"Shadowman" continued strongly with sales in the hundreds of thousands of books per month (ultimately selling more than 5 million copies altogether) until 1996 when Acclaim Entertainment, which bought Valiant for $65 million, started a new "Shadowman" series under the Acclaim Comics banner. Acclaim focused on adapting "Shadowman" for video games. In preparation for the leap to video games a new more action oriented Shadowman took up the mask in comics. The second series of comics (spelled "Shadow Man") featured the iteration of Shadowman that would gain huge popularity in the successful Shadow Man video game franchise.