| 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 |
| Characters |
Richard Wentworth
Nita Van Sloan
Ram Singh
Ronald Jackson
Stanley Kirkpatrick |
| The Spider |
| Series publication information |
| Schedule |
Monthly (until March 1943)
Bi-monthly (until final issue) |
| Format |
Pulp magazine |
| 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) |
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 cape, mask, and slouch hat, and terrorizing the criminal underworld with extreme prejudice and his brand of vigilante justice.
The stories often involved a bizarre menace and a criminal conspiracy and were often extremely violent. 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 Spider was published monthly and ran for 118 issues from 1933 to 1943.
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. Ronald Jackson was Wentworth's chauffeur. Jackson had served under Wentworth in World War One 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.
The Spider's seal
One distinguishing feature of The Spider was his "calling card." Wentworth often left a red-ink "spider" impression on the foreheads of the criminals that he slew. During the same time period, in a much more benign fashion, Lee Falk's long-running 1936 sydicated comic strip hero, The Phantom, left a skull-and-cross-bones impression on 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. It was invented by Professor Brownlee.
Movie serials
There were two movie serials produced about The Spider. The first was The Spider’s Web which came out in 1938; the second was The Spider Returns which came out in 1941. These were 15-chapter cliffhangers produced by Columbia Pictures, and starring Warren Hull as Richard Wentworth.
Reprints and adaptations
Some of the original Spider pulp magazine novels have been reprinted in both mass-market and trade paperback editions. They continue being republished up through 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, now depicted as a muscular blonde hero holding a gorgeous woman. These mass-market reprints also failed to find an audience and were canceled.
At roughly the same time in England, Mews Books/New American Library reprinted four Spider novels, also sporting new cover artwork but not the same ones as used on the Pocket Books editions. This mass-market series also ended after only four titles had been published.
Then, three years later, an unusual Spider publishing event happened out of the "blue." Python Publishing put into print in 1979 the never-before-published last original Spider novel, Slaughter, Inc., originally to have been Spider pulp magazine #119. Python published it as a one-shot 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, it continued with three mass-market Spider reprints, one in 1984 and two in 1985. These last three sported new cover paintings of the original costumed Spider by noted fantasy artist Ken Kelly.
In the early 1990s, Carroll and Graf published eight mass-market Spider paperbacks using the double-novel format, all with original Spider pulp magazine cover artwork. These 16 Spider novels became the longest running Spider series done for the mass-market trade.
Since then, several small press pulp publishing houses have tried a complete reprint of the Spider series before finally going under in the late 1990s. Currently, Girasol is reprinting the Spider in a series of 'pulp double' trade paperback volumes. Dozens of novels have been reprinted.
New York publisher Baen Books published in the trade paperback format a Spider novel in 2007 and another in 2008. Each sported new covers by noted comics artist and graphic designer Jim Steranko, who had illustrated all 23 mass-market reprint volumes of pulp hero The Shadow published by Pyramid Books and HBJ/Jove during the 1970s.
Age of Aces reprinted in August of 2009 the Spider's "Black Police" trilogy in a single volume. And Moonstone Books has published a collection of brand new Spider short stories entitled The Spider Chronicles.
The Spider in the comics
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 "1990's as seen by the 1930's". 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 1990's. 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.
Most recently, Moonstone Books has started a new Spider comic book series, which is more like illustrated prose stories.
References
- Goodstone, Tony (1970), The Pulps: 50 Years of American Pop Culture, Bonanza Books (Crown Publishers, Inc.), SBN 394-4418-6.
- Goulart, Ron (1972), Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of the Pulp Magazine, Arlington House, ISBN 0-87000-1722-8.
- Hamilton, Frank and Hullar, Link (1988), Amazing Pulp Heroes, Gryphon Books, ISBN 0-936071-09-5.
- Hutchison, Don (1995), The Great Pulp Heroes, Mosaic Press, ISBN 0-88962-582-2
- Robinson, Frank M. and Davidson, Lawrence (1998), Pulp Culture, Collector's Press, ISBN 1-888054-12-3.
- Gunnison, Locke and Ellis (2000), Adventure House Guide to the Pulps, Adventure House, ISBN 1-886937-45-1
Triva
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.
External links
