Explore The Spider’s web on the internet through our list of curated links. Please let us know if you have a link you would like to share.
Links marked [Archived] are no longer active on the open web, but live on through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Links open archived versions; some pages and images may not be fully preserved, and links may take longer to load.
Start here
- The Spider at Wikipedia
- The Spider’s entry at the online collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia covers the pulp, the characters, the authors, reprints, and comic-book versions.
- The Spider Returns
- Uber-fan Chris Kalb has created the ultimate site on The Spider. Everything you’d care to know about the Master of Men is here, plus some extras, such as essays and articles on collecting and protecting pulp magazines. The Spider Returns is an outstanding resource. Don’t miss it.
- PulpFest’s The Spider videos
- PulpFest’s YouTube channel has several videos on The Spider — the character, the artwork, the artists, and more.
- Pulp Sunday: Pulp Spotlight: The Spider
- Artist and illustrator Francesco Francavilla put his pen to paper for a portrait of The Spider and provides a bit of background on the character. The Pulp Sunday blog is no longer active, but this entry remains a worthwhile stop.
Quick links
The pulp originals
- The Spider at Steeger Books
- Steeger Books holds the license to reprint the complete run of The Spider pulp novels in authorized editions, with the original interior illustrations restored. The publisher also releases new original Spider novels by Will Murray as part of its Wild Adventures series.
- The Spider at Wikisource
- Wikisource, an online source for e–texts, has the first three adventures of The Spider available for reading online, complete with the interior illustrations: “The Spider Strikes,” “The Wheel of Death” and “Wings of the Black Death.”
- Age of Aces Books: The Spider vs. The Empire State
- Age of Aces Books reprinted three stories from 1938 that are the “Black Police Trilogy” written by Norvell Page for The Spider pulp. The webpage for the book, The Spider vs. The Empire State, includes information regarding the book, illustrations from the stories and a look inside the book.
- The Spider at the Fifth Imperium
- The Fifth Imperium’s website hosts a collection of CD images from Baen Books’ digital books, including The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham. In addition to the text of the book, there’s also a condensed version of Chris Kalb’s The Spider Returns site here. This site says it isn’t affiliated with Baen Books.
- Baen Books Interview: Chris Kalb
- Chris Kalb, proprietor of The Spider Returns site (mentioned above), talks with Toni Weisskopf about The Spider, the pulps and his websites.
In other media
- The Spider at the Internet Movie Database
- Find out about The Spider’s film serial adventures at the Internet Movie Database:
- The Spider’s Web (1938)
- The Spider Returns (1941)
- The Spider – Master of Men!
- Chris Kalb, proprietor of The Spider Returns! website, has scanned, restored, and edited the first seven chapters of the 1938 movie serial The Spider’s Web into a feature film that runs just under an hour and 20 minutes.
- Dissecting Tim Truman’s The Spider
- In his “When Words Collide” column for Comic Book Resources, Timothy Callahan takes a look at Eclipse Comics’ The Spider from 1991, a reworking of the pulp character in a fictionalized contemporary setting.
- Dial B for Blog: The Spider [Archived]
- The Dial B for Blog, a comic blog, takes a look at the pulp character’s appearances in magazines, comic books and film, with plenty of cover art and movie stills.
- Hero Pulp Essay #4: The Spider
- MARDLtransmit, a.k.a. Don Gates, has put together a video essay on The Spider, one of a series of Pulp Hero videos on YouTube.com.
Collectors & deep dives
- The Spider at Wikimedia Commons
- Wikimedia Commons, an online repository of free–use images, sound and other media files, has a gallery of The Spider pulp covers.
- ReelArt Studios: The Spider Sculpture
- ReelArt Studios produced a limited edition, 10–inch–tall statue of The Spider sculpted by William Paquet. The ReelArt website includes photos of the finished statue, details of it and shots of the original sculpture.
- The Spider at R.A. Maguire Cover Art [Archived]
- Robert Maguire is chiefly known for his cover paintings for the paperback books that supplanted the pulps as cheap popular fiction. But if you burrow down into this site, established by his daughter Lynn, you’ll find the original reference photos [Archived] of Steve Holland that Maguire used when he painted the covers for the Pocket Books reprints of The Spider adventures>.
Further reading & fan community
The Spider has a smaller dedicated fan infrastructure online than The Shadow or Doc Savage — a reflection of the character’s relative obscurity rather than any lack of merit. This section will expand as new resources emerge.
- The real Spider
- A gallery of the seven Spider covers by artist Rafael DeSoto — from March through September 1940 — that depicted Richard Wentworth in his full disguise, revealing the character’s true hideous appearance on the cover.
