In the next in this series of articles, I take an overview of one of the major pulp publishers and their pulp heroes: Street & Smith.
Established in 1855, Street & Smith was a publisher of inexpensive books and magazines. They started off with dime novels before moving to pulp magazines. In 1940, they added comic books. In 1949, they shutdown both pulps and comic books, selling off some pulp titles to Popular Publications. This lead to speculation at the time that they might sell off their pulp heroes, but that didn’t happen.
At that point, Street & Smith concentrated on “slick” magazines (mostly women’s magazines like Mademoiselle) until they were bought out by Conde Nast in 1959.
They are notable for kicking off the hero pulp explosion in 1931, when they launched The Shadow, probably the most well-known of pulp heroes. Street & Smith had been sponsoring a radio show to help sell one of their detective pulps. They used a mysterious announcer, which they called “The Shadow,” to read the stories. It was so popular that people asked for “that Shadow magazine,” and S&S knew they had to capitalize on this. So Henry Ralston and John Nanovac recruited Walter Gibson to pen the stories under the name Maxwell Grant. They hedged their bets by having the magazine be a quarterly and reusing an old cover. But the magazine was so popular that it soon went from quarterly to bimonthly to monthly, and within the next year to twice a month!
The Shadow was so popular that he got his own radio show, comic book, comic strip, and movies and movie serials.
Building off the success of The Shadow, S&S in March 1933 launched their next two pulps: Doc Savage and Nick Carter. Doc Savage was their larger-than-life adventurer/hero, penned by Lester Dent under the name Kenneth Robeson. Nick Carter was a revamp of their larger-than-life dime novel detective hero, now recast as a more hard-boiled detective. Interesting thing is that the original Nick Carter was more like Doc Savage!
Doc Savage, of course, was widely successful, and also spawned a couple of radio shows and a comic book. Attempts to do a comic strip or movie never panned out.
Nick Carter, however, was not so successful. He only lasted three years in his own pulp, but did get a radio show and a comic book series in the back of several S&S comic books, as well as some backup stories.
In November 1933, S&S added Pete Rice, a modern western hero. He would last about six years, half of that as a backup series.
Later, in February 1934, they would add Bill Barnes, an aviation hero. He would plug along for several years, though, again, not as successful. His later stories appeared in the back of Doc Savage magazine.
In 1936, S&S tried to repeat the success of The Shadow and Doc Savage with two similar characters: The Whisperer and The Skipper. At the same time, they canceled Nick Carter and Pete Rice. The Whisperer was Police Commissioner James Gordon, who also fought crime as the mysterious Whisperer.
Captain Fury, the Skipper, was a roving adventurer/hero with his crew of the Whirlwind, who travel the seas fighting evil. Neither were very successful, only lasting a couple of years to be relegated to the back of The Shadow and Doc Savage respectively, though The Whisperer did get a new title later on.
In 1937, S&S tried a different tactic. They dumped The Whisperer and The Skipper, and retitled a magazine into Crime Busters (later retitled Mystery Magazine), and ran several pulp hero series in the hope that one (or more) could be launched into their own magazine. Kind of like what DC Comics did with Showcase. Walter Gibson did Norgil the Magician, Lester Dent did Click Rush the Gadget Man, Theodore Tinsley did Carrie Cashin, Norvel Page (of The Spider fame) did Death Angel, Lester Dent also did Ed Stone under the Kenneth Robeson name, and there may have been others I don’t know about. Norgil was a magician-detective, Click Rush was the last of Dent’s “gadget heroes,” Carrie Cashin was an interesting female detective. Ed Stone was a detective who dealt with more humorous cases. And the Death Angel was a violent vigilante, appropriate for Page. Sadly, none got their own magazine, though a few got brief comic series in the back of the S&S comic books.
In 1939, S&S tried a different tactic, this time combining the elements of The Shadow and Doc into one: The Avenger. They got pulp scribe Paul Ernst to write it, with some input and suggestions from Gibson and Dent. Sadly, it wasn’t as successful as it could have been. I never liked that they “de-powered” him after 12 issues. He did get a radio show (though it was nothing like the character) and some comic book stories. Around this time they dropped Bill Barnes from his magazine, and totally dropped Pete Rice.
The last new hero pulp they tried was The Wizard in 1940. He only lasted six issues. At this time S&S was getting into comics as well, so maybe they weren’t as interested in new pulp heroes.
As noted, in 1940, Street and Smith got into comics. Several of their pulp characters made the transition, a very few getting their own titles. The Shadow Comics was the most successful, getting 101 issues. Doc got a shorter-lived title, as did Bill Barnes. Many of the others got series that ran in several comics, along with more original comic book heroes and characters. Some of their more successful original comic titles were Supersnipe and Super-Magician.
There are a few I probably missed. I know of the interesting character I.V. Frost written by Donald Wandrei. He appeared in Clues Detective Stories from 1934 to 1937. Haffner Press is coming out with a complete collection of his stories.
Any others?
I’m curious about Norvell Page’s DEATH ANGEL. I know Moonstone used a character by that name in its pulp comics, but I had assumed it was a wholly original character (and it may have been, with only the same name). Googling Norvell Page and Death Angel, I couldn’t find any information about this character anywhere. You’d think with The Spider’s popularity that a similar sort of vigilante character written by Page would have generated some interest from hero pulp fans. It seems there have been a couple of sporadic reprints of these stories scattered about (mostly as e-texts), but I would like to know more about the character before purchasing any. Can’t believe Altus Press hasn’t collected these, as they seem to be doing a series of anthologies of Page’s short detective/horror fiction. The character isn’t even listed in Bill Thom’s Pulp Series Character Reprint Index.
I don’t know much about Page’s Death Angel, but AFAIK, Moonstone’s character is NOT based on his. Page’s character I think is male.
ALL of Street & Smith’s characters are still owned by Conde Nast, so Altus would need to get permission. And I think all the reprint rights are held by Sanctum Books. So they’d be the ones to reprint him.
Altus Press has a Pulp Hero Index which includes Death Angel. He had 11 stories.
It’s a shame that Sanctum hasn’t done any reprint collections of short fiction, as it would be nice to have all of these stories (not sure of the word counts) in one or two collections. But I guess there’s still a good possibility that some of these stories may show up as bonus features in the back of Sanctum’s double novels of The Spider.
Thanks, Michael.
Would agree. I think people would really like to get collections of say, all the Norgil stories, all the Dent stories (Click Rush and the other one he did), all the Carrie Cashin stories, etc. Maybe they could do such collections under the “Crime Busters” name, using some of the covers from that pulp, else partner with Altus Press.