The Spider #6: The Citadel Of Hell

The Spider #6: The Citadel Of Hell, by Grant Stockbridge
March, 1934  Popular Publications

I’m continuing to enjoy the Spider series, and Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page delivers once again with this sixth installment, which per the norm plunges our hero into a maelstrom of blood, violence, and mass death. It’s yet another headlong rush into pulpy thrills, leaving the reader almost exhausted by the tale’s end.

The Citadel Of Hell is notable for two firsts in the series: the first appearance of the Spider ring and the first appearance of the “Tito Caliepi” disguise which would eventually become the Spider get-up worn by our unhinged hero, Richard Wentworth. The ring was sold through the magazine, and was crass marketing at its best, but the “Tito” stuff was a novel idea on Page’s part, separating the Spider from the typical masked crime fighters of his day. (Unfortunately this look was only depicted on the series covers for a brief run in 1940, though it was shown in the interior illustrations.)

But once again Wentworth is out of his depth, alone against a massive criminal syndicate that practically brings the country to its knees. Published in the height of the Great Depression (the Depression even referenced in the narrative), The Citadel Of Hell must’ve really hit home for a lot of readers, as it envisions a hellish America in which times become even more desperate and nightmarish.

A group of pyromaniacal criminals are in the process of firebombing a food industry notable when the tale opens, torching the bastard right outside Central Park. Wentworth, per the norm, is already on the scene, following along behind the cops as they get in a running battle that takes up most of downtown Manhattan. Wentworth is, again per the norm, convinced that these killers are part of a grander threat – and, per the norm (one last time), he’s right. Soon to be referred to as the “Food Destroyers,” these sadists intend to destroy all of the nation’s food channels, thus capitalizing on the limited food supplies and “fattening their wallets” as the nation suffers.

But Wentworth has more pressing issues; after an apocalyptic firefight up in Yonkers, where the Destroyers are in the act of destroying a sugar plant, Wentworth is nearly blown away by a crazed redhead (a hot one, naturally), named Janice Hally. This novel’s version of the villainous woman (every Spider novel apparently had one), Janice is a constant thorn in Wentworth’s side. After getting away from him she later shows up in Police Commissioner Kirkpatrick’s office, accompanied by a District Attorney named Glastonbury, and there she and the DA openly accuse Wentworh not only of being the Spider, but also of being the man who started the sugar plant fire.

This is yet another constantly-recurring schtick of the series, Kirkpatrick being given sterling evidence that his “good friend” Wentworth is indeed that “criminal” the Spider. And Janice has excellent proof, as earlier, at the fire, she bashed Wentworth in the head. Wentworth, before meeting Kirkpatrick, applied some of his ever-trusty makeup to the wound…but this would easily be discovered should Wentworth consent to the search Glastonbury demands.

In what almost comes off like a scene in a Peter Sellers Pink Panther movie, Wentworth avoids all this by turning about, inentionally stumbling over his own feet, and “accidentally” bashing his head onto a metal filing cabinet! The wound reopens and the blood flows, and though an attendant doctor says it’s not possible to tell if it’s an old wound or new, Glastonbury is of course suspicious. The DA is set up as more of an enemy of the Spider than even Kirkpatrick, and it makes one wonder if Page will bring him back in future volumes.

Wentworth wears a variety of costumes this time. Disguising himself as a food industry leader he attends a meeting of these men, discussing the Food Destroyers with Kirkpatrick in attendance. One of them, Xavier Jones, claims he’s been extorted by the syndicate, but begs the cops to stay away. Wentworth instead breaks out his Tito Caliepi disguise and heads for the dude’s posh penthouse, where he soon enough gets in a firefight with a “dope addict” and some others, all of them gunmen for the Food Destroyers.

An early scene that stands out has the Food Destroyers firebombing another plant near the Hudson wharves; tenement buildings soon catch fire, with countless innocent victims dying. Wentworth, on the scene, rushes to the rescue. He single-handedly saves a woman and her apartment full of children, tossing them out of their burning apartment and down to a fireman’s net. One of the saved youth, a boy named Timothy Walsh, later vouches for Wentworth when the stupid cops assume he’s one of the arsonists – Wentworth, knocked cold by one of them, has had an incendiary device planted on him in an obvious attempt at setup.

When Timothy Walsh follows Wentworth’s whispered instructions, our hero is able to escape the cops who attempt to arrest him, the boy having stirred up the crowd into a lynching frenzy. For this invaluable assistance Wentworth awards Timothy “the ring of the Spider,” which we’re informed that we too can purchase through the magazine! (By god I want one!) But the catastrophe suffered by the boy and his family is widespread, with the Food Destroyers starting fires all over New York.

Wentworth meanwhile continues to pose as Tito Caliepi, old Italian streetcorner violinist; there follows an enjoyable sequence where Wentworth’s fiance, Nita Van Sloan, bumps into him on the street and they trade knowing words. But per the series standard Nita is promptly removed from the narrative (the later volumes appear to put her in more of a spotlight, but not these early ones), and Wentworth is once again alone.

And worse yet, he’s injured, shot in the right shoulder while escaping the police. His erstwhile assistant Ram Singh saves him, takes him to the townhouse of kindly old Professor Brownlee (Wentworth’s version of Q), and there Wentworth recovers for three weeks!! When he comes out of his delirium, Wentworth is begged to rest for another week, to fully recover his strength; meanwhile he learns that the Food Destroyers have so wrecked the nation that poverty is rampant, people are starving to death, and no one can stop the menace. Plus, Nita’s been arrested for assisting the Spider, and has been in jail this entire time!

The Spider returns to New York to kick holy ass, and there follows another memorable part where he and Kirkpatrick meet face to face. Actually, that’s a third “first” for The Citadel Of Hell, this volume featuring the first meeting of the Spider and Kirkpatrick. Once again in his Tito Caliepi costume (which I forgot to mention he accessorizes with fangs when switching from the “old violinist” look to the full-on Spider look), Wentworth meets Kirkpatrick while the cop is having the meager lunch afforded him by his ration card.

The scene doesn’t go as you’d expect it would, with Kirkpatrick having obvious respect for his “enemy;” they even shake hands at the end of the conversation. We learn here that the Spider has been around for five years, as Kirkpatrick mentions at one point that this is how long they’ve been futiley chasing the vigilante. Wentworth hands over a list of men he somehow has learned are involved with the Food Destroyers, and Kirkpatrick not only tells him he’ll help, but also that he’ll loan the Spider several police cars – even putting machine guns on them!

Again Norvell Page makes it patently obvious that Kirkpatrick knows Wentworth is the Spider; when, shortly after the in-person meeting, Wentworth calls Kirkpatrick with followup requests, Page doesn’t even bother to write that Wentworth uses his “Spider voice.” Or, for that matter, to even identify himself as the Spider! All this despite the fact that, so far as Kirkpatrick knows, Wentworth has nothing at all to do with these plans.

Barrelling into the homestretch, Wentworth first goes to a meeting of the Food Destroyers disguised as Xavier Jones; this after a long, action-packed sequence where he impersonates the man in his own home, after drugging Jonrd with a “narcotic”-tipped sword edge. After more gunfights, a disguised Wentworth meets with the Food Destroyers, all of whom wear masks to protect their identities; they’re lead by the Red Mask, the only one who knows who each man is.

Wentworth is quicky uncovered, which leads to more fireworks, including the unveiling of the Spider’s own police task force, loaned to him by Kirkpatrick; guns blazing, they tear through Manhattan in a running battle with the Food Destroyers. Another thrilling sequence arrives with Wentworth commandeering a city bus and smashing enemy cars left and right; a sequence featuring a great cap-off where he marks the hood of the smashed bus with the Spider’s brand, which he usually puts on the foreheads of his victims. This time it’s a “decoration of honor.”

Page doesn’t shirk on the climax, which has Wentworth, after a running battle across Central Park (where this all started), gunning down all of the Food Destroyer henchmen. Then he brazenly heads into the headquarters of “the chief” behind it all (Page apparently forgetting that earlier he called the guy “The Red Mask”), where Wentworth is immediately knocked out by Janice Hally! This girl by the way gets the better of our hero throughout the novel; her story has it that she thinks the Spider killed her beloved, some dude named Denny.

But as usual Wentworth has figured out on his own – somehow during all the chaos – not only who really killed Denny but also who the leader of the Food Destroyers is. The finale takes place high atop the Empire State Building, where Wentworth, despite being shot again (this time in the left shoulder), is able to turn the chief and Janice against one another – yet another memorable sequence, which has at least one of them plummeting to their death far below, all while burning alive!

Strangely, the denoument is an overdone courtroom scenario in which DA Glastonbury realizes his case against Wentworth is now groundless. Even stranger is the end, in which Kirkpatrick flat-out tells Wentworth he knows he’s the Spider – and, what’s more, not only does he respect him, but he’ll be happy to help him out should he ever need his assistance! (Doubtless this mindset was lost with the series reset which occurs each volume.)

Norvell Page again grabs hold of the reader and doesn’t let go; his style has that sort of “literary” vibe of the old pulpsters, but meshed with a more modern, cinematic feel. He never bogs the narrative down, and keeps things moving. What’s crazy about The Spider is that, despite the repetition, despite the lack of continuity, despite the insistence on pointless and lame “villain reveals,” as soon as I’m finished reading one…I want to start another.

The Spider #3: Wings Of The Black Death

The Spider #3: Wings Of The Black Death, by Grant Stockbridge
December, 1933  Popular Publications

The third volume of The Spider is notable because it was the first to be written by Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page, who would go on to write the majority of the ensuing 115 volumes. Having read some of Page’s later volumes, I was curious how different this first one would be. Surprisingly, it’s almost identical to what came later: a breathless excursion into bloody action and chaos.

One thing that does separate Wings Of The Black Death from the others I’ve read is that it seems Page put a little more care into this storyline, at least insofar as how the villain of the piece is outed. Whereas other volumes throw a lame “reveal” on the reader in the final pages, some barely-mentioned character unveiled as the main villain, this time Page appears to put more thought into the mystery. But we aren’t talking Arthur Conan Doyle here – this is still first and foremost an action pulp, designed to be speedily read and quickly forgotten.

But anyway, in his first Spider novel Norvell Page hits the ground running; within the first few pages Richard “The Spider” Wentworth is already shooting someone point-blank in the forehead, then a few pages later he’s shooting down a dog, and then a few pages after that some little kid is dying horrifically (and graphically) of Bubonic Plague. There are no tentative steps as the author attempts to familiarize himself with the characters, the audience, or the genre; from first page to last Wings of the Black Death delivers the same blunt impact as the rest of Page’s Spider oeuvre.

It’s interesting to note that Page uses characters and situations that had been created by original writer RTM Scott, without attempting to change the scenarios Scott had laid out. What I’m trying to say is that Page never changed the setup very much; I mean, Nita van Sloan started out as Richard Wentworth’s fiance, and she stayed that way for the next ten years. Similarly, Scott had Commisioner Stanley Kirkpatrick and Wentworth be friends, even though the commissioner suspected Wentworth of being the Spider – in fact Kirkpatrick apparently knew he was – yet he was duty-bound not to act on it until he had verifiable evidence. Page never changed this, either.

Scott only wrote the first two volumes of the series, and there’s apparently even debate if it was the same RTM Scott who wrote the second volume as the one who wrote the first; Scott had a son of the same name, who was also a pulp writer. So to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, “RTM Scott, or another hack of the same name” wrote the first two volumes of the Spider, and by all accounts they were more tepid, mystery-focused yarns, lacking the psychotic, violent spark of Norvell Page’s work.

But Scott(s) created the characters, situations, and setup, and Page ran with it; within the first few pages Wentworth and Kirkpatrick are bantering at a social event, the commissioner implying that, now that Wentworth has returned from a trip to Europe, so too might the Spider be returning to the city. (Again, it’s bluntly obvious Kirkpatrick knows!) Meanwhile Wentworth has hurried here after taking care of business in that very personage, though this early in the saga the Spider dresses more like the Shadow; ie, none of the fangs and “fright wig” stuff. Instead he wears a mask over his eyes with a black veil covering the lower half of his face.

The plot is overly complex at the outset, but never fear as it soon straightens out into more of an action blitz. At any rate, Wentworth has decided to investigate a muddled plot about forged bonds that were unwittingly used by a girl named Virginia Doeg, whose dog soon thereafter died of Bubonic Plague, aka the Black Death. Somehow Wentworth knows there’s more to this story, and thus in the opening pages he’s already putting a hole in the head of some hapless, gun-wielding pawnbroker; thousands more would die at Wentworth’s hands in the coming decade.

Now begins a veritable war between Wentworth and Kirkpatrick, one because Wentworth is determined to visit Virginia Doeg, despite her being in police custody, and two because someone is killing New York cops…and putting the seal of the Spider on their foreheads. This leads to strange bits where Kirkpatrick will snarl at Wentworth, ready to kill him on sight…gullibly believing that the Spider, despite his “services for the city over the years,” has become a cop killer. Yet Wentworth has seen one of these seals, and knows them to be fakes – someone, as will become standard in Page’s work, is setting up the Spider. And now the whole world is against him.

From meager leads Wentworth eventually comes upon the whole Black Death scheme, which shows itself early with a horror-esque scene where a little boy and girl are dosed with an advanced strain of the disease…by a cute little puppy! A masked villain calling himself “The Black Death” is now extorting wealthy people; pay up, or you and your loved ones suffer from the Bubonic Plague. Wentworth is able to shoot the dog, but too late to save the kids, and Page delivers an unforgettable bit where we are informed of the grotesque deaths the children suffer.

Meanwhile, someone’s still killing cops and branding them with the fake Spider seal. There are several Wentworth/Kirkpatrick confrontations throughout Wings Of The Black Death, with the cops more focused on bringing down the Spider than saving citizens from the random outbreaks of Black Death which are now occurring throughout New York. These confrontations reach their climax with Kirkpatrick arresting Wentworth – a scene which has the commissioner finally discovering the hidden compartment of Wentworth’s lighter, which contains the Spider seal. However due to overly-described mumbo-jumbo, the seal disappears before Kirkpatrick can see it.

Wentworth then pulls the first of his escapes from the police; many more such incidents would follow in the coming years. This one’s pretty impressive, with Wentworth taking the wheel of the police car taking him to prison and wrenching it, sending the car off a bridge and into the Hudsdon. In the aftermath everyone thinks Wentworth – and thus the Spider – is dead. Even poor Nita thinks he’s dead, and for a stretch of the book she becomes the star of the show, with Wentworth well out of the picture.

Nita is just as resourceful as her fiance, using her wits to figure out what Wentworth already has – that someone is spreading the plague through pigeons. Out in Long Island Nita manages to get herself caught, by ruffians who work for the Black Death – who, per pulp standards, is a masked fiend, his face covered by a black veil. The thugs openly discuss raping Nita, though Page glosses over it a bit; one element missing from Wings Of The Black Death by the way is any sort of sexual element. Also missing is the hot evil woman who tempts Wentworth, another element which will be much used in later Page novels. Nita is the only female here, other than rarely-seen Virginia Doeg.

Anyway, Nita is tied up in a cave…only to be discovered by a still-alive Wentworth, who has been hiding throughout. This is all after a big fake blowout Wentworth and Nita had in a restaurant, to fool people into thinking Wentworth was leaving town; a ruse rendered moot by his later faked death. And also I’ve neglected to mention Wentworth’s random fights with various Black Death thugs, including a big firefight in a burning building. But the reader of The Spider already knows that he’s in for an action onslaught.

Wentworth is also captured a few times in this novel, including here in the end, where both he and Nita are tied up in the cave, with a convoluted death awaiting them. Nita has a loyal Great Dane, Apollo, given to her by Wentworth back in the first volume or something (the dog was fated to die in one of the later Page novels, only to be accidentally brought back by Emile Tepperman, one of the authors who occasionally filled in for Page); the Black Death has drugged the dog, and placed a water bowl filled with Bubonic Plague near him. The idea is that the dog will wake, drink the water, and then be called to his owners, lapping them with the plague.

Long story short, this is a stirring scene in which Nita again displays her bravery, calling for the dog despite Wentworth’s objections – and the guaranteed death which will follow. (It’s all rendered moot with the deus ex machina reveal that one of the Black Death’s goons accidentally spilled the water bowl!) The climax seens Wentworth and Nita in a biplane, Nita flying while Wentworth blasts at the Black Death with a machine gun. The final confrontation is even better, with Wentworth strangling the villain with his bare hands!

“Only” a thousand people die of the Bubonic Plague – a hefty number, but paltry given the widespread death of later volumes. However the Black Death incurs Wentworth’s wrath, and he’s more driven to kill this particular villain than in the other Spider novels I’ve yet read. But “driven” sums up Richard Wentworth, who blazes through this novel, killing thugs, escaping the cops, faking his death, and even finding the time to madly play his violin for a few hours.

Summing up, Wings Of The Black Death was another entertaining, bloody, action-filled entry in the Spider saga, and it was very interesting to see that Norvell Page already had command of his craft in his first contribution to the series.

The Spider #15: The Red Death Rain

The Spider #15: The Red Death Rain, by Grant Stockbridge
December, 1934  Popular Publications

I splurged on this volume of The Spider: when I read that The Red Death Rain was considered one of the more outrageous novels in the series, with it’s Yellow Peril threat, sexpot female villain, and a character raped to death by an orangutan, I decided I would in fact seek out a reprint of the original magazine, complete with the interior illustrations, just to replicate the full pulp experience.

Unfortunately, The Red Death Rain was not one of the novels included in Girasol’s 25-volume “Pulp Doubles” reprint series, nor was it reprinted by Bold Ventures or Pulp Adventures Press, all three of which reprinted novels with the illustrations. It was however reprinted by Caroll & Graf in the early ‘90s, but no illustrations were included with those reprints. My only option, then (other than trying to find the original 1934 printing and shelling out my life savings for it), was to acquire another Girasol publication – that of the “Pulp Replica.”

Girasol is mostly known for publishing exact replicas of old pulp magazines, even down to the typos and sometimes-blurry print. The original advertisements, editorials, and interior illustrations are also included. Sounds great, and looks great, but the price isn’t great…they retail for $39.95 each. Luckily, I got my copy of Girasol’s The Red Death Rain replica on “sale”…for a mere $29.99. I chalked it up as an Xmas present to myself.

And I’m only halfway kidding, because The Red Death Rain actually takes place during Christmas. Christmas of 1934, to be exact, which resulted in an interesting experience as I read the book exactly 80 years after it was published. And this novel truly is of another era, something encapsulated by the primary threat: namely, that smokers are dying from poisoned tobacco.

It might not be a very large slice of the demographic these days, but in 1934 practically everyone smoked…and, per the usual method of Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page, they are dying some quite gory deaths because of it. As the novel opens, Richard Wentworth, the Spider himself, watches in hiding as a group of people stumble out of a tobacco shop, vomiting blood and dying horrible deaths as they shudder and twitch on the sidewalk.

Wentworth is here due to a tip from his “friend,” Police Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick. Someone has apparently issued a warning to the Spider, threatening him that his “latest case” would have its beginnings outside this very tobacco shop that night. Now, as stated, Norvell Page had a long-simmer “does Kirkpatrick know Wentworth is the Spider or not” storyline which ran the entire ten years he wrote this series, but here once again it seems patently clear that Kirkpatrick does know. The narrative even plainy states it.

Wentworth, who is in a new disguise, that of Cockney-voiced Snuffer Dan Tewkes, rushes into the tobacco shop, only to be accused by the young owner, a man named Steve Jardin, that Wentworth himself is the one who poisoned the tobacco. However, this is the first time our hero has ever stepped foot in the shop. Clearly this is a setup, but “Master of Men” Wentworth can tell that Steve Jardin believes he’s speaking the truth; he really believes that Wentworth was in the shop earlier that day.

The clear culprit, as far as Wentworth is concerned, is a “skeletal man” he saw exit the shop moments before the bloody chaos erupted within. But Wentworth has bigger fish to fry; Commissioner Kirkpatrick arrives, chomping at the bit to arrest Wentworth. I forgot to mention that seconds before the people began dying in the shop, Wentworth heard the voice of his fiance, Nita Van Sloan, calling for him – a warning about Kirkpatrick. But Nita’s disappeared (and remains gone for practically the entire novel), and now here’s Kirkpatrick, acting like a completely different person.

Not only that, but Kirkpatrick’s acting like he wants to flat-out kill Wentworth. Plus he’s blaming him for the poisoned tobacco, fully buying Steve Jardin’s story, and claims no knowledge of providing Wentworth with the written-in threat which brought Wentworth here in the first place.  In other words, he’s acting like he’s lost his mind, and the veteran pulp reader will automatically suspect mind control is at work, though Wentworth takes forever to figure this out.

In what must be an often-used device in the Spider series, Wentworth is actually arrested; this leads to a thrilling escape sequence, which includes Wentworth knocking Kirkpatrick out cold and then impersonating him, even snipping off a few locks of the commissioner’s hair to fashion into a false moustache! Returning to his posh penthouse on Fifth Avenue, Wentworth is able to use his disguise to get around the police cordon that surrounds it.

Upstairs, though, he’s confronted by a pair of “oriental” intruders; further, he discovers his loyal charges Jackson and Ram Singh tied up. Wentworth blows away the intruders, then stamps his infamous Spider seal on their corpses and dumps them off the side of the building -- his building. Our hero doesn’t go to much trouble to guard his secret identity, does he?

Another person happens to be waiting in Wentworth’s home: Steve Jardin, who not only claims that his girlfriend Delia has been kidnapped (and accusing Wentworth of abducting her), but also that he’s been sent here by Kirkpatrick himself – to kill Wentworth! More proof that the police commissioner has gone insane – or, as Wentworth begins to suspect, is actually working with the tobacco poisoners. After convincing the young man of his innocence, Wentworth gets information from him.

Jardin’s lawyer is a “skeletally thin” man named Dewitt Ahearn, and he did in fact visit the tobacco shop tonight. Now, Ahearn has gone to visit the palatial home of cult founder Deacon Coslin, a faux-“puritan” minister who you won’t be surprised to know is rotten to the core. And guess what his spiel is: preaching against the “evils” of smoking. In fact, Coslin has “prophesized” that more people will soon die from the poisoned tobacco.

Off Wentworth goes in the dead of night – disguised as the Spider! In this early volume we learn that the Spider disguise – with the wig of lank hair, the hunchback, the big nose, and the fangs – has a name of its own: “Tito Caliepi.” Apparently under this guise, posing as a streetcorner violinist, Wentworth only has to make a few makeup changes (ie, donning the fangs, etc), and he changes from an “old Italian violinist” into the fearsome presence who is the Spider. In the later volumes I’ve read, it appears that this Tito Caliepi bit has been dropped: the hunchback, fangs, and etc are the Spider look.

Wentworth sneaks onto the rolling grounds of Deacon Coslin, who lives in a veritable fortress, guarded by “great black negroes” who are “turbanned and naked above the waist.” Instead of running into one of them, Wentworth instead finds himself sneaking into a darkened bedroom occupied by a gorgeous Chinese woman – one who not only doesn’t even flinch at the bizarre, shambling figure who has just broken into her room, but who is also holding a gun on him.

This is Wu Ya Che, who stands there in nothing more than a silk nightgown which is “draped about the rounded maturity of her body,” thus perfectly showing off her “magnificent breasts.” Indeed, Page will often go on about Ya Che’s awesome boobs, and her silky black hair’s not bad, either. With her exotic looks and “high cheekbones,” Wentworth surmises that she is of Mongolian descent. She also comes quite close to breaking Wentworth’s steadfast resolve; our hero is completely in love with Nita Van Sloan, an idealized, romantic love which, Page wants us to know, isn’t sullied by sex (because they aren’t yet married, naturally!).

We immediately know that Ya Che’s our kind of gal, as she lounges back on her bed and basically offers herself to Wentworth…while he’s in the hideous disguise of the Spider. This is just the first of her many attempted seductions of our hero. And this is just the first of Wentworth’s many refusals; still pretending to be “an old man” and not the Spider (to which a disbelieving Ya Che responds, “When you look at me, you are not an old man”), Wentworth hobbles out of the room. Ya Che’s dad is Wu Chang, also here in Coslin’s mansion, a venerable old Chinese man who gradually becomes Wentworth’s top suspect.

More chases with the cops, more deaths from the poisoned tobacco, and again Wentworth is alone against everyone. Having ditched the Spider disguise (again, per the early novels, he doesn’t wear it much), Wentworth eventually fingds himself in a cab on Broadway and 61st, where a potential stampede threatens to erupt, due to the rampant bloody deaths of the tobacco; a memorable incident with a department store Santa almost getting stomped to bloody ribbons. But it only gets more memorable, as Wentworth, to prevent mass chaos, takes up a flute and leads the rioters in a rendition of “Silent Night!”

Surely one of the more over-the-top moments one will ever read, this jawdropping sequence has the riotous, insane rabble of New York City gradually singing along with Wentworth, who Pied Piper style has successfully captured his audience with his music and his singing. And even the almost-killed Santa and a couple kids help him out! What’s most awesome is the scene isn’t saccharine; it’s instead so nuts that you just have to laugh. But then, that’s the power of Norvell Page’s prose; he’s so invested in it that he convinces you it all really could happen.

One problem with The Red Death Rain is that the first half doesn’t feature much of the gory violence the series is known for, operating more as a mystery as Wentworth shuttles from one lead to another, desperately trying to figure out who is behind the tobacco poisoning. But around the midway point things kick in gear – the first sign being when Wentworth shoots a thug point-blank in the head during a firefight along an elevated train platform. This is after he’s discovered that the poison is spread by “spring water bottle” delivery trucks; Wentworth chases the poisoners down, blowing them away without mercy.

Wentworth is knocked out, captured. He ends up in a torture room, in wich that damn “skeletal man” appears – wearing a veiled mask. Soon he is referred to as the “Crimson Veil,” and he too is Chinese. As they gut another prisoner to death, Wentworth frees himself, knocks out the chamber’s only light, and a bloody fight ensues. More memorable images, like when Wentworth leans on the torture victim’s corpse and it groans, the air squeezing out of it, thus scaring the superstitious Chinese Wentworth is fighting.

Page just runs with it, with Wentworth hiding beneath the corpse and continuing to press on it, continuing to make it “speak.” He even tries out a ghostly voice, pretending to be the spirit of the deceased! But while his underlings cower, the Crimson Veil is not fooled. Wentworth still manages to gut the torturer with his own knife. An escape, more confusion, and now Wentworth has descended again upon Chinese sexpot Ya Che; he realizes with a jolt that it’s Christmas Eve.

Page delivers a somewhat-moving flashback to the plans Wentworth and Nita had made for this evening. But she’s still missing, kidnapped by whoever is behind this fiendish plot. But no more time for emotions; Wentworth and Ya Che enter her temporary home, only to walk in on an assassination attempt upon her father. As old Wu Chang is knifed, Ya Che almost casually pulls a small pistol from her purse (she also carries a dagger in “the throat of her dress”) and starts blasting away at the Chinese assassins. When Wentworth prevents her from killing the only survivor, in the hopes that they can follow him, she almost goes insane with rage.

But they follow after, and soon Wentworth is knocked out again, but not after he’s killed the elusive Crimson Veil. When Wentworth comes to, he’s in a private chamber in the catacombs beneath the city, and days have passed; it’s December 30th. Ya Che, sexy and tempting as ever, is at his side. She claims that they are both the prisoner of the Red Mandarin, the schemer behind it all. Wentworth, injured from a concusion, is lead into the massive chamber where the villain resides; wearing a “mitred hat” with a red veil covering his face, the Red Mandarin is surrounded by burly Mongol warriors who wield broadswords.

The Red Mandarin gives Wentworth a choice – give his word that he will work for the Mandarin, and Wentworth will go free. If not, then Nita Van Sloan will suffer a horrendous fate. To prove his word, the fiend lets Wentworth see the poor girl. Locked in a cell, wearing the skimpy, revealing clothing of a harem slave (which shows off her “exquisite breasts” and apparently well-compliments her “glorious chestnut hair”), Nita is in the cell beside a lust-crazed orangutan. If Wentworth doesn’t agree to do the Mandarin’s bidding…the orangutan will be set loose upon Nita!

The Red Mandarin wants Wentworth to kill three men for him. One of them is Police Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick. Wentworth pleads for a day to consider. When he’s sent back to his opulent chamber-cell, he is confronted with another offer: namely, the sexual temptress who is Wu Ya Che. She comes on to him very hard, and a guy would be hard-pressed to say no to her. And Page writes this sequence so that you think, if only for a moment, that Wentworth actually gives in to the woman’s ample charms.

But it turns out to just be a fake; as after a few lines of white space we come back to the scene, only to be informed that Wentworth has in fact spurned the lusty woman’s advances. Now Ya Che is inflamed with another passion – hatred. She wants to see Wentworth suffer and die. From here on out she no longer pretends to be a captive – she is in fact in league with the Red Mandarin, and indeed wants to see Wentworth suffer miserably before he dies. Plus she’ll also ensure that Nita gets raped to death by that damn orangutan.

Wentworth manages to escape his cell and starts killing with glee. Running roughshod through the catacombs, “berserk with killing rage,” Richard Wentworth murders countless Mongol guards in bloody combat, sometimes using his bare hands. Desperation compels him; the Red Mandarin plans to unleash his poison on countless public places at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Have I mentioned that, by this point, five thousand people have already died?

Page does not disappoint with the finale, which sees more mass bloodshed in the Red Mandarin’s throne room. The lust-maddened orangutan is set free, but Nita (along with Delia, Steve Jardin’s girlfriend, who also was locked in the Mandarin’s harem) manages to hide from it, all while Wentworth gets in bloody swordfights and shootouts. Then the “beast” gets sight of Ya Che, who is in the process of desperately trying to open a hidden door. 

Wentworth passes out yet again, and when he comes to, Kirkpatrick is there, freed from his mind control, and the Red Mandarin’s dead, Wentworth having shot him as he attempted to flee. Wentworth blithely announces that he’s already figured out the Red Mandarin was really Wu Chang; a nonplussed Kirkpatrick pulls off the red veil to discover our hero is right. But what of Ya Che? No one has seen her since she attempted to escape. But then…

A horrible cry rang through the corridors, but it was dim in the distance. It was the scream of a woman terribly injured — terribly afraid. It rose high and clear through the night — three, four times. Even in its agony, it was plainly recognizable as Ya Che's voice.

"The roof!" Kirkpatrick barked. "The roof, quickly!"

He plunged from the room and long minutes afterward there continued a fusillade that echoed through the night. Kirkpatrick came back into the room heavily; every eye centered on him as he stopped just inside the doorway. He shuddered uncontrollably.

"We were too late," he said. "Ya Che was dead. The orangutan had mated."

And with that The Red Death Rain comes to a close. While it wasn’t perfect, it was still by far the best volume of The Spider I’ve yet read, and has only whetted my appetite to continue reading these outrageous, violent, lurid tales. The overwhelming length of this review should be an indication of just how much I’m enjoying them.

The Spider #75: Satan's Murder Machines

The Spider #75: Satan's Murder Machines, by Grant Stockbridge
December, 1939  Popular Publications

The Spider returns in an installment published a few years after the previous volume I read, Death Reign Of The Vampire King, though not much has changed – he’s still thrust into a relentless sequence of chases, firefights, and life-threatening traps, all while separated from his usual supporting cast of characters, author Norvell Page (ie “Grant Stockbridge”) showing his protagonist little mercy.

The first novel collected in Baen’s 2008 mass market paperback Robot Titans Of Gotham, Satan’s Murder Machines sees hero Richard “The Spider” Wentworth going up against another villain with a name that would one day become associated with another character: The Iron Man. Unlike the later Marvel superhero, this one’s a murderous psychopath who commands a legion of almost-indestructable robots that are tearing apart Manhattan as the novel begins.

The Spider’s already on the scene, this time wearing a mask and veil, so I guess sort of like the original magazine cover depictions of the character mixed with the Shadow’s look? Wentworth has more problems than just the robots, which have torn down a few buildings and killed several people – he’s being framed by whoever’s behind them, framed as both a thief and a murderer. This leads to the novel’s central confrontation: Wentworth versus Commissioner Kirkpatrick, aka Wentworths’ best and only “friend.”

It’s pretty obvious that Kirkpatrick knows Wentworth is the Spider – I’m currently reading an earlier (and crazier) volume of the series, The Red Death Rain, and Page basically states as much in the narrative – but throughout the entire ten-year run of the series it was a constant question if the commissioner would ever get proof of it. As he constantly reminds everyone, as soon as he gets verifiable evidence of who the Spider is, that man will be arrested promptly.

Yet despite all this, Wentworth and Kirkpatrick are pals. Not that you’d know it this volume. While the robots are tearing up the city, Wentworth is busy being shuttled around by Kirkpatrick and his cops, the commissioner almost outright accusing Wentworth of being a murderer. Long story short, someone’s planted stolen artwork in Wentworth’s sprawling penthouse, and also one of his pistols has been stolen, used by this same perpetrator to murder someone.

The opening half features a handful of entertaining scenes in which Wentworth either uses guile or trickery to get around Kirkpatrick and his men, like when he recovers his pistol from the crime scene before the cops can spot it. More entertaining though is the increasingly-hostile banter between Wentworth and Kirkpatrick; no two men could remain “friends” after the amount of vitriol they pour upon one another. Standard with the “series reset” which occurs after every installment, though, I’m sure they’ll be back to being pals by the next volume.

Meanwhile the robots! Early in the novel, while in his Spider guise, Wentworth encounters them. While we never get a good idea how tall the things are, they are sufficiently bulky and massive enough to cause terror in their wake. They also have glowing eyes, and teeth which are memorably compared to shovels. They stampede over everything in their wake, nearly killing Wentworth and his assistant, Ronald Jackson, who served as a sergeant to Wentworth’s major in World War I.

Wentworth soon suspects that these “robots” really house men inside, especially when one of them begins to speak, the booming voice projecting from a grill on the chest. Eventually Wentworth learns he’s correct; these robots are more so powered suits of armor, with men inside them, yet even after this is revealed they’re still referred to as “robots.” Anyway per series standards how exactly these robot suits were created is never explained; Page is more focused on action and thrills.

And he succeeds -- Satan’s Murder Machines is a lot of fun, and I enjoyed it even more than Death Reign Of The Vampire King. One of the main reasons for this is that the supporting characters get more of a chance to shine, this time. In particular Nita Van Sloan, Wentworth’s fiance – there are a few scenes where she not only saves Wentworth, but poses as the Spider herself, usually so as to distract the cops. This includes a great moment where Kirkpatrick and his cops are escorting Wentworth out of a building, and are shocked by the sudden appearance of the Spider, who shoots over their heads and thus gives Wentworth opportunity toe scape.

The Wentworth/Nita moments provide a better understanding of why these two stay together, perennially “about to be married” but never taking the plunge due to Wentworth’s commitment to fight crime. But Page makes it clear that Nita is the same as her man, just as (psychotically?) devoted to taking on criminals, even if it means “true happiness” must be curtailed. Like her fiance, Nita even enjoys donning disguises; in this installment she takes on an apparently-frequent guise of a streetwalker, which leads to some humorous banter between her and Wentworth in a bar.

But really Satan’s Murder Machines is Wentworth’s show; while Nita, Jackson, and “Hindustani” colleague Ram Singh make scattered appearances in the opening half, Wentworth is relegated to working alone, mostly due to his wanted status by the police. Also, Jackson gets arrested for moving a body, so as to help foil the scheme to frame Wentworth, and Nita gets captured after drugging Wentworth and, once again, going out to do the Spider’s work on her own.

This is just another highlight in a novel filled with them; Wentworth midway through gets in an underwater battle with a few robots in the East River, trying to track them to their hideout. He manages to destroy one, but due to the freezing cold (the novel occurs in December, the same month it was published) he’s come down with the flu. Refusing to allow her man to go back underwater to find the robot shell, Nita instead slips our boy a mickey and then goes out to do it herself!

But as mentioned, she gets caught, and now Wentworth works alone again, trying to free her from the minions of the Iron Man. Speaking of which, the villain gets little narrative time, and in fact isn’t even described. There’s a part where Wentworth is fighting a few robots, one of whom is stated as being the Iron Man, but how Wentworth knows this is not mentioned. Is his suit of armor larger, or differently colored? Page doesn’t inform us, but then he was banging out about a million words a month, so we can forgive him if he sometimes misses little details.

Speaking of costumes, Wentworth wears a variety of them this time, from the “mask and veil” getup to the more-standard Spider disguise of the hunched back, lank hair, and fangs. I do love his thoroughness, though; when in a late sequence where he takes out one of the robots and appropriates the armor, Wentworth stamps his spider seal on the forehead, so everyone will know that this particular robot is none other than the Spider!

One thing missing this volume is the OTT violence of the series; since his opponents are armored robots, Wentworth is unable to blow their faces off as per usual. He does still find ways to kill them, either by ramming cement trucks into the robots or electrocuting them. Innocents still suffer, though, with men, women, and children being torn apart by the marauding robots, in particular a part where they destroy a tenement building. Here Page goes to the trouble of describing a woman and her child meeting a horrible fate at the metal hands and feet of the robots.

The novel is filled with scenes of Wentworth narrowly evading the robots, destroying one or two of them if he can, and keeping others from danger, in particular Kirkpatrick and his cops. There’s a great part where Wentworth, again as the Spider, poses briefly as a cop, commandeering the bullhorn in Kirkpatrick’s car to call off the cops, who otherwise would be destroyed by the robots. This climaxes with Kirkpatrick and the Spider meeting face-to-face; I got a chuckle how Kirkpatrick immediately went for his gun and snapped off a shot. Cops in the ‘30s didn’t mess around.

Wentworth pulls off many superhuman feats, from wrestling robots beneath the Hudson to shooting through the finger-muzzle of one of them, blowing up its entire arm. He does all of this while still clearing his name (thus leading to a truce with Kirkpatrick) and figuring out who the Iron Man is. Unlike what I assume is the standard norm, this particular secret identity seems to be at least a little planned out, with Page introducing the person midway through the tale and spending an entire sequence with him. It’s my understanding that most of these “surprise reveals” turn out to just be random characters briefly mentioned.

This was another fast-paced Spider yarn which barely allowed the reader to catch his breath, plunging Richard Wentworth into one confrontation after another. What’s most surprising then is how Norvell Page is still able to shoehorn in some fun dialog and memorable character exchanges amid all of the chaos; there are even minor references to earlier adventures, which no doubt would be pleasing to long-time readers.

The other Page novel collected in Robot Titans Of Gotham by the way is the first and only volume of an obscure 1939 pulp “series” titled The Octopus (which coincidentally or not happened to be the name of the villain in the 1938 Spider serial The Spider’s Web). It’s my understanding this novel was only co-written by Page. At any rate I haven’t read it yet, and will instead move on to more Spider volumes.

The Spider #26: Death Reign Of The Vampire King

The Spider #26: Death Reign Of The Vampire King, by Grant Stockbridge
November, 1936  Popular Publications

Again I have Zwolf to thank – or should that be blame? Because, thanks to his awesome Spider overview, I’ve gone off the deep end, and within the span of a few weeks have picked up like 60-some installments of this 1933-1943 pulp series.

I was only slightly aware of the Spider, one of the longer-running pulp heroes, mostly just due to mentions I’d seen of him over the years, but mainly due to the DVD copy I acquired a few years ago of The Spider’s Web, a 1938 serial based on the character – and suprisingly faithful to its source. When I was a kid I was obsessed with these ‘30s pulp heroes, these masked crimefighters who appeared to be just as bloodthirsty as the criminals they opposed, but back then I couldn’t find any reprints of the various pulps.

However one of the few good things about our miserable modern era is that stuff like this has become much easier to acquire. In fact, Will Murray and Radio Archives have released scads of pulp novels in eBook format, including the Spider run. I’m not sure if they have yet released all 118 volumes, but they’ve got to be damn close. So then, for around $2.99 you can actually read these old novels, which for decades were nigh impossible to find.

While in this case I’m in favor of eBooks, I have to admit that I didn’t read my first Spider novel that way; instead, I read Death Reign Of The Vampire King in the 2008 Baen mass market paperback Robot Titans Of Gotham, which compiled two Spider novels and another pulp novel that was co-written by Norvell Page, who wrote pretty much the entirety of the Spider series.

Norvell Page sounds like one interesting dude. As Zwolf mentions in his overview, Page would sometimes dress like his character when turning in his Spider manuscripts, likely just having fun with it. But damn the guy was a writing powerhouse, turning out a novel a month! And he did this for almost ten years, and that’s not even including the novels he wrote for other pulp magazines. But anyway Page was the “Grant Stockbridge” (ie the house name the series was published under after initial series author RTM Scott left), even though he didn’t come onto the scene until the third volume.

Zwolf’s also on point with his theory that Joseph Rosenberger was probably an admirer of The Spider. My friends, as I read Death Reign Of The Vampire King, there were times I had to remind myself I wasn’t reading a Rosenberger novel. The styles are pretty similar, with a sort of skewed, off-the-wall vibe mixed with endless action and a breathless tone, with exclamation points all over the place. However, Page is a much more refined (and, uh, better) author than Mr. Rosenberger, and while I’d consider reading a hundred or so Rosenberger novels a pointless endeavor, I’m so impressed with Page and his characters and storylines that I hope to someday read all of his Spider work.

But for those of you who are more into ‘70s or ‘80s men's adventure novels novels and don’t think ‘30s or ‘40s pulps would be your thing, you will be in for quite a surprise. If Death Reign Of The Vampire King is any indication, this series is very similar to the men’s adventure novels of the 1970s. In tone, content, and even page length, the series is almost the prototype of what came a few decades later. It even has the lurid vibe of those ‘70s novels, though obviously not as exploitative as some of them – though to be sure, there’s some definite exploitation afoot here.

This 26th volume is proof enough. The villain is a deformed monster with fangs and wings who commands an untold number of vampire bats, there’s a femme fatale who gets off on torture and wants to watch as our hero is killed by bats, there’s a scene in which said femme fatale apparently has sex with the hero’s accomplice – the accomplice taking advantage of that aforementioned turned-on nature – and finally there’s thousands of people around the country getting killed by the vampire bats. This isn’t even mentioning our hero, who goes around in the disguise of a hunchback with a big nose and vampire fangs of his own.

Like Rosenberger, Page throws us right into the action and doesn’t stop until the final page, with only a few moments here and there for introspection and reflection. But again, whereas Rosenberger’s endless action onlsaught can quickly become nauseating, Page’s style is so much more assured and measured that you can’t help but keep reading – seriously, the dude was a master of the craft, and should be enshrined as pulp royalty. As the novel opens those damn vampire bats have already killed a bunch of people, though must of the victims have been gamblers and horse-betters and other such people; ie, no “innocents.” At least not yet.

Enter hero Richard Wentworth, wealthy gadabout known to all and sundry as a famous criminologist. He’s also the Spider, hunchbacked and fanged enemy of the underworld (despite the cover depictions, the Spider didn’t actually wear a domino mask…though sometimes he did). That Wentworth is the Spider is quite obviously known by New York Police Commisioner Kirkpatrick (who doesn’t appear this volume), though this “does he know or not” element is apparently played out throughout the series, with these two ostensible friends constantly at war, with Kirkpatrick bound and determined to someday arrest the Spider….no matter who he may turn out to be.

But make no mistake, Wentworth is nuts. Will Murray perfectly sums up the character in his series overview which appears in all of the Radio Archives Spider eBooks, so be sure to check one of those out – and Murray’s overview is also important because it actually gets the reader excited to read one of these books. (Unlike the pretentious and annoying one in Robot Titans Of Gotham, which only succeeds in grating the reader’s nerves.) Anyway, Wentworth is very similar, again, to the Death Merchant, in that he’s basically an inhuman warrior. Though, unlike Rosenberger, Page actually succeeds in making his hero both human and likable.

Anyway, Wentworth is already on the trail of these vampire bats when we meet him, on the scene in Philadephia, away from his home turf of New York. An interesting thing to mention is that, other than a few pages at the begninning, Wentworth is not in the guise of the Spider throughout the entire novel, so really it’s more so the adventures of “Richard Wentworth, Criminologist.” But he’s in the cape, slouch hat, deformed nose, “lank-haired wig,” and of couse the fangs of the Spider ensemble as the novel opens, sneaking onto the property of a criminal he suspects might be next on the vamire bat death list.

While Wentworth is brilliant and all, he apparently has poor judgment at times, as he sneaks onto the property carrying a bird cage with bats in it!! And yet he’s surprised when later a witness accuses him of being the person behind all these bat attacks. Wentworth’s aren’t vampire bats, just decoys, and when the real vampire bats actually do attack, we’re thrust into the first of the novel’s many action scenes. Here we see how bloodthirsty our hero is, as he guns down various crooks with his twin “automatics,” which are never specified but if the series covers are any indication are good ol’ Colt .45s.

Here we get to see the Vampire King himself – the “Bat Man!” Unlike the more famous character (who hadn’t been created yet, anyway), this Bat Man can actually fly, flapping about on his massive bat wings. Page builds up a supernatural element with Wentworth spending most of the novel wondering if the Bat Man is even human. But the villain escapes, his victims dead, and off Wentworth goes in pursuit; he spends most of the novel like ten steps behind his quarry, while soon people all over the country begin dying…and not just gamblers and underworld riffraff, either.

Wentworth as mentioned is soon called out by a witness, who claims she saw him setting those vampire bats free; this is June Calvert, a hotstuff gal who is the above-referenced femme fatale. She claims to be the sister of a man who was killed by the Bat Man – and she thinks the Spider and the Bat Man are one and the same. Wentworth brings her along, pretending to commandeer his own Daimler – even to the extent of pretending to kidnap his faithful servant/chauffer, Ram Singh, a hulking “Hindustani” who appears to be a little too eager to go out and shed blood with his curved dagger.

Speaking of accomplices, Wentworth’s fiance Nita Van Sloan is flying in from New York to assist. Nita is fully aware of Wentworth’s double life and also takes part in it, sometimes even taking up the Spider mantle herself. However nothing like this happens in Death Reign Of The Vampire King; Nita’s unfortunately-brief storyline has her becoming reacquainted with Fred Stoking, an old flame who just happens to run into Nita and Wentworth in Philadelphia. Apparently Page’s intention is for readers to suspect that Stoking might be the Bat Man – the villain’s true identity is a big source of mystery for everyone – but if so, this element is quickly dropped.

Actually, none of Wentworth’s accomplices are around much. He’s pretty much a one-man band here; even June Calvert quickly disappears from the text, though when she appears again she’s morphed into becoming like the Bat Man’s sadistic and depraved female minion. In the best scene in the novel, Wentworth and another of his colleagues, Ronald Jackson, are captured by the “Jivaro Indians” who serve the Bat Man. They’re taken to the Bat Man’s underground lair in Jersey City(!), where he sits on a throne, surrounded by his bats and barely-clothed Indian warriors.

The Bat Man is straight out of a horror film, with huge wings, fangs, and the twisted, demonic face of a bat. Also, he squeaks when he talks, and can command his bats with his voice. Did I mention yet that his bats have poisoned fangs? Anyway, June is here as well, dressed in a form-revealing red dress with bands across her breasts, like she just walked out of one of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. While there is of course no sex in these books, I have to say again how “modern” they seem, at least so far as the style goes, as June’s ample charms are constantly mentioned, in a matter not unlike that which would be common in the men’s adventure novels of the ‘70s.

The Bat Man orders Wentworth and Jackson stripped nude and tossed into a cell in which they’ll be drained to death by swarms of vampire bats. And June Calvert demands to be allowed to watch! It’s all very Myrna Loy in The Mask Of Fu Manchu, as June even pulls up a chair outside of the cell so she can avidly watch it all go down. And while fending off the innumerable bats, Wentworth can’t help but notice how excited June looks…and also how Jackson himself can’t seem to keep his eyes off the evil yet ultra-hot woman.

So Wentworth does what likely no other pulp hero would do – he tells Jackson to fuck June, right through the cell bars! Of course, he doesn’t use these exact words, and Page does leave it to our imagination, but it’s still pretty clear what goes down…despite the vaguery of the narrative, Jackson uses his macho charms to capitalize on June’s sexually-excited nature. While Wentworth keeps his back turned, still fending off the bats, June and Jackson soon begin panting and thrusting away behind him.

And it works – the evil woman is ensnared by her own sadistic impulses, and soon enough has fallen in love with Jackson. She helps them escape, which of course really pisses off the Bat Man, and he sends more bats and Jivaros after them. Wentworth kills scads of both, and while Nita sits out the majority of this installment, June Calvert basically stands in for her, serving as Wentworth’s asskicking female assistant. Eventually it’s just him and her working together, with Jackson too disappearing into the narrative aether along with Nita, Ram Singh, and Nita’s old boyfriend.

Once again my review is reaching absurd proportions, so I’ll stop synopsizing. Long story short, Death Reign Of The Vampire King is an endless, breathless sequence of Wentworth either stealing cars or planes and chasing after the minions of the Bat Man. I think there are like ten plane crashes in this novel, Wentworth’s commandeered planes getting shot out of the sky again and again (and yet he and everyone else on board always surviving, of course).

One of these crashes leads to an interminable sequence in which Wentworth and June must walk through the rough terrain of the Appalachian mountains. This part goes on and on and serves to drag the novel down; surely Page could’ve come up with something more exciting to fill the pages. In true pulp fashion he has no problem with shoehorning in coincidence; June, besides being an expert pilot herself, was also briefly a school teacher in the Appalachias(??), and thus uses her knowledge of the redneck world to steal a truck, making the journey faster.

Also in true pulpster fashion, Page clearly runs out of pages in the homestretch, and thus we are graced with a finale that’s a little unsatisfying. Having figured the Bat Man’s next big attack will be in Michigan City (where 3,5000 people are killed by bats!), Wentworth steals another plane, gets in another aerial dogfight, and then breaks out his own wings as he jumps from this latest crashing plane. Employing wings he’s had made to match the Bat Man’s, now Wentworth himself can fly around, and thus battles the Bat Man in the sky.

Any hopes of a big climax are dashed; the Bat Man merely plummets in the scuffle, and only later does a dazed Wentworth discover that he succeeded in shooting him to death. There’s also a Scooby-Doo reveal where it turns out the Bat Man isn’t some mutant monster, after all; instead he’s some random character who was briefly mentioned earlier in the novel. Apparently these “surprise reveals” were part and parcel of Page’s schtick; see this humourous Will Murray article at the essential Spider Returns site for more on that.

The thing that most impressed me about Death Reign Of The Vampire King, besides its hectic pace and bloodthirsty protagonist, was how modern it seemed. In fact there were even parts where Wentworth thought of various things, ie house architecture, as “old fashioned;” an interesting sentiment to encounter in an 80-year-old novel. Speaking of which, this installment was one of the four that Pocket Books “modernized” in the 1970s, editing the text so “the Spider” became just “Spider,” and other such bizarre changes which still draw fan spite.

While this particular installment of The Spider didn’t knock me out, it entertained me enough that I immediately began reading the other Spider novel compiled in Robot Titans Of Gotham, Satan’s Death Machines, which I’ll be reviewing next – and which I enjoyed even more.

Above I mentioned the eBooks, but for those like myself who still prefer print, you can find the 25 Spider “Pulp Doubles” published by Girasol, which compiled two novels per volume. Unfortunately, they were not published in any sort of order, however they did retain the interior illustrations, something lacking in both the eBooks and the two Baen mass market paperbacks. The eBooks are obviously much cheaper – and also there are many volumes of the series that were never reprinted by Girasol, Baen, or the others. (Actually, Girasol has published the majority of the series in “Pulp Replica” format: exact replicas of the original magazines…at a hefty forty bucks each!!)

Another thing to note is that the Spider novels are sometimes referred to as “novellas.” I don’t think this is accurate. The Spider novels compiled by Baen run to about 150-160 pages each, which again is basically the same page length as the men’s adventure novels of the 1970s. I picked up all of the “Pulp Doubles” as well as a handful of Spider reprints published by Bold Ventures and Pulp Adventures Press (both of which also retain the original interior illustrations), so there will be many more Spider reviews forthcoming – you can definitely count me a fan.