{"id":22643,"date":"2026-05-07T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T14:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=22643"},"modified":"2026-04-03T13:53:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:53:26","slug":"the-man-with-the-rubber-face-by-h-bedford-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2026\/05\/07\/the-man-with-the-rubber-face-by-h-bedford-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Man With the Rubber Face’ by H. Bedford-Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Man With the Rubber Face<\/em> reprints the entire series of stories starring John Cabot<\/strong>, the titular “man with the rubber face,” in his crusade against criminals.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>Written by H. Bedford-Jones<\/a><\/strong>, this series ran in Mystery<\/a><\/em> magazine. This was a slick-paper magazine from Tower Magazines<\/a>, sold only in Woolworth stores, and is not properly a pulp magazine.<\/p>\n

Mystery<\/em> started as Illustrated Detective Magazine<\/a><\/em> from 1929 to 1932 before being renamed Mystery<\/em> and running until 1935. These stories ran from February to August 1933. The reprint is part of Steeger Books<\/a>‘ H. Bedford-Jones Library<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I don’t know the source of the cover. The original illustrations were included, and the artwork is very nice, black-and-white wash paintings. However, in the last story, the illustrations appear to be photos.<\/p>\n

The first four stories all have the same name, “The Man With the Rubber Face,” while the following three have normal titles. The stories are short, about 20 pages each, with the final one twice as long as the rest. Despite this, there are actually a lot of characters in this series, though not all have a large role in the fast-moving stories.<\/p>\n

John Cabot is our main character, who has the ability to change his appearance by using muscular control. He has recently inherited the Cabot Estate from his late uncle. But Cabot had, several years ago, adopted another identity of Larry Kilraine<\/strong> to earn a living, this as a professional magician known as Korvo the Great<\/strong>. However, “Larry Kilraine” was framed for theft and was sent to prison, but got out after two years after receiving a pardon for helping the authorities during a prison riot. Why he didn’t just drop that identity and avoid going to prison is never really explained.<\/p>\n

There is Viola Le May<\/strong>, who is Larry’s assistant and seems to want their relationship to be more than just professional, but John\/Larry has no interest. There is Judson Harmer<\/strong>, Cabot’s lawyer, and one of only two people who knows that John is Larry. There is Bowker<\/strong>, John’s chauffeur, a former con, who is the other person who knows. And there is Mary Sargent<\/strong>, a childhood friend of John, whom he hires to be his secretary and manager of his estate. And maybe she’ll be more.<\/p>\n

In the first story, we find John phoning in a tip to the police to find a kidnap victim before visiting his lawyer and hiring Mary. John is planning on going after Morse<\/strong>, the man who framed Larry. So, are we getting a limited-revenge hero? He next meets up with Viola to get info on Morse, but then has to help her out when a gangster, Carias<\/strong>, is killed by accident in her apartment. While John gets rid of him, he is spotted as Larry and may be thought a killer. But he is able to get the best of Morse and send him away. Huh. So what happens next?<\/p>\n

In the next story, we see that John needs to use his Larry identity, as he is now seen as the killer of Carias. But the main action is John setting up a group of crooks to wipe themselves out.<\/p>\n

Next up, John gets tricked by the police commissioner, who now knows John is Larry and tries to blackmail him. Can he get out of this? We also learn there is a “Big Shot” who controls all crime, which John wants to expose. This will now become the overarching storyline.<\/p>\n

Then, in the next story, John finally decides to get rid of his Larry identity. Harmer informs John that he will become the new police commissioner. And so the series goes, with new dangers that might expose John as Larry while he also fights crime. It won’t be until the final story that the “Big Shot” is exposed. Can John defeat him and get with the girl he loves?<\/p>\n

As always, this is another fun and fast-moving series from H. Bedford-Jones. This is less a series and more of a serialized novel. Each story leads into the next, and they really don’t stand on their own, since the events in one story often don’t get fully resolved until the next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Man With the Rubber Face reprints the entire series of stories starring John Cabot, the titular “man with the rubber face,” in his crusade against criminals. Written by H. Bedford-Jones, this series ran in Mystery magazine. This was a slick-paper magazine from Tower Magazines, sold only in Woolworth stores, and is not properly a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":22754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":{"highlight_sharing":"default","image_sharing":"default","headline_sharing":"default"},"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[1,135,14],"tags":[153,2589,2592,2591,939,2590],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-22643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pulps","category-reprints","category-review","tag-h-bedford-jones","tag-h-bedford-jones-library","tag-illustrated-detective-magazine","tag-mystery-magazine","tag-steeger-books","tag-tower-magazines"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2026\/03\/man-with-the-rubber-face-featured.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-5Td","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22643"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22761,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22643\/revisions\/22761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22643"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=22643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}