In October 1933, Popular Publications launched their two longest-running pulp heroes: The Spider and G-8.
The Spider is nominally a Shadow clone, but that doesn’t do him justice. The first two stories were written by R.T.M. Scott, author of Aurealus “Secret Service” Smith, an earlier and somewhat popular character. However, I have heard rumors he really didn’t write these two stories, but his son who worked at Popular did. This Spider was more in the line of an amateur detective, though he had a spider stamp he used on the criminals he killed.
With the third story, Norvell Page took over and soon turned The Spider into an over-the-top vigilante hero, fighting over-the-top weird-menace super villains that we all know. Unlike most of his covers, which show a handsome Spider wearing a domino mask and slouch hat, The Spider in the stories wore a hat and mask, but also a fake hunchback, a fright wig, and fake fangs. He laughed maniacally. His view was the only good crook was a dead crook, and he littered the back alleys and crime dens with plenty of good crooks. Then he made sure to stamp them with his spider sign so everyone knew who did it. He outlasted G-8 with 118 stories.
The Spider was really wealthy man-about-town Richard Wentworth, who was a WWI veteran. He is joined by a small group of assistants that includes his manservant, the fearsome Ram Singh, a Sikh warrior; Nita van Sloan, his long suffering fiance who actually got into the action; and Jackson, who had served under Wentworth during the Great War. Professor Brownlee provided him with his weapons.
The stories are best described as “pulp hero meets weird menace.” In each story, New York or the nation is faced with a new weird menace threat that often times kills hundreds, if not thousands. In a rarity for most pulp heroes, he actually faced a few foes more then once. The Living Pharaoh showed up in four stories, the most. Other foes included The Fly, The Red Mandarin, The Brain, The Bloody Serpent, The Bat Man, The Wreck, Red Feather, The Silencer, The Iron Man, Judge Torture, and The Emperor of Vermin.
In a bizarre three-part story from 1938, The Spider had to deal with a criminal and fascist take over of New York State. An obvious warning about the Nazis and the like. Age of Aces has reprinted the whole trilogy as The Spider vs. The Empire State.
As to other Spider reprints, Sanctum Books has started a new reprint series with double novels (about eight so far), and Girasol Collectables had a reprint series that lasted about 20 or so double-novel volumes. The Spider has yet to get a full reprint of all his stories, but he is probably had stories reprinted by the largest number of publishers. I am aware of Berkeley (four), Dimendia (six), Pocket (four), Carroll & Graf (eight), Baen (two), and Ramble House (one). Bold Venture and Pulp Adventure Press also tried launching complete reprint series, but I’m not certain how many they put out, after which the rights went to Wildside Press very briefly. One novel, “Death Reign of the Vampire King,” has been reprinted by four different publishers and adapted into a comic book!
For those into audio books, several Spider novels have recently been done in that format.
There was an unpublished 119th story. It was published back in the ’70s by Python Press, but The Spider was renamed “Blue Steel” (with an unused Operator #5 paperback cover done by George Gross). It was finally (re-)published recently by Moonstone Books in its original form. And Moonstone has also published new Spider stories.
Movie serials
The Spider was one of the few pulp heroes to get a serial in the 1930s, with two from Columbia. I am only aware of the first, The Spider’s Web, out on video. Different from the pulp version, in this version The Spider wears a full face mask and cape with a spider web motif on it, along with a slough hat.
Comic books
Popular Publications never got into comics, though they thought of it. But since then, several have done comic-book versions of The Spider. Like book reprints, The Spider may have the largest number of publishers doing comic book versions of him of any pulp hero.
In the early 1990s, Tim Truman did two mini-series at Eclipse Comics that put The Spider in a sort of alternate universe version that was interesting. Both were based on original pulp stories. I’m not aware of any reprint of these.
In 1994, the owners of The Spider had a brief comic-book line called Blazing Comics. They did an issue of The Spider Presents: Quiver, but The Spider was more of a secondary story than a major part. In one of their comics, they had “Blue Steel” appear as a character! At the same time, Millennium was planning an expansion of their pulp comics with a Spider comic, but nothing came of it when Millennium went under.
In 1998, Insight Studios put out Titanic Tales that included an adaptation of a Spider novel. Overall I thought it was good. And Vanguard Publications did a one-shot in 2002.
In 2009, Moonstone got the rights to several pulp heroes, including The Spider, and put out a wide range of one-shots and minis. Some were more of illustrated stories than proper comic books. Then they lost the rights to all the Popular Publication characters. (So probably no more new prose works from them.)
The rights moved to Dynamite who did a more modern version, with The Spider wearing an outfit more like the serial movie version. This ran 18 issues, plus an annual, which have been reprinted in three trade paperbacks. No idea if we will see any new Spider works. He has also appeared in their Masks miniseries.
Reference works
Robert Sampson has done the only book-length study of The Spider, which is sadly out of print. Black Dog Books plans to reprint it, but I have no idea when. Really wish they would, as it’s pretty good.
The Spider is a well-known pulp hero and there are a lot of reprints out there, so its easy to find some of his stories to read. If you haven’t checked out The Spider, do so.
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