Dr Hermes Reviews - THE SPIDER Back to our Contents Page

SERPENT OF DESTRUCTION (Jan 27, 2007) It's odd to read one of the earlier Spiders (this one is from April 1934) after careening through some of the demented epics that followed. When you're used to crooks in giant armored suits and hordes of rabid dogs set loose and an army of migrating Neanderthals, not to mention a daily body count running into many thousands – well, SERPENT OF DESTRUCTION seems a bit mundane. Still, even the most minor case for Richard Wentworth is something that would be the crowning achievement for your typical detective or vigilante. One thing that struck me was just how close the Spider was originally intended to resemble the Shadow. From the original pulp cover (which shows a man's hand wearing a signet ring with a spider insignia rather than the girasol) to all the references like "He merged with the night, a dark moving shadow amid blackness" and "the shadow that was the Spider crept on...", it's fairly blatant. In the opening scenes, we follow a man in a soft black hat and full-length black cloak sneaking around investigating a mystery. Later on, there are mentions of the Spider's flat mocking triumphant laughter (so many mentions that it seems forced). Except for the fact that this crimefighter wears a skirted mask rather than a scarf around the lower half of his face, someone in 1934 who was waiting at the newsstand for the next issue of THE SHADOW to come out would likely skim through THE SPIDER and give it a shot. But fear not. Pounding the typewriter behind the house name "Grant Stockbridge" (sounds like a cover artist for THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, eh?) is the wild genius of Norvell Page. The differences are evident and will become more so. Instead of an enigmatic figure living under an alias, whose thoughts remain opaque, we readers are close to Richard Wentworth. We follow what he feels and thinks, and we see how stressed and battered he becomes in his crusade. What's more, while Wentworth is passionately in love with Nita and devoted to his friends, his dedication to crimefighting usually puts him through Hell as he has to risk their lives as well as his own. This time, New York City is threatened with a cocaine epidemic. So what else is new? No, seriously, it's a carefully planned campaign to get as many citizens hooked on dope as possible. There's even a slogan, "It's smart to be dopey." With the repeal of Prohibition and the collapse of the bathtub gin market, mobsters need a new source of income. (Some heroin seems to be in the trade as well, as one character asks for "the needle which brings forgetfulness.") The racket is so successful that packets of dope start bearing trade names like "Snowballs" and "Eskimo's Kiss." ("White Horse" was already taken.) Behind all this harmfulness is the Bloody Serpent, who always appears with a hat pulled low and his face wrapped in a white silk scarf to disguise himself. Knowing the rules in the Manual For Criminal Masterminds, he also appears during the story in his true identity so that the hero has a chance for some observation and deduction. (What fun would it be if the hero yanked off the fiend's mask on the last page and muttered, "Nope, never seen 'em before?") He also obligingly wears a glass ring in the shape of a coiled serpent. (One of the requirements for Mastermindhood is to provide a token for the hero to swipe so he can infiltrate the organization.) All the usual cast are here: Nita van Sloan, Joe Ronald Jackson, Ram Singh (still a Hindu) and Commissioner Kirkpatrick. Nita gets abducted (not for the last time) and addicted to dope; Kirkpatrick helps with an ambush that kills twenty gangsters. Two of the regulars who will be missed after they drop out of the saga are Apollo, the loyal Great Dane (who's a good boy? Yes, you are. Now go rip that gunman's throat out) and Professor Brownlee. I like the white-goateed old Prof, he's Q to Wentworth's Bond. If you need a snug booth of bulletproof glass with armholes to shoot through or a dozen tiny radio speakers in a hurry, he's the man to see. Brownlee provides Wentworth with a cane that not only imprints the dreaded Spider insignia with its tip, it injects a concentrated dose of black widow venom (guaranteed to kill within an agonizing twenty-four hours). Aside from the usual large-scale manslaughter (Wentworth seems particularly fond of using bottles of nitroglycerine these days), there are plenty of interesting little tidbits. "I grant you that you and I believe narcotics bad for people. But remember that before prohibition, there was the same sort of talk about liquor... Did you know there is an organization called the Association for Repeal of the Harrison Anti-Narcotics Act?" says one character. "And they're saying the same things the anti-prohibition crowd said. That you can't enforce the law, that it creates graft and crime, that it's an infringement on personal liberty. They want narcotics sold like liquor. They point out the revenue to be derived from taxing it." But you can't mislead Richard Wentworth with that pro-cocaine talk. (Good thing Sherlock Holmes wasn't called in on this, eh?) He is well aware that the white powder degrades people so badly that they can become hemophiles; a young woman is arrested when she's caught slicing up a live dog with a knife because "she wanted to see the blood..." Imagine how many poor canines must have been killed in discos during the 1970s! I'll never listen to the Bee Gees again! Again, popular music comes in for a few digs. "The dancing was continuous and, rhythmed by a Negro orchestra, jerkily sensuous." And "from above came the throb and thump of a rhythm that dragged the soul back thousands of years, back to the deeps of of the African jungle,to drums of human skin rubbed by frenzied hands..." (Oh come on, it's just Cab Calloway singing "St James Infirmary – good thing Wentworth didn't live to see hip hop.) The Spider's gruesome get-up as Tito Caliepi, the twisted, straggle-haired old man (complete with vampire fangs) is for once given no respect. A gangster (himself a stereotype called Big Mack Harrigan) dismissed the unsavory looking intruder as "You ornery hunch-backed old wop!" (He soon learns to be more polite to deformed street musicians, of course.) As much as I enjoy Norvell Page's hectic imaginative writing, there always seem to be a few points in the plotting that you'd think an editor might raise an eyebrow over. Nita is abducted and Wentworth receives a photo of her obviously wired up on coke; other users require stays in sanitariums to recover but Nita just pops up at the end, apparently just fine. Wellll, she was a Vassar graduate and you know college girls, so maybe she just chuckled as the Bloody Serpent's men prepared the needle. Also, at some point the evil organization has learned Wentworth is the Spider and promptly shoots up a Fourth Avenue cigar store where he's making a phone call while in disguise. How they knew he was there is beyond me. At one point, Wentworth sends a large crowd of crooks off to the police and they certainly know he's the Spider, but this doesn't seem to be any concern to him. With the deadline breathing down his neck and other stories ready to be started, I don't think Page went over his manuscripts line by line, polishing and revising looking for inconsistencies in the knowledge that his stories would still be read seventy years later.

SATAN'S DEATH BLAST (July 15, 2005) Maybe it's time for me to give the Spider books a breather for a few months. SATAN'S DEATH BLAST (from June 1934) certainly has everything you could hope for in a Spider adventure. A melodramatic supervillain causing massive destruction and loss of innocent lives, our hero taking enormous physical abuse and soldiering grimly on (even though he feels betrayed by those he trusts), enough of the old ultra-violence and suspenseful close calls to give even Indiana Jones acid reflux... it's all here, in that wonderfully lurid Norvell Page wordplay. (The only element notably missing is Kirkpatrick issuing a "wanted - dead or alive' on order on his best friend Richard Wentworth.) Yet somehow, it didn't quite stir my imagination as the Spider epics used to. Probably, I've just become too familiar with the formula and the style. It's time to read some sedate Ellery Queen brain-teasers or another one of Talbot Mundy's Tros of Samothrace sagas, and cleanse the cerebral palate. So, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with SATAN'S DEATH BLAST at all, if this review sounds unenthusiastic. It's just me getting a bit jaded. Anyway, the mastermind this time round calls himself the Devil and certainly looks the part. "Satanic evil sat upon his features. Black points of mustache and imperial sharpened a bony, ridged face. The eyes were narrow and slanted upward, and the thin lips jeered." There are no actual horns, but they wouldn't look out of place. He even wears a red cloak which can stop slugs (Page includes a lengthy paragraph about how bulletproof silk can be made, not that I was convinced.. maybe if it was six inches thick.) By the way, the Devil has a unique distinction. When Wentworth thinks he has killed the man (but only stunned him), he whips out the trusty cigarette light and plants the hideous Spider seal on the guy's forehead. Imagine his surprise when he runs into the Devil later. "Never before had a living man worn the seal of the Spider, but it doomed him as certainly as if the Black Widow's dread poison burned in his veins." This crook calling himself the Devil has come up with a new astoundingly potent explosive. A single cigar containing this stuff can vaporize a man, leaving absolutely nothing behind, and at the same time blow out windows for blocks around, overturn cars and generally wreak havoc. The secret behind the explosive is somehow tied in with underground caverns, which has water just seething with deadly red-eyed electric eels! (This seems surprising to me, as I thought electric eels were tropical fish from Brazil and unlikely to thrive in cold underground rivers, but you never know...) Only one man can and will thwart the devilish plan of err, the Devil. Richard Wentworth sure takes a beating in this story. Right off the bat, he gets shot through the left thigh and spends the entire story limping painfully around, using whatever's handy for a crutch. ("If you don't keep off that leg," an interne warns him, "you stand a damned good chance of losing it.") As if this isn't enough grief, he takes a bullet crease across the head which leaves him unconscious for four days which seems to make him erratic emotionally (well, more than usual) and he is convinced her partner Nita Van Sloan has sold him out. She's acting out an information-getting ruse he told her to do, and he should trust her implicitly after all these adventures, but paranoia has really bloomed into his overheated brain this time. In fact, he has a touch of traumatic amnesia and can't recall exactly why it is he desperately needs to remember if he is to save this country. By this time, Wentworth's eyes are dry and gleaming brightly, his face is yellowish as if jaundiced and we find him laughing wildly and screaming out, "Death! Death to the Devil!" Feverish and delirious from his many untreated wounds, Wentworth still keeps running and leaping and slugging it out with the ungodly. At one point, he's wrestling with an enemy and can only win by taking a rapier blade in the shoulder. If that's not bad enough, "he deliberately twisted his shoulder against the steel, feeling it tear the muscle. But his flesh imprisoned the blade. His foe could not withdraw it to strike again!" (Kids, don't try this at home) Yet, the Spider gives as good as he gets, that's for sure. No anesthetic mercy bullets or harmless nerve pinches for this avenger; at one point, Wentworth breaks up a mob of looters by driving over them in a car, backing up and running over more of them. No patient social workers in his agenda for fighting crime. Norvell Page keeps the action hurtling along so hysterically that there's never time to stop and consider how unworkable some of the Spider's tricks are. Later on, though, you have doubts. Running through dimly-lit caverns, Wentworth uses the make-up kit strapped under his arm to disguise himself as a crook he has just glanced at. No mirror or anything, just putting on make-up as he runs. I'm also dubious about his plan to swim an underground river with a machine gun and ammo drums and pistols tied to his head (they might still get wet when all that weight flips you upside down in the water, Dick). The most intriguing moment is a little soliloquy Richard Wentworth gives when he finds skepticism toward his revelations of the threat facing the nation. "Man, the stories you read in magazines and newspapers are not half the truth! Every day the Underworld concocts some new and horrible menace against humanity, something that must be suppressed before it is fairly organized ere civilization would crumble... When some deep-probing searcher after truth turned the things he knew into fiction because otherwise they could never gain print, they furnished the evening's thrill." This rant provides a nice little chill of conspiracy-mindedness until you realize that the Spider adventures were not likely to be covered up or disguised as rumour. I mean, what with cities in flame, hundreds of thousands of agonizing deaths, walking dead men and giant robots and death rays from the sky, it's all kinda hard to keep from becoming public knowledge. We get a nice little summary of the Spider's origin here. Richard Wentworth was the sole living member of a wealthy family and was studying criminal law when his friend Professor Brownlee was framed by a scholastic rival who wanted Brownlee's position and wife (some of those college professor feuds are bitter). The only hope to save Brownlee's tenure, reputation and marriage was for his young friend to drill a hole in the schemer's forehead with a bullet. "Wentworth had killed the man cold-bloodedly and on the dead man's forehead had traced in blood the figure of a hairy-legged spider." And so the exclusive ranks of the pulp vigilantes received a new member.

THE CORPSE CARGO (June 16, 2006) Despite what your high school teachers may have told you about significant crisis points in American history, the truth is that 1934 was the darkest year this nation ever survived. Cities in flames, five thousand rabid dogs loose on the streets, death rays sweeping from the sky and flesh-dissolving poison gas swirling all over, mass starvation and looting and rioting.... Man! I think it is a tribute to our resilience as a people that we bounced back and rebuilt everything in time for the next issue of THE SPIDER to hit the stands. CORPSE CARGO from the July 1934 issue is a good example. Norvell Page's Spider stories tend to read as though a paragraph from the Book of Revelations had been used as a starting point and this one is no exception. Check out the cover. Against a black background with three horrified onlookers, a skeleton in white pirate outfit (complete with tricorn hat and red sash) is brandishing a four-foot lightning bolt in its bony hand. Yikes. The only opposing force to this gruesome menace is a man's hand in the lower left corner; it's wielding a slim rapier which doesn't really seem like a good item to jab into an electrical charge. But on the hand's middle finger is a black signet ring which bears a red symbol of a spider. So at least we know Richard Wentworth can be counted on. The threat this time is a group of modern-day looters called the Pirates. Like their namesakes from history, these are not colorful roguish anti-heroes but heartless mass murderers. And, like real pirates of the Caribbean, they kill everyone in sight so as to leave no witnesses. "Dead men tell no tales" was a policy. (This would have made those Johnny Depp movies more accurate but maybe not as popular.) The Pirates are led by an attractive woman with short black hair, who calls herself Captain Kidd. Not only is she completely merciless and hard-hearted, she has a definite sadistic tendency and really gets excited seeing people being tortured and killed (especially when she gets to do it personally). So she's not an ambiguous femme fatale who might come over to the side of the good guys, either. She's a twisted sicko. Captain Kidd's lieutenant is a big beefy goon with a black beard, and if you picture Bluto, you won't be far off. Once again, a well-meaning scientist has come up with a new invention which evil minds twist to their purposes. This time, it's a super-powerful battery which is so potent that it can electrocute every living thing in a passenger train, ("Green-white chains of flame that struck like vicious snakes stabbed out from every metal thing upon the train, from the steel sides of the coaches."). Captain Kidd even has managed to apply the Green Fire to a dagger, with which she has developed the appealing habit of carving a skull and crossbones symbol on victims' chest while she cackles maniacally. Also once again, the nation is wetting its figurative shorts as trains are found with nothing but corpses on them, and everything valuable has been stripped. Even fingers have been hacked off to get at jewelled rings. At one point, a passenger train roars full blast into Grand Central Station with its "corpse cargo", making a wreck of the place in a tragic scene. But it doesn't stop with trains, and soon the Pirates are executing all the inhabitants of apartment buildings so they can make off with the loot. The body count is in the thousands and it looks like nothing can stop these modern-day Pirates. Well, there is still the Spider. Richard Wentworth is on the job, facing one nerve-wracking death trap after another as he outwits the enemy, shoots large holes in them and pauses only to brand a small red spider symbol on their foreheads (when there's enough forehead left). There are some details worth noting for the archives. Not all of Wentworth's life is taken up with his crusade against masterminds. The world also knows him "as a wealthy clubman who sometimes gave charity concerts, playing a violin that sang with the soul of genius, or who, again, brought back some rare beast, alive, from the wilds of far Sumatra, or purchased some fabulously valuable painting." (All well and good, but I don't know if I'd want to read a hundred pages of Wentworth at Sotheby's, bidding on a genuine Van Dyck.) Then there's the return of Jim Walsh, a freckle-faced twelve-year-old who helped the Spider escape a lynch mob back in CITADEL OF HELL, In gratitude, the dreaded vigilante gave the boy a signet ring with a spider seal on it, to bring to the police if he ever needed help. Jim is the leader of the "Spider Club" which meets in a shack, its juvenile members following their idol's exploits in the papers. One member of the Spider Club in fact is tortured to death by the Pirates, a skull and crossbones burned into his chest. Realizing that a group of young boys getting mixed up in his crusade is not the best idea in the world, Wentworth gives them a stern lecture. "Listen, boys. It is a great thing to help the law, and the police, Keep doing that. But the work of the Spider is not for you. You must never involve yourself in anything like this again...." Kid sidekicks were an aspect of the pulps to some extent, but they were much more common in the 1940s comic books that followed. I realize the publishers figured that young readers could more easily identify with Operator 5's Tim Donovan or the Shield's Dusty than with the main hero*, but the whole idea seems unsavory today. A grown man, often with extensive training or special powers and weapons, going out to fight gangsters and spies is one thing. But to bring along a minor maybe fourteen years old, with no such powers or skills, is really hard to defend. It's a convention of the genre that hasn't aged well. And don't get me started on Catman and his jailbait partner Kitten...

PRINCE OF THE RED LOOTERS (Oct 26, 2002) From August 1934, this adventure by Norvell Page (under the Grant Stockbridge house name) pits the Spider against his evil counterpart, the Fly (well, that name seemed inevitable). Like most of the books in this series, it`s a headlong gallop from one tense moment to another, with massive loss of life and destruction of property along the way. Actually, the carnage does not quite get as much out of control as in some of the stories, although burning down a packed opera house is not something you`d find in a demure Herule Poirot story. On the most basic level, Richard Wentworth is identical to dozens of pulp and comic book heroes... the Green Hornet, the Sandman, the Crimson Avenger, the Shadow, even the Batman. He`s a wealthy playboy who puts on a disguise to fight crime, has a loyal girlfriend and faithful partner of foreign extraction and is usually hunted by the police as well as the underworld. Details and gadgets vary, from the gas guns to the Batmobile, but the formula is usually the same and it`s a solid framework to tell a long-running series of adventure stories. Where the Spider is different from the rest is in the way his emotions are right there on the surface. He`s no enigmatic mystery man. Wentworth lives at a constant high pitch of anger, paranoia, doubt, and righteous indignation, and we`re in on his thoughts all through the adventures. From the first paragraph to the end, the Spider is in a desperate life-and-death struggle that has him worked up to a point where most of us would break down. In fact, if any action hero is likely to end up institutionalized, it would be Wentworth, considering every book puts him through the wringer mercilessly. In this story, Wentworth has to deal with the Fly taking as captive Corcoran, the nephew of his best friend and a youth that Wentworth himself likes very much. Although Commisioner Kirkpatrick never admits directly he knows Wentworth is the Spider, it`s an open secret between them. As long as the Spider keeps gunning down crooks that are too elusive to catch, Kirkpatrick sees him as useful, but if he ever gets conclusive proof of the vigilante`s identity, he would be honor bound to arrest the guy. So every minute he`s on the job, Wentworth is caught in a nerve wracking trap betweeen his own role as an amateur criminologist, his identity as the murderous Spider, and his strained relationship with Kirkpatrick. What a life! Doc Savage and the Avenger didn`t know how cushy they had it. The Fly is sort of what the Spider might have become without Wentworth`s sense of right and wrong. Born to wealth and craving thrills, he found excitement in his schemes. With a slightly different slant, he could just as easily have become a crimefighter. As criminal masterminds go, he`s in the middle range, above those who are only planning to steal a new bomb sight or the Eye of Shiva but not in the ranks of those who literally are embarking on world conquest. The Fly plans and carries out huge robbery schemes, from banks to the opera crowd, using some clever strategy and a complete lack of regard for human life. He casually leaves a trail of hundreds of gassed corpses behind him to ease escape or prevent witnesses, and with the millions he amasses, he gathers a literal army of gangsters under him (although we don`t see more than a handful in action.) Refined, sardonic, the gentleman villain type, the Fly is at home in high society and a master of sabres who can meet the Spider on equal terms in any type of conflict. (Also there are several likely suspects among the cast who might be the Fly, but not much emphasis is placed on deducing which of them is the culprit. This isn`t Ellery Queen we`re dealing with here.) Nita and Ram Singh are pretty much in the background for this story, providing moral support or guarding a prisoner but getting no time in the spotlight. It`s interesting that when Ram persists in asking if he can accompany Wentworth into the crook`s stronghold, his master is angry at this "defiance" and tells him to just obey orders. You might expect him to say, "Thanks for offering to go into mortal danger for my sake, old friend, but I have to do this alone." Nope. ("Wentworth frowned, hard lights in his eyes. `Since when has the Spider needed help in his battles?` he demanded sharply") Old Ram Singh should have said, "Fine, be that way! I`ll go work for the Moon Man." (And I`m no expert, but doesn`t a fighting man named Ram Singh sound like he was meant to be a Sikh rather than a Hindu?)

As an afterthought, it`s interesting that Wentworth appears as the Spider in two different incarnations. The most impressive is as a hunchbacked old man with fangs, pointed nose and straggly hair, wearing a cloak and slouch hat. This version is probably the one the underworld describes to each other when they discuss their enemy. This getup takes a few minutes to set up. But at least once, when in a hurry, Wentworth just slips on a "skirted mask which concealed his entire face." Apparently this is a mask with an opaque veil. And on the covers he is shown wearing just a simple domino mask, which lets the artist show his grim, resolute, teeth-clenching mug.       Also, Wentworth spends much of this book disguised as either the Fly or a henchman. But because these disguises are only mentioned once, it`s easy to forget he`s not running around as his own self and it`s surprising when he announces he`s the Spider. What`s puzzling is when he (in disguise) captures a crook and leaves him in Ram Singh`s custody. Unless he plans on killing the gangster in cold blood later, it seems that having the guy be able to identify Ram will be a big clue to the Spider`s identity.   And of course, he occasionally will (as Wentworth) gun down a crew of thugs and (if no witnesses are left) will leave his Spider emblem. If anyone is left to tell the story, he`ll take credit for the kills himself. Can a private citizen repeatedly end up shooting people to death, even in self-defense, without legal repercussions? Apparently so. ("The jury finds that because the offenders had their handguns drawn, the defendant was justified in shooting all six of them in the head. Case dismissed.")

BUILDERS OF THE BLACK EMPIRE (Aug 4, 2006) Don't let the title mislead you. This October 1934 story is not about a new Chaka organizing African tribes to overthrow European colonial governments. Nor is it about a cunning criminal mastermind who happens tobe Black, sort of like Mr Big from the James Bond book LIVE AND LET DIE. Actually, I think either of those premises might have led to a more memorable exploit for the Spider. Not that BUILDERS OF THE BLACK EMPIRE is exactly dull or uneventful. With Norvell Page at the typewriter? Come on. It's one nerve-wracking moment after another as Richard Wentworth has to overcome six armed men in a plane and take control before other nearby planes explode; he is shot right in the gizzard and falls into the freezing Hudson (you know, that bulletproof underwear Doc Savage and the Avenger wore sometimes seem worth the rashes and itchiness); and, in my favorite scene, while still wobbly and weak enough to remain in a wheelchair, Richard Wentworth confronts a worked-up lynch mob with nothing but a pistol and a flashlight that has the Spider emblem on its lens. The guy has attitude, all right. So. the "Black Empire" of the title is just a figure of speech. Most of the villainous activity takes place around the Caribbean and the candidates to be exposed as the ringleader include a dapper little "revolutionist" Remarque D'Enry, the elegant aristocratic Don Esteban de Cinquado y Janandez and his passionate (slightly bloodthirsty) daughter Carmencita. Of course, there are a few other suspects in the mix, including the hearty Scott Hallie. So even as thousands of people are violently killed and nations move toward bloody war, keep an eye out for any slight clues in dialogue or descriptions. That large diamond ring one wears that keeps getting mentioned seems mighty suspicious to me. I also think D'Enry is like Jules de Grandin gone rogue. Richard Wentworth is up against a large gang of modern pirates who kill huge numbers of innocents for loot. This is a bit too reminiscent of the bad guys in CORPSE CARGO from just a few months earlier. Those skunks at least had the novel gimmick of "chained lightning", which instantly electrocuted everyone onboard a train or in an apartment building. The pirates of the Black Empire are much less imaginative, simply bombing ships at sea, machine-gunning the survivors and making off with the swag. Not only is this rather prosaic for THE SPIDER magazine (where are the death rays, giant robots or poisoned vampire bats?), it's not too convincing that the United States Navy couldn't tackle a band of raiders who specialize exclusively on American ships. Instead of the US armed forces getting all apocalyptic on these crooks, instead the American response is to blame an unnamed Asian power (okay, definitely Japan) and prepare for war. I've come to expect one edge-of-the-seat sequence after another from Norvell Page, with Richard Wentworth taking an awful beating both physically and emotionally ("for three weeks he had lain between life and death, stricken with pneumonia and fever and gunshot wound...") . It's all here again. Yet, somehow it's not quite as audacious as some of my favorite Spider novels. In some of the books, it seems as if Page is pulling both legs at once as he throws in action scenes that over the top and back up again. BUILDERS OF THE BLACK EMPIRE falls a bit short of that. I hesitate to use the word believable about a Spider story, but this one is a good deal less hysterical than usual. Although not the main bad guy, it's Miguel Oriano who makes the strongest impression. This bruiser is a big, beefy guy with a pockmarked face, bristling reddish hair and blue eyes. His father had been "a swashbuckling soldier of fortune by name Mike O'Ryan, who had carved out a minor kingdom among the peons of Mexico." Oriano has a major chip on his shoulder and he enjoys using that fifteen-foot bullwhip way too much. Plenty of blood is spilled in all directions by that cruel lash, and before it's all over, Wentworth comes face to face with Oriano, pitting his fencing sword against the whip. Don't let the kids watch. The funniest lines come when Wentworth goes to visit Nita van Sloan at her plush penthouse. He sounds a coded signal on the doorbell. "Scarcely had the third peal sounded than a furious barking broke out within and he heard Nita's feet flying to the door." Good God, Richard, just what does your girlfriend LOOK like? Despite my ungallant chuckle, of course it's just the Great Dane Apollo accompanying her. Now, Wentworth normally carries a small metal case strapped under his arm. It's what, the size of a flat cigarette case that could hold a dozen deathsticks? Usually he carries basic make-up supplies in it, sometimes a little explosive or acid in glass vials. Fine. This time, though, as he's on the run, he hurriedly builds up a beak of nose, gets his fake vampire fangs and shaggy eyebrows for his Tito Calliepi role. But then he fastens the lank black wig on his head and slaps on the slouch hat. From that little metal case? Detracting a little from the fearsome visual is the fact that the Spider is in a wheelchair, still wearing pajamas and a bathrobe. Oh well, at least it's not that garment that ties in the back and shows your dignity. There are also a few of the strong hints we get from time to time that Richard Wentworth's mental health is really being worn away by the stressful double life he leads, what with all the deathtraps and desperate chases and hundreds of men he has shot dead. "Crazy laughter bubbled up in Wentworth's throat, but he choked it down." Or, " 'I've won,' Wentworth stammered crazily. 'I've won!' " All these references add up in Page's stories. Maybe a year or two in that Tibetan lamasery where the Shadow, the Green Lama and Mandrake studied would help. (Except you can be sure some horrendous threat would arise only the Spider could tackle.) The usual cast are here, but none of them really get a chance to shine. Nita impersonates someone well enough, Jackson shoots and kicks people in "the lower stomach" (ahem) and Ram Singh does his knife-throwing and following shady characters. If I had never heard of the Spider and had just strolled unsuspectingly into the pages of BUILDERS OF THE BLACK EMPIRE, it would have been like being smacked between the eyes with a cue ball. As it is, of course, I'm comparing it to some of the entries which really stand out so it suffers slightly but that's inevitable with any long-running series.

DEATH'S CRIMSON JUGGERNAUT (Jan 27, 2003) From the November 1934 issue of THE SPIDER, it's another headlong stampede of death and disaster with Richard Wentworth. The Spider novels start out at the level of action and danger that most adventure stories build up to for the final chapter, and Page's books pretty much keep going full blast until the last page. There's no first chapter setting moody atmosphere as fog creeps over Chinatown like Walter Gibson used to open some of his Shadow books with*, and there's no chapter in the middle where the hero takes a breather before things heat up again. The villains this time are up to so much heinous activity that it's hard to summarize what's going on. People are being tortured and crucified alive for no apparent reason. Witnesses are killed with bombs. Buildings blow up and trains crash! Liners are sunk! Hand grenades are thrown at Wentworth out of his own apartment's elevator! Someone is impersonating the Spider and throwing the blame for the crucifixions on him! Blinded by tear gas, he's trapped in a burning building while trying to rescue a baby and unconscious woman! And then things start getting really bad.... It's always disquieting that one of the things that distinguishes the Spider is that he casually shoots in his victims (usually in the forehead) in cold blood. (In one instance, he calmly shoots a man floating with a life preserver in the ocean; he's pretty sure the guy is a member of the gang, but still...) Doc Savage and the Avenger try to prevent taking life, the Shadow almost always gave his opponents a fighting chance, even Robert E. Howard heroes like Solomon Kane and Francis X. Gordon would let their enemies pick up a sword before attacking them. Not Wentworth. It's no wonder the police are more anxious to nail him than other vigilantes. The Spider is essentially a serial killer who picks criminals for his victims, and although WE know he's never wrong, the characters in the stories don't have that reassurance. In the Popular universe, modern criminology texts probably describe the Spider as a hired killer who usually assassinated other crooks and who was suspected of being Richard Wentworth. (The way so many innocent people are killed and their deaths blamed on the Spider by the villains can't have given the general public much confidence in this avenger.) The book is an avalanche that keeps picking up more momentum as it goes, and I'm amazed at Norvell Page's slightly gruesome tricks that he has Wentworth play with corpses to help in his escapes. At one point, Wentworth impersonates a Spider victim, a fake bloody bullet hole next to the red seal on his forehead, who gets back up and frightens gangsters out of the way by acting like a zombie. Page had some imagination. He throws out little twists here and there that many writers could get a complete short story out of, and there always seems to be a new surprise on the next page. I haven't read that many Spider stories yet (I'd like to sample some of the final issues), but from what fans say, the stories remain essentially the same throughout the series. The masterminds get more murderous and more deranged and their crimes more destructive and fantastic, but Wentworth and Nita and Ram Singh apparently don't change or evolve much, and the uneasy relationship with Kirkpatrick remains the delicate balancing act between partners and enemies. If the magazine had lasted longer, the Spider stories might have been more successful during the postwar years when Doc and the Shadow were humanized and cranked down a few notches to become more conventional crimefighters. Richard Wentworth could have done well as a amateur criminologist who still frequently finds he has no choice but to shoot a gangster and, just maybe, put a little red seal on the crook's forehead. ______________________ *I like Gibson`s slower approach almost as much, just pointing out the contrast.