 By basing the serial character more on the pulp fiction version and turning the mysterious Shadow into a flesh-and-blood figure, plainly visible in hat and cloak, Columbia patterned the serial after its wildly successful serial of 1938, "The Spider's Web", itself based on a masked hero of pulp fiction.The Spider was the respectable Richard Wentworth, who terrorized the underworld as the mysterious Spider and infiltrated gangland under a third identity, small-time crook Blinky McQuade.Columbia copied the triple-role format for "The Shadow", with the stalwart Lamont Cranston baffling the enemies of justice as The Shadow (in a Spider-esque disguise) and moving among them as Oriental confederate Lin Chang.