Spider (pulp fiction)

This article is about the pulp magazine character. For the British comic character, see The Spider (comic). For DC Comics characters, see Alias the Spider. For other uses, see Spider (disambiguation).

The Spider
Cover of the first issue, October 1933, featuring the story "The Spider Strikes"
Publisher	Popular Publications
First appearance	The Spider, vol. 1, no. 1 ("The Spider Strikes") (October 1933)
Created by	Harry Steeger
In story information
Real name	Richard Wentworth
Supporting characters	Nita Van Sloan Ram Singh Ronald Jackson Stanley Kirkpatrick
Spider (pulp fiction)
Publisher	Popular Publications
Schedule	Monthly (until March 1943) Bi-monthly (until final issue)
Genre	Hero pulp
Publication date	October 1933 – December 1943
Number of issues	118
Creative team
Writer(s)	Norvell W. Page Reginald Thomas Maitland Scott "Grant Stockbridge"
Editor(s)	Rogers Terrill (1933–1942) Robert Turner & Ryerson Johnson (1943)
Films or serials
The Spider’s Web	Columbia Pictures 1938 Portrayed by: Warren Hull
The Spider Returns	Columbia Pictures 1941 Portrayed by: Warren Hull
Comics and graphic novels
The Spider	Eclipse Comics 1991
The Spider: Judgement Knight	Moonstone Books 2009

The Spider was one of the major pulp magazine heroes of the 1930s and 1940s.

Background

The Spider was created by Harry Steeger at Popular Publications in 1933 as competition to Street and Smith Publications' vigilante hero, The Shadow. Similar to the character of The Shadow, The Spider was in actuality millionaire playboy Richard Wentworth living in New York and unaffected by the Great Depression. Wentworth fought crime by donning a black cape, slouch hat, and vampiric makeup job or face mask to terrorize the criminal underworld with extreme prejudice and his own brand of vigilante justice.

The stories often involved a bizarre menace and a criminal conspiracy and were often extremely violent, with the villains engaging in wanton slaughter of literally thousands as part of their crimes. The first story was written by R. T. M. Scott, but later stories were published under a house name, Grant Stockbridge. Most of the Spider novels were written by Norvell Page. Other authors of the Spider novels included Emile C. Tepperman, Wayne Rogers, Prentice Winchell, and Donald C. Cormack. The cover artists for the Spider magazine were Walter M. Baumhofer for the debut issue, followed by John Newton Howitt and Raphael De Soto. ^[1] The Spider was published monthly and ran for 118 issues from 1933 to 1943. A 119th Spider novel manuscript had been completed but was not published until decades later, then as a rewritten mass-market paperback (see paperback novels section, below).

Supporting characters

Richard Wentworth was aided by his fiancé, Nita Van Sloan. Though they were as close as man and wife, they knew that they could not marry, as Wentworth believed that he would eventually be unmasked or killed as The Spider and his wife would suffer for it.

Ram Singh was Wentworth's manservent. A Sikh (originally Hindu), Ram Singh was a deadly knife thrower and usually carried several knives with him, including the deadly Kukri. He never saw his position as servant as demeaning or having a negative impact on his self respect, feeling that he served a man totally above other men. Ronald Jackson was Wentworth's chauffeur. Jackson had served under Wentworth in World War I and often referred to him as "the Major". Harold Jenkyns was Wentworth's butler, a man who had been in the Wentworth family's service for a long time. Wentworth's main ally/antagonist was the Police Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick or simply "Kirk", who suspected Wentworth was The Spider but could never prove it. An old war colleague and inventor named Professor Ezra Brownlee featured heavily in the early stories before being killed off ("Dragon Lord of the Underworld", July 1935). Brownlee's son made some appearances afterwards.

Enemies

Despite The Spider's tendency to kill his enemies, he encountered several foes more than once, such as The Fly and MUNRO, a master of disguise. Some storylines featuring a struggle against a single villain lasted for several consecutive issues, such as The Spider's four-part battle against The Living Pharaoh. Among the enemies he encountered once were predecessors of the costumed supervillains of comic books, such as The Red Mandarin, The Brain, The Bloody Serpent, The Wreck, Red Feather, The Silencer, Judge Torture, and The Emperor of Vermin. The names of two Spider villains, The Bat Man and The Iron Man, would be used for comic book superheroes years later.

The Spider's seal and weapons

One distinguishing feature of The Spider was his "calling card." Wentworth often left a red-ink "spider" image on the foreheads of the criminals that he slew. During the same time period, in a much more benign fashion and perhaps inspired by the Spider's calling card, Lee Falk's long-running 1936 sydicated comic strip hero, The Phantom, left a distinct skull mark in the faces of those enemies he fought, made by the ring he wore. The Spider's seal, however, was concealed in the base of his cigarette lighter and was invented by Professor Brownlee.

Brownlee also invented the lethal and almost silent air pistol the Spider used for 'quiet' kills. He acted as a sort of on-call technical wizard for Wentworth, who he looked upon as being close to a son.

In Timothy Truman's 1990s comic-book version, Brownlee also created the "Web-Lee," a non-lethal 'stun' pistol that fired projectiles that erupted into a spiderweb-like mass, inundated with microscopic barbs of frozen curare.

Like The Shadow, The Spider's usual weapons of choice were a pair of Browning .45 automatic pistols.

Master of Men

The Spider's by-name was "Master of Men", indicating that he had a voice commanding enough to get many people to do his bidding. Wentworth could also imitate other people's voices. When he imitated Kirkpatrick's voice, he could give orders to lesser policemen during a stake-out, even during one intended to capture the Spider, so he could himself escape.

Movie serials

There were two Spider movie serials produced, the first being 1938's The Spider’s Web; Spider pulp magazine novelist Norvell Page worked on that first serial's screenplay. The second serial was 1941's The Spider Returns; it was written by adventure and science fiction pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard. Both were 15-chapter cliffhangers produced by Columbia Pictures, starring Warren Hull as Richard Wentworth. Both serials featured a dramatic wardrobe enhancement to the Spider's magazine appearance: his simple black cloak and head mask were now over-printed with a white spider's web pattern and then matched to his usual plain black fedora. This striking addition gave the silver screen Spider an appearance more like that of a traditional superhero, like other comics heroes being adapted for the era's movie serials; it also made the serial Spider look less like the very popular Street and Smith pulp hero The Shadow, which also had been produced by Columbia and starred Victor Jory.

Novel reprints

Many of the original 119 Spider pulp magazine novels have been reprinted over the years in both mass-market and trade paperback editions. They continue being republished today and seem likely to continue for some time to come.

Berkley Books (then Berkley/Medallion) first reprinted the Spider in 1969 and 1970, intending to reprint all 118 novels in order, hoping to tap into the reprint phenomenon of the Doc Savage novels being published by Bantam Books. But these first paperback reissues met with poor sales after only four volumes, and the planned series was canceled.

In the mid-seventies, Pocket Books reprinted four Spider novels, this time featuring "modern" pulp artwork on their covers: Each featured a non-costumed, heavily armed Spider depicted as a muscular blonde hero holding a gorgeous woman. These mass-market paperbacks also failed to find an audience and the series was canceled. It seems likely that these four books were edited and modernized reprints, one of several reasons why they may have never caught on with their intended audience. In one, Death and the Spider, with an original publishing date of 1940, Nita Van Sloan is shown driving an Jaguar E-type X-KE, a sportscar not created and on the streets until 1961, some nineteen years later.

At roughly the same time in England, Mews Books/New American Library reprinted four Spider novels sporting new cover artwork, each being different in style and execution from those used by Pocket Books. This Spider mass-market series also ended after only four titles had been published.

Then, three years later, in 1979, an unusual Spider publishing event happened out of the "blue." Python Publishing put into print the never-before-published last original Spider novel, Slaughter, Inc., originally to have been published as Spider pulp magazine #119. Python finally published it as a one-shot, mass-market paperback. For copyright reasons, all characater names were changed and the novel was retitled Blue Steel ("The Ultimate Answer To Evil"). In it, the Spider was recast as Blue Steel. Just like the previous Pocket Book editions, it also sported a "modern" pulp cover featuring a very similar, non-costumed, but heavily armed blonde hero.

A year later, in 1980, Dimedia, Inc. reprinted three Spider pulp novels in the larger trade paperback format. Then beginning four years later, they continued with three mass-market Spider novel reprints, one in 1984 and two in 1985. These last three sported new cover paintings of the original costumed Spider by fantasy artist Ken Kelly.

In the early 1990s, Carroll & Graf Publishers began issuing a series of eight mass-market Spider paperbacks, each one in a double-novel format. All used original Spider pulp magazine artwork for their covers. These 16 novels became the longest running Spider reprint series done for the mass-market trade.

After Carol and Graf, several specialized small press pulp reprint houses tried a complete reprinting of the Spider series before finally stopping. Bold Publications started this multiple small press revival during the mid-1990s with a series of affordable Spider trade paperback reprints. Others soon joined in with Spider reprintings. In later years, the prolific Wildside Press started offering Spider reprints. But Girasol Collectibles has been the most dogged of them all. It has reissued the novels as both a series of single pulp novel facsimile editions, as well as retypeset stories in 'pulp double' trade paperbacks. Both series use Spider pulp magazine artwork for their covers. More than five dozen Spider novels have been put back into print as part of Girasol's ambitious program, which still continues.

New York science fiction publisher Baen Books published in 2007 a single trade paperback featuring three Spider novel reprints. Then in 2008 they released a second companion trade paperback of Spider reprints. Baen then issued both volumes as mass-market paperbacks. One of the three novels in that second omnibus stars another Street and Smith pulp character, the Octopus. The Baen editions sported new Spider cover paintings by noted graphic designer and comics artist Jim Steranko. Steranko had illustrated all 28 covers for the 1970s mass-market reprint volumes of rival pulp hero The Shadow, published by Pyramid Books and HBJ/Jove Books.

In late 2009, Doubleday's Science Fiction Book Club reprinted in hardcover Baen's second Spider three-in-one volume from the previous year. This became the first Spider hardcover edition ever published.

In August 2009, Age of Aces reprinted the Spider's "Black Police" novel trilogy in a single volume. Moonstone Books also published an original anthology of brand new Spider short stories entitled The Spider Chronicles the same year.

The Vintage Library has thirty-four licensed Spider novel reprints available in the PDF format. For a small fee, each one can be downloaded from their website.

Spider comics and graphic novels

In the early 1990s, the Spider and its characters were reinterpreted in comic book form by Timothy Truman for Eclipse Comics. As noted in Comics Scene #19, Truman decided to set his version of the Spider in the "1990s as seen by the 1930s". In other words, he tried to anticipate how a writer from the 1930s would anticipate sociological and technological developments of the 1990s, with obviously some elements not matching the actual 1990s. Elements of this version of the Spider's milieu included airships as common transportation, the survival of the League of Nations into the near past (Wentworth meets Ram Singh during an intervention into India/Pakistan), and World War II, if it ever happened, taking place differently. This series featured an African-American Commissioner Kirkpatrick.

Moonstone Books has started a new Spider graphic novel series, which are structured more like illustrated prose stories than traditional panel-by-panel comics. In March 2011, the same publisher offered the first issue of a more traditional Spider comic book, with art by veteran creator Pablo Marcos.

References

• Barbour, Alan G. Cliffhanger: A Pictorial History of the Motion Picture Serial. A & W Publishers, 1977. ISBN 0-89104-070-6.
• Goodstone, Tony. The Pulps: 50 Years of American Pop Culture. Bonanza Books (Crown Publishers, Inc.), 1970. SBN 394-4418-6.
• Goulart, Ron. Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of the Pulp Magazine. Arlington House, 1972. ISBN 0-87000-1722-8.
• Gunnison, Locke and Gunnison, Ellis. Adventure House Guide to the Pulps. Adventure House, 2000. ISBN 1-886937-45-1.
• Hamilton, Frank and Hamilton, Hullar. Amazing Pulp Heroes. Gryphon Books, 1988. ISBN 0-936071-09-5.
• Hutchison, Don. The Great Pulp Heroes. Mosaic Press, 1995. ISBN 0-88962-582-2.
• Quezada, Rome, Senior Editor. "A classic from the Golden Age of pulp fiction returns." Science Fiction Book Club magazine. Late Winter, 2009. No ISSN.
• Robinson, Frank M. and Davidson, Lawrence. Pulp Culture. Collector's Press, 1998. ISBN 1-888054-12-3.

Pop culture trivia

In his 1974 Fireside Book (Simon & Schuster), Origins of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee states that, in the creation of the Spider-Man character, he adapted the name of The Spider for Marvel's character. "It was the name that grabbed me."

References

1. ^ Spider by Robert Sampson, Bowling Green State University, Popular Press, 1987 ISBN 9780879723972 (p. 89).

External links

• Spider (pulp fiction) at the Internet Movie Database
• Index of Spider stories with authors
• The Spider Returns, fan site with detailed information
• The Spider Pulps at the Vintage Library
• The Spider at ThePulp.Net
• Magazine Datafile for The Spider