Meet The Black Star

Johnston McCulley, the prolific writer who created Zorro, created several other serial pulp characters that many of today’s pulp fans are unaware of.

His first serial character was The Black Star, a villain who appeared in Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine from 1916-30, though most stories appeared between 1916 and 1921. The stories appeared under both McCulley’s name and one of his pseudonyms, John Mack Stone, at first.

The Black Star pre-dates Zorro by a couple of years (and Zorro doesn’t appear to have been created with the intention of making him a serial character).

The series sets down several elements we will see in further McCulley characters. The Black Star wears a sack-cloth hood, black with a jet black star on it. (He also wears a mask underneath the hood.) Such a hood will be used by characters such as The Thunderbolt, The Bat, and The Green Ghost.

While a thief, The Black Star is a “gentleman thief.” He and his men do not kill. They use knock-out gas and gas guns — which, again, will be used by other characters of his such as The Crimson Clown and The Bat.

And there needs to be a hero to oppose the villain, and this hero is also similar to several that will follow. We have what is called the “Master and Man” combo by pulp historian Robert Sampson. The hero is Roger Verbeck, an idle millionaire and amateur criminologist who decides to challenge The Black Star. He is aided by his servant and friend Muggs, a small, tough, former crook that Roger saved from suicide. (Sound familiar? We will see characters similar to Muggs in other series.) And Roger has a fiance, whom he can’t marry until he deals with The Black Star.

Another interesting element is that The Black Star’s men would leave little black star stickers as a calling card. Maybe picked up from The Gray Seal‘s little diamond-shaped stickers? Other pulp characters will follow with that idea.

The stories, dates of their first publication in Detective Story Magazine (many cover featured), and reprint collection titles are:

• “Rogue for a Day,” March 5, 1916 (The Black Star) C
• “Black Star’s Defiance,” June 20, 1916  C
• “Black Star’s Subterfuge,” Oct. 5, 1916 (Behind the Mask #29)
• “Black Star’s Revenge,” Nov. 5, 1916  C
• “Black Star’s Masquerade,” Dec. 20, 1916  C
• “Black Star’s Mistake,” Feb. 5 & 20, 1917 (The Black Star) C
• “Black Star’s Return,” Oct. 2, 1917 (The Return of Black Star) C
• “Black Star’s Rebuke,” Oct. 23, 1917 (The Return of Black Star)   C
• “Black Star’s Serenade,” Nov. 27, 1917   ?
• “Black Star’s Raid,” Dec. 11, 1917   C
• “Black Star’s Hobby,” Jan. 29, 1918 (The Return of Black Star)  C
• “The Defeat of Black Star,” Feb. 26, 1918  C
• “Black Star’s Campaign,” Jan. 14-Feb. 4, 1919 (six weekly parts; The Black Star’s Campaign)
• “Black Star Comes Back,” Jan. 8-22, 1921 (three weekly parts; The Black Star’s Return)  C
• “Black Star on the Air,” March 3-17, 1928 (three weekly parts)  C
• “Black Star Back — and How,” Nov. 1-13, 1930 (three weekly parts)

As you can see, The Black Star series came our pretty consistently for the first six stories, then there was a short gap. It resumed for a while. I am told the 1928 story was probably written early and would have closely followed the 1921 story. For some reason S&S delayed it.  As I understand it, the final story was in many ways different from the rest in terms of how the characters acted.

The stories mostly follow a basic pattern. Roger and Muggs get captured on the trail of The Black Star. The Black Star gets captured, and Roger takes his place. The Black Star escapes. He commits his great crime. He is captured at the end, though he will escape. One thing interesting as compared with later villains is The Black Star is The Black Star. He is a full-time criminal not some upstanding member of society who has to worry about being unmasked.

Also interesting is that the next serial characters McCulley would do was The Spider in 1918, who was also a pure villain (I hope to get to him soon). Next was Thubway Tham, a pickpocket who targeted bad people, so not a pure villain, but not quite a “Robin Hood hero.” But his stories are more humorous than those.

After that we will mainly get “vengeance heroes” (heroes who target certain criminals who have done the hero wrong) or “bent heroes” (Robin Hood-like characters who steal from the unjust rich and give to the poor). In the first group are characters such as The Avenging Twins, The Rollicking Rogue, The Thunderbolt, The Mongoose, and The Bat. In the second are The Man in Purple and The Crimson Clown.

Sadly, no one has as yet done a complete reprint of The Black Star stories. Chelsea House, Street & Smith’s book imprint, reprinted some of The Black Star stories in a trio of books (Black Star, Black Star’s Campaign and Black Star’s Return). Wildside Press has reprinted two of them (The Black Star and The Black Star’s Campaign). There are other reprints out there of these three books, but no one has tried to do a complete reprint of the series. Yet.

Murania Press hopes to, and has started this with The Return of The Black Star. This is meant to kick off a series of further volumes reprinting other McCulley serial characters. So pick it up so we can have further ones.

While The Black Star may not be a perfect character, he is an interesting one in the development of the pulp serial characters as well as McCulley’s other characters.