My guess is that most BOOKGASM readers have heard of The Shadow, the hero pulp crime fighter who is frequently thought of as the first of his kind — you know, rich guy who roots out evil by disguising himself and adopting an odd but catchy nom de vigilante, like … oh, say, Batman, for instance. But before The Shadow’s first magazine adventure in 1931 came Zorro’s first appearance in 1919 and The Scarlet Pimpernel’s print debut in 1905.
Which brings us to another of those pulp masked action heroes: The Spider. He was Richard Wentworth during the day, another of those indolent millionaire playboys who seemed to be two for a nickel during the Depression. His gal pal was Nita Van Sloan and together they busted more insidious crime than J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson.
Girasol Collectables, a publisher in Canada, has been producing first-rate reproductions of pulp magazines for years, but they recently got into putting out two-fers without the bells and whistles. Their Spider reprints give you two Spider novels for around 15 bucks. The books are the size of a real pulp, but unlike The Shadow and Doc Savage reprints currently on the market from Sanctum Books, contain no historical essays. They don’t even include the names of the authors or cover artists.
The novels were originally published as written by “Grant Stockbridge,” but several pulpsmiths were the real authors. Most of the books were written by Norvell Page, as were the two in this edition: THE CORPSE CARGO AND SLAVES OF THE RING.
If I’ve made The Spider sound like just another version of the same old masked, slouch-hatted, caped, .45-carrying crime buster, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. These stories are different — kinkier and far more violent than those of Wentworth’s more family-friendly rivals. Good and bad guys drop like flies in these yarns.
In 1934′s THE CORPSE CARGO, a band of land pirates led by the sadistic Captain Kidd rob trains by shooting electricity through the cars and killing everyone onboard: “Wentworth got hold of a paper and by the light of a pocket flashlight he read the shrieking black headlines. TRAIN WRECKS KILL 1,000; PENNSY FLIER CRASHES IN TUBE; 2ND SMASH IN GRAND CENTRAL; FIVE MAIL PLANES CRACK UP. ‘And the loot will run into millions,’ he said. ‘Millions—and a thousand witnesses killed. Captain Kidd—does—right—well.’”
What I like best about that paragraph is the lack of pulp-fiction exclamation points, as if The Spider is appalled at the needless slaughter, but not terribly surprised. The surprise comes when he finds out that Captain Kidd is a woman.
In 1942′s SLAVES OF THE RING, a criminal madman known only as The Brain has corrupted absolutely the political ring of a certain state — no name given. The Spider and Nita, who plays a larger than usual role in the story, have to save the lives of a crusading newspaper publisher and his daughter, convince the governor that he’ll be killed by his bosses if he doesn’t reveal their identities first, solve the murder of an honest U.S. Senator, and bust a statewide siege by the police, and all without the aid of the federal government, which is never even mentioned. The “state” is an obvious stand-in for some small European country that has been conquered by a fascist power.
Forgive me, but I enjoy The Spider stories a lot more than I do those about The Shadow. They’re wilder, goofier, more action-filled — hell, just pulpier. Plus, Nita Van Sloan is hotter than Margot Lane. —Doug Bentin
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THE SPIDER:
• THE SPIDER: ROBOT TITANS OF GOTHAM by Norvell Page
• THE SPIDER: THE DEVIL’S PAYMASTER by Grant Stockbridge
Related posts:
- The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham
- Spider-Man Family Featuring Spider-Clan
- Spider-Man Family
- Spider-Man Magazine #4
- The Shadow: Crime, Insured / The Golden Vulture
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Ah yes, The Spider. I remember reading those adventures in order, one after the other, when I picked up the complete run years ago from a reader who had gone mad. But they didn’t do much harm to me. I’ll be out of the asylum in another couple of years. hahahahahahahahahha
Norvell Page was great. His plots often didn´t made a lot of sense, but his villians mostly were mass-murderers who put the hero through the wringer. The rabies, the plague, acid in cosmetics, poisened cigarettes, poisened alcohol – if he just once would have give a damn for a thing like continuity, his New York would have been a ghost-town.
And Nita was the best side-kick ever.