In response to an increasing public demand for a magazine featuring the mysterious narrator of the radio series, Detective Story Hour, Street & Smith Publications commissioned magician Walter B. Gibson to begin writing stories about "The Shadow." Using the pen name of Maxwell Grant, Gibson wrote 282 out of 325 tales over the next twenty years: a novel-length story twice a month (1st and 15th). The first story produced was "The Living Shadow," published April 1, 1931.