied by the Jack Binder Shop for the first two years.
In 1943 Walter Gibson became the manager of his own shop that produced The Shadow Comic and Blackstone Comic for Street & Smith with offices in the Chanin Building at 122 East 42nd Street. He hired artists from the Binder Shop on a freelance basis and also used talent from The Philadelphia Evening Ledger which had closed in 1942. The Gibson Shop also worked on "Bulletman" for Fawcett, as well as "Dick Cole" and "The Cadet" for Novelty.
In 1949 Walter Gibson married his second wife Pearl Litzka Gonser (1901-1996), who was also a writer. They had no children.
Walter Gibson died at the age of eighty-eight on December 6, 1985 in Kingston, New York.
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GIBSON SHOP ARTISTS from 1943 to 1946
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1943
Al Bare
Charles Coll (Art Director)
James Hammon
Russell Henderson
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1944
Al Bare
Charles Coll (Art Director)
James Hammon
Russell Henderson
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1945
Al Bare
Lloyd Birmingham
Charles Boland (drawing Nick Carter)
Charles Coll (Art Director)
Russell Henderson
Walter Johnson (drawing The Cadet)
John Meditz (drawing Nick Carter)
Ed Poucher (drawing The Shadow)
Kemp Starrett (drawing Blackstone)
Charles Tomsey (drawing Bulletman)
J. M. Wilcox (drawing Dick Cole)
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1946
Al Bare
Lloyd Birmingham
Charles Boland (drawing Nick Carter)
Charles Coll (Art Director)
Russell Henderson
Walter Johnson (drawing The Cadet)
John Meditz (drawing Nick Carter)
Ed Poucher (drawing The Shadow)
Kemp Starrett (drawing Blackstone)
Charles Tomsey (drawing Bulletman)
J. M. Wilcox (drawing Dick Cole)
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