The Spider #31: The Cholera King

The Spider #31: The Cholera King, by Grant Stockbridge

April, 1936  Popular Publications

It’s funny; the volumes of The Spider that I think I won’t enjoy turn out to be the most entertaining. It happened before with Reign Of The Death Fiddler, and now again with The Cholera King. Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page really keeps the story moving…mostly because he changes the direction of the plot so many times that the book veritably speeds by. 

It’s a month after the previous volume, the events of which aren’t mentioned, but when we meet him Richard “The Spider” Wentworth is taking a much-needed vacation, along with his ever-suffering fiance, Nita Van Sloan. On a boat in the mid-Atlantic, Wentworth is in the process of having a marksman contest with a fellow shipmate, when the shipmate abruptly tries to kill Wentworth. The man then jumps off the ship and is picked up by a plane, making his escape. 

However, this is not the plot Page wants to fool around with. Immediately thereafter we learn that cholera is rampant on the boat, and what’s more, Wentworth is informed that there’s been a cholera outbreak back in New York City. Wentworth does what any other pulp hero would do; he commandeers the boat’s sea-airplane and takes off for New York. 

One thing I have been much appreciating about the latest volumes of The Spider is Nita’s growing involvement. Whereas past volumes shunted her off to the side, only appearing long enough to be captured, this time out Nita flat-out insists that she go to New York with Wentworth; she demands to take part in his adventures, now. This leads to a great bit where Wentworth, after flying alone in what he’s thought was a solo capacity for several hours, finds himself attacked by dogfighting planes – and is saved by the surprise appearance of a stowaway on his little airplane. 

However this sequence is the only part of The Cholera King that I didn’t enjoy, as Page indulges in several pages of “aeronautical fiction.” Once Wentworth lands in New York, though, we get back on firmer pulp ground; Wentworth learns that cholera is rampant in the city, with thousands dead, and what’s more New York has been quarantined. This was especially timely in our post-Covid world, Norvell Page once again displaying a strange prescience: 

Yes, “God help a city when the very children forget to play.” Not to mention a city where mothers are arrested for taking their children to playgrounds. Or where a man is arrested for paddleboarding on an empty beach. Not to mention the hundreds of other injustices the ruling class of “experts” perpetrated on we the public in the reign of Covid – things which they just wish we’d forget about, today – all in the name of “public health.” 

It’s pretty sad that even the imagination of a 1930s pulp writer pales in comparison to reality, especially given that the New Yorkers in Page’s novel rebel against these injustices, and indeed unite, rise up together, and take their salvation into their own hands. But then, these people have none other than the Spider to lead them. 

Page isn’t content to just write a novel about New York under a cholera quarantine, though. He also works in a murder-mystery plot, with city notables getting killed, and “tit-tat-toe” (or, more commonly today, tic-tac-toe) diagrams carved into their torsos. Wentworth is certain these murders are related to the cholera outbreak, but police boss Kirkpatrick doesn’t believe it. 

We get more flying fiction as Wentworth (with Nita!) goes off in pursuit of men who try to sabotage a supply of acids or whatnot that’s being brought in to counteract the cholera in the city’s water. After this it’s back to the murder mystery subplot as Wentworth chases down various red herrings, certain that someone is the mastermind behind this nefarious plot. 

Once again Wentworth himself names the villain of the piece: it’s the Plague Master, and sadly he continues the trend of being a poorly-costumed villain. He’s tall, bald, wears a crimson robe, and has a mummy-like face. He operates mostly in the background, but like all other Spider villains, he not only has an army of criminals at his command but he also knows who the Spider really is. 

Speaking of the Spider, the best part in The Cholera King entails Wentworth donning his Spider guise and going out into the city to take down the looters – yet more prescience on Page’s part, with the caveat that in his day looters were still considered criminals. Wentworth, slouching through the city in his cloak and deformed mask, comes upon a pair of sadists as they toss a woman out of a window, and the Spider goes up there to dish out some bloody payback. It’s a cool moment, the best in the book, and it would’ve been great if Page had just written the entire novel in this manner. 

Unfortunately, our author has other intentions: for one, he introduces yet another subplot where Wentworth disguises himself yet again and goes into the slums of the Bowery, posing as a criminal in the hopes of being drafted into the Plague Master’s criminal empire. This subplot is humorously dropped as Page changes his mind and instead has the Spider become a hero for the downtrodden, quarantined masses of New York City. 

If only there had been a Spider in the real world of 2020! After taking down many of the looters and criminals who are plaguing the disease-ridden, quarantined city (not to mention being chased by the cops himself), Wentworth the next day comes upon a group of desperate people who are about to drink from a water hose, even though the water is contaminated with cholera and it will mean sudden death if they drink it. Wentworth is driven to help them and, still in his cape and whatnot, makes a stirring speech and says he will lead them to safety. 

This part is great and shows that Page understood the concept of masculine strength, another thing the “experts” have tried to make us forget. There are constant asides of “What a man!” from the women who flock to the powerful leader that is Richard Wentworth, one of them even mentioning later on how no man will ever equal Wentworth in her eyes. Wentworth, we’ll recall, is a man of wealth who has seen a need in people and has willingly put himself in harm’s way to help them, despite being branded as a criminal and hated by the authorities. Boy, this sure reminds me of a particular real-world person… 

Now The Cholera King becomes a survival yarn as Wentworth, still posing as the Spider, leads a few million New Yorkers on an “exodus” into the country, where they can have fresh water and live again, away from the cholera. Again there’s that prescience as they are constantly impeded by the authorities, ie the “experts,” who even draw guns on them and tell them they cannot proceed, because they are infected with cholera and it’s important for the “public health” that they stay in New York. To die. 

But Norvell Page and Richard Wentworth are on the side of freedom and life, not tyranny and death, and Wentworth leads his millions on into the wilderness, breaking right through the government troops who have lined up to stop them. It was awesome to read this and to be reminded that there was a time when a pulp writer could still believe in the independence and free spirit of the American people, to imagine that they would buck against the forces of oppression. Sadly, as demonstrated by the willful masking, one-way-aisles-at-the-grocery-store, and “six feet of separation” of the Covid years (the majority of which was bullshit that was made up on the fly), this independence and free will has either been lost in the 89 years since The Cholera King was published, or it never existed in the first place and is just the product of a pulp writer’s imagination. Personally, I believe the former. 

The exodus sequence is almost disconnected from the rest of the book, but is entertaining as hell, especially given its connotations with our modern day, or at least the modern day of a few years ago. (Fortunately, things seem to be changing profoundly.) But then it’s back to the “posing as a criminal to get hired” subplot, which of course leads to Wentworth being trapped by the Plague Master, who by the way also has Nita prisoner – and also wants her to marry him! 

There’s no big action finale for The Cholera King; indeed, Norvell Page relies on deus ex machina, with Wentworth being saved as he’s being led to his death. Really, Page has spent so much of the narrative on the tic-tac-toe mystery (including a super-long footnote in which he tells how to solve the various ciphers in the text, perhaps unintentionally inspiring the future Zodiac Killer), not to mention the exodus from New York, that the poor Plague Master himself is reduced to almost a footnote…and the “revelation” of his real identity is (intentionally?) hilarious, as it’s some dude Wentworth and Nita knows, but the guy hasn’t even been mentioned in the book! 

Anyway, I really enjoyed The Cholera King; the plot was all over the place, but the high points were really high, and Norvell Page’s unwitting prediction of the Covid era gave the book a lot of resonance with today.

The Spider #30: Green Globes Of Death

The Spider #30: Green Globes Of Death, by Grant Stockbridge

March, 1936  Popular Publications

I was under the impression this volume of The Spider was the third part of a trilogy that started with The Mayor Of Hell and continued into Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate, but that doesn’t turn out to be the case. Green Globes Of Death is for the most part self-contained, with only infrequent mentions of those previous two volumes. The volume it is really the sequel to is Prince Of The Red Looters, as it features the return of that one’s main villain: The Fly. This is quite puzzling for Richard “The Spider” Wentworth, as he’s certain he killed the Fly in that previous book – he impaled him in the heart with a rapier and then the Fly fell many stories to his supposed death. 

To be honest, the Fly is not one of the more interesting villains in The Spider, at least not to me, but either Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page liked him, or the readers demanded he return. Who knows. To me, the rapier-carrying character in monk’s robes is quite boring when compared to the average Spider villain. Also I don’t know how “Fly” equals a Medieval monk’s robes for a costume. I was thinking the guy would at least have antennae on his costume. But at any rate, as we know from the final moments of the previous book, the Fly is back – and what’s more he has killed the mayor. 

This was how Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate ended, and as a reminder the bigger deal here was that Wentworth was notified of the Fly’s return moments before walking down the aisle with long-suffering girlfriend Nita Van Sloan. This was one of the most emotionally-resonate moments in The Spider, as it was Nita herself who told Wentworth to go after the Fly, and to skp the wedding…this after an entire novel in which she’d nagged Wetnworth to stop being the Spider and marry her. So then, one might be under the impression that Green Globes Of Death would open immediately thereafter. 

As it turns out, that is not the case. As typical with the series, it opens on an action scene, with Wentworth in his Spider costume (demonic face with fangs and a hunched back) attending a costume ball in the hopes of rooting out the Fly. It’s two weeks after the previous volume, the events of which are not much dwelt upon. As is also typical, a reset has occurred and we’re back to the status quo, and there’s no real pickup on the emotional finale of the previous book. What’s even more curious is that Norvell Page doubles down on the alternate front, this time: the main subplot of Green Globes Of Death concerns Nita hobknobbing with one of the men Wentworth suspects of being the Fly, to the point that Wentworth kicks her out of his home and tells his companions that Nita is no longer their ally! 

Wentworth suspects a few men of being the Fly; another recurring schtick of the series being the various red herrings Wentworth busies himself with. But I’m happy to note that Green Globes Of Death throttles back on the endless, arbitrary action scenes of previous books and goes for more of a suspense angle. To be sure, there is quite a bit of action, but this time Page balances it with characterization and plot, and he doesn’t seem to just be coming up with stuff to meet his word count. There’s also a bit more care put into the mystery of who the Fly is – Wentworth is certain he killed the original, so this new one must be an imposter – so for once the outing of the villain’s identity isn’t arbitrarily shoehorned into the climax. 

Another cool change is that Nita is becoming more of the “adventuress” that she would be in later volumes, like Satan’s Murder Machines. A recurring motif is that Nita is always abducted by the villain’s people – because everyone and their brother knows that the Spider is really Richard Wentworth – but this time she has a surprise for her would-be captors, blowing one of them away with her own gun. She even makes an action-heroine quip afterwards. Of course, Nita is still abducted, but it’s cool to see the emerging action-heroine characterization for her. But this too picks up from the previous volume’s climax, in which Nita put on the costume of the Spider and went into action with guns blazing. 

Nita is saved off-page by a sort of alt-Wentworth, a “criminologist” who is not suspected of being the Spider, per Wentworth’s best friend-worst enemy Commissoner Kirkpatrick. Soon Nita is hanging out with this guy, and there follows “high melodrama” where Wentworth pretends to be outraged that Nita went off with another man, desperately hoping that Nita can see through his charade but spending the rest of the novel afraid that she hasn’t. So there’s a lot of melodramatic stuff here where he will see the two together and feign anger, not sure if the tears in Nita’s eyes are genuine or not, even telling erstwhile butler Jenkyns to mind his own business. As I’ve mentioned before, a reader can easily detect that Richard Wentworth is nuts; there’s an unintentionally(?) humorous part where, after sending Nita off in feigned anger, Wentworth looks at himself in the mirror and starts laughing…and just keeps laughing. 

The apocalyptic tones typical of the series are way whittled down here. In fact, I think this was true of the previous Fly yarn. In this one, the Fly’s minions hit the occasional bank and get in shootouts, but there’s none of the “New York is nearly destroyed” catastrophes of earlier books. The titular “green globes” are glass balls that are hurled by the Fly’s men; they contain an acidic gas that essentially melt guts. These things don’t even appear until near the end of the novel, and Page well captures the horror of them when they are hurled at victims during the Fly’s various robberies. Mostly though the Fly does his fighting with a rapier, and there are numerous parts where Wentworth engages the Fly – or another guy he suspects of being the Fly – in a fencing match. 

We’re often told that the Fly is the most dangerous, most cunning villain Wentworth has ever faced, but a mere perusal of earlier books will prove that is not true. But hell, Wentworth thinks that of every single villain, every single volume. The Fly also has a greatly reduced force compared to previous villains. Instead of an army, he just has a bunch of random hoods. All of which is to say that Green Globes Of Death operates on a smaller scale than its predecessors…which really isn’t a bad thing, because Page focuses more on internal turmoil than endless action. But the rift with Nita is a little tough to buy after the events of the previous book, in which her devotion to Wentworth was made clear. Then again, this is why Page does a reset each volume, so he doesn’t get bogged down by what came before. 

Another plus for Green Globes Of Death is that Wentworth wears his Spider costume a lot more than he usually does; in most books, he’ll appear as the Spider for a scant page or two. This time, though, he is often donning the garb and going out with fangs and hunchback to blow away the bad guys with his dual .45s. That said, he just as often fights without a costume, and Norvell Page once again points out that Commissioner Kirkpatrick is quite aware that Wentworth is really the Spider. Indeed, pretty much everyone knows Wentworth is the Spider, which lends the series a little unintentional camp value…as if everyone is going along with Wentworth’s charade that he’s just a wealthy gadabout. 

An interesting thing I wanted to note – there’s a part early on where Wentworth acquires the palmprint of a man he suspects might be the Fly. Wentworth has a cast made of the palmprint, even though we are informed crime labs haven’t yet been able to figure out how to use palmprints to identify a suspect. Ultimately Wentworth is able to use it to prove an identification, but it was cool to see how novel this technique was in 1936. Years ago I cut my cable, and if you cut cable and get a digital antenna you automatically become an armchair homicide investigator. This is because there are about ten thousand true crime networks on over-the-air television. I’ve seen several episodes of Forensic Files, for example, which hinged around identifying someone by a palmprint. I could only imagine how much better the show would be if, instead of a cop or a crime-lab technician relaying the story, it was a millionaire playboy “criminologist” in cape and fangs. “I knew he was The Fly!” 

Despite the more smallscale setup, Green Globes Of Death really entertained me, and kept my attention more than the average Spider novel, mostly because everything flowed so well in the story. Norvell Page this time does a great job juggling action, character, and introspection; the only setback is the villain, but Page does pull a cool surprise twist at the end concerning the Fly that has a horror vibe. It just happens so quickly that the reader doesn’t have sufficient time to realize it, meaning that Wentworth must exposit everything for us in the final paragraphs. The “rift” with Nita is also unsatisfactorily resolved in some quick, expository dialog, but still, overall Green Globes Of Death was one of my favorite Spider yarns yet.

The Spider #29: Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate

The Spider #29: Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate, by Grant Stockbridge

February, 1936  Popular Publications

Picking up two months after the previous volume, this 29th installment of The Spider again finds our hero, Richard “The Spider” Wentworth, struggling against a national threat pretty much all on his own. While last time Wentworth dropped his Spider guise, this time his entire existence as The Spider is called into question, with Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page instilling the yarn with more emotional depth than the previous volumes. 

That’s not to say Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate isn’t the typical Page onslaught of action, though. As with the previous installments, a lot of the good stuff is squandered by frequent detours into time-consuming action scenes. But there is a lot of good, character-driven stuff here, more so than any of the earlier books, or at least anything I can recall in them. In particular Wentworth’s relationship with Nita Van Sloan is really put into the spotlight, with Nita’s ever-staunch acceptance of Wentworth’s life as the Spider put to the ultimate test. 

Last we saw Wentworth he was on the run, outed in the papers as the Spider but still fighting crime as Corporal Death. Now, two months later, a near-penniless Wentworth (his vast assets frozen due to his being a wanted man and all) lives in the Underworld, disguised with a “face quite altered…by puckered scars…as if by a richocheting bullet.” His plight, as ever, is dire, and his best friend/worst enemy Commissioner Kirkpatrick still has the cops looking for him, despite the fact that last volume Wentworth helped Kirkpatrick defeat the (latest) supervillain who threatened to take over New York. Curiously the Corporal Death gimmick is completely dropped this time, at least so far as Wentworth goes; the guise is only mentioned in passing halfway through the novel, then very late in the game another character takes up the mantle. 

There isn’t much pickup from The Mayor Of Hell, though. The way things go, there’s already a new menace Wentworth must deal with; true to form this one opens with Wentworth just happening to witness some latest criminal act, as a carful of men ambush a lone girl and point a “queer gun” at her. This thing fires darts, and this will be the volume’s villain gimmick, or at least one of them – as the narrative tells us, “Almost always, these geniuses of crime invented some new weapon.” The darts make their victims go nuts, spastically dancing as they (presumably) shit themselves and die; Wentworth will soon be calling this weapon “the dancing death.” But that’s not enough for Page, and later in the book he has the criminals using a Dissolver bomb that, well, dissolves people. 

As for the villains, this time for the most part they are Indians, apparently of the Thuggee cult, though Page doesn’t do too much with this. Their boss is the lamely-named Chief, who just wears a hood…but then this supervillain’s gimmick is he never really appears in person, each hooded “Chief” Wentworth encounters turning out to be a decoy. After failing to save the girl in the opening scene, Wentworth gets in a running battle against the Chief and his Thuggee minions, with as ever the fate of the entire nation ultimately coming into play. But as if that weren’t enough, Wentworth also has to avoid the cops, who are really closing in on him – not to mention Nita Van Sloan, who sets Wentworth up for the trap! 

The stuff with Nita has kind of bored me in previous volumes because it’s too hard to believe; I much prefer the presentation of Nita in later volumes, like #75: Satan’s Murder Machines, where she’s getting in on the action instead of just being caught by the villains. The seeds of this later female ass-kickery are planted here in Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate, particularly in a climax that actually gave me the old chills due to the emotional content of the heroic sacrifice and whatnot. Indeed this Spider yarn reaches dramatic heights only hinted at in previous volumes. 

Nita’s betrayal of Wentworth, following him to his slum hideout and distracting him long enough until the cops can show up – that is, after she has, for the first time ever, seriously nagged at him to give up being the Spider – is one of the biggest dramatic surprises in the series yet. But I couldn’t help but chuckle like I was some gutter-minded high schooler (which at heart I guess I always will be), because some of Wentworth and Nita’s dialog here can be taken way out of context:

I mean, seriously! “Stiffly,” “It’s hard, “I want to make it so hard?” “Dick lover?!” What are these two really talking about?? (And FYI, later in the book Nita does actually say “Dick lover,” without the comma between the two words as in the excerpt above…) It’s been years since I read it, but in Robert Sampson’s 1987 study The Spider I’m pretty sure Sampson speculates that Wentworth and Nita Van Sloan, as a pair of healthy mature adults in love, had to have been engaging in some pre-marital sex off-page, and that Page craftily insinuated so in the text. Page certainly does here; late in Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate Wentworth and Nita take an unexpected trip to Florida (even though the country is literally about to be taken over by the Chief!), and spend a few weeks there, staying together in a beach house. I mean Page can’t get into Harold Robbins “full, upthrusting breasts” territory, it being 1936 and all, but it seems pretty evident that Nita is giving Wentworth the goods during this brief sabbatical from his crimefighting life. After all, by her own admission Nita is a “Dick lover!” Hell, I wish I could go spend a couple weeks in Florida with her. 

Nita isn’t the only woman who wants Wentworth, though; this volume brings a female villainess back to the fold. There hasn’t been one of those in a Spider yarn for a few volumes now. This one’s named Tarsa, and she follows the template of the previous female Spider villains: sinuous, evilly “exotic,” and seemingly just as eager to kill Wentworth as to bed him. Page spends a good bit of the middle half detailing an overlong sequence where Tarsa, who mockingly refers to Wentworth as “Master,” tries to woo Wentworth to the side of the Chief (she of course knows that Wentworth is the Spider – not to mention that he was also Corporal Death), then gets in an extended chase with him through the death trap-laden headquarters of the villains. 

A cool thing about The Spider is that Page will have a bit of continuity in it, with recurring minor characters. This time it’s Bill Horace, a bumbling cop who was made a detective after the events of #20: Reign Of The Death Fiddler – thanks to the help Wentworth gave him. Horace starts off Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate as a dolt, with the joke being he was made detective too soon and is prone to stupid mistakes. Again Wentworth helps him, and gradually Horace turns into a stronger character; by novel’s end he is a crimefighter in his own right, having appropriated a mantle of his own. I am curious to see if he returns in this guise in future volumes. There’s also a laughable bit where Wentworth toys with Horace and others that he, Wentworth, isn’t really the Spider, and the real Spider might become upset that Wentworth is going around pretending to be him! Even Horace is confused by this…at first convinced Wentworth is the Spider, then by novel’s end – thanks to that thrilling climax – thinking he might not be, after all. 

Speaking of which, the Spider costume makes its return in Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate…though as ever the costume is just as quickly cast aside as it is donned. Wentworth per the norm spends the majority of the narrative as himself. But it was cool to finally get a few sequences of the hunchbacked, fanged Spider getup, even if it didn’t last very long. The recent volumes have certainly been lacking in the “costume” department; even the Corporal Death guise didn’t feature a mask or special suit or anything. And as mentioned the crime boss “The Chief” just wears a basic hood. The bigger gimmick is that Wentworth gradually deduces that the entire character is a ruse; there’s some fun un-PC stuff where Wentworth will blow away the Chief, only to take the hood off and see it’s “just a Hindu” who “can’t possibly be the real Chief.” Of course Wentworth is proven correct in novel’s end, but the revelation of who really leads the villains comes off as too arbitrary and as if Page were trying to connect two plot strands. That said, it’s at least better than the lame “villain reveals” of previous yarns, where some random character was outed as the boss. 

Another thorn in Wentworth’s side is Kirkpatrick’s sudden ferocious attack on him; the Spider is accused in the papers of murder and kidnapping and etc throughout the book, and Wentworth is certain Kirkpatrick is behind these false allegations. It’s a subplot Page doesn’t satisfactorily wrap up, but the explanation is this is just another method Kirkpatrick is employing to convince Wentworth to give up being the Spider. As I say, the genetic makeup of the Spider himself is called into question in Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate, with Wentworth not only assailed by the usual external forces but internal ones as well. The only friends not badgering him to give up are Jackson and Ram Singh, who are finally sprung from prison late in the novel – a sequence that features Wentworth’s return as the Spider, working with the new Corporal Death. 

There is of course frequent action throughout, like an attack on a cruise ship that Wentworth desperately tries to prevent. But a lot of the action is one-off sequences that sort of distract from the bigger picture, which is the one thing that always annoys me about The Spider. It does build up to a great climax, with Wentworth, Corporal Death, and the Spider coming to save Kirkpatrick and various politicians who have all been captured in Washington, DC. The nick-of-time appearance of the “other” Spider is the highlight of the novel; even Wentworth is shocked and has no idea who it could be. However, having read the later volume Satan’s Murder Machines, I had a pretty good hunch – and this didn’t take away from the thrilling nature of the scene at all. Otherwise this climax features characters dissolving and also being chomped apart in an elaborate death machine. 

Shockingly enough, Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate ends with Richard Wentworth declaring that the Spider is dead forever…and he and Nita make their long-delayed walk down the wedding aisle. But, of course, criminal genius The Fly, returning from #11: Prince Of The Red Looters, chooses this precise moment to attack New York…and only the Spider can stop him. In yet more good “character” stuff, it is Kirkpatrick and Nita – the two who spend the entirety of Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate trying to convince Wentworth to quit – who tell our hero that “only the Spider” can save the day. This must be why I was under the impression that The Mayor Of Hell, Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate, and next volume’s Green Globes Of Death formed a trilogy, as last we see Wentworth he is once again rushing into the fray.

The Spider #28: The Mayor Of Hell

The Spider #28: The Mayor Of Hell, by Grant Stockbridge

January, 1936  Popular Publications

Even though it doesn’t feature the typical supervillain of the series, or much in the way of supernatural thrills, or even an appearance of the titular Spider himself, this 28th volume of The Spider is one of my favorites yet in the series, Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page turning in a novel that has more emotional resonance than typical for a pulp yarn. He also manages to hit on some relevance with our modern day, which is incredible considering this pulp yarn was published 86 years ago. 

In fact I found myself downright moved by a few sequences in The Mayor Of Hell, and midway through was prepared to declare it the best Spider I’d yet read. But unfortunately the story kept going, and as was his wont Page began to stuff the plot with too many disconnected action scenes. I agree with Zwolf that Joseph Rosenberger must have been a Spider fan, as there are a lot of similarities here. At one point in the book, during a firefight no less, Richard “The Spider” Wentworth starts boasting about how he kills, and his words could be put directly into the mouth of Richard Camellion. And hell I just realized, both characters have the first name “Richard.” (Which happens to be my middle name! But that has nothing to do with anything whatsoever.) 

This one starts off a sort of trilogy, too. Long story short, in this one Wentworth, who is (once again?) publicly exposed as the Spider, drops his guise and becomes “Corporal Death,” vowing to take down the so-called “Mayor of Hell,” who has, wouldja believe, united all the criminals of New York into one faction. Indeed, the worst villain Wentworth has ever faced! One thing to note, though: there’s no Corporal Death costume. Wentworth basically just takes up this new crimefighting name, arms himself with a special knife, but otherwise goes about in his regular clothes, without even a mask. So the costume factor is totally absent in The Mayor Of Hell; even the titular villain doesn’t wear a costume. He appears in one sequence and his schtick is he hides behind a bunch of mirrored lights. 

But like I said, whereas you’d think the loss of the typical Spider trappings would result in a misfire of an installment, it’s as if Page set the bar higher for himself with this one. There are some moments where Wentworth displays the sterling courage (stirring courage?) that Page has only hinted at in the past. And as usual Page puts his hero through the wringer; I mean The Mayor Of Hell opens with Wentworth getting machine-gunned in the back, chest, etc. But like a Terminator he essentially walks it off, recuperating for a few months in bed and wholly recovering. 

That’s another thing that differentiates The Mayor Of Hell: it takes place over a broader section of time, encompassing about three months. We learn at the outset that it’s been “six months” since the Spider has seen any action – meaning sixth months after #27: Emperor Of The Yellow Death? However Page drops the ball on this; the guy was typing so fast that it was only expected he’d make the occasional goof. Late in the novel Wentworth, as ever going undercover, appropriates the name of a hood he killed in Chicago “two months ago.” This does not jibe with the six month timeline of no action established in the opening…and for that matter, Wentworth spends two months in bed after the opening action scene. 

Well anyway, who cares about such trivialities. It’s still all about the action, which ultimately undoes the novel. At least in my opinion. This is unfortunate because Page really amps up the manly drama in the opening half. He already puts the screws to his character in the opening pages; Wentworth is relaxing in his lush penthouse and playing his Stradivarius when he’s suddenly attacked by a veritable army of subgun-toting thugs. There’s even a guy across the street hammering away with a heavy gun and a plane dropping bombs. The place is destroyed, Wentworth smashes his precious Stradivarius in an act of self-defense, and as mentioned our hero is shot more times than Fifty Cent. (“Why, good God, he was being killed!”) 

Page was too harried to worry over niceties like convenient plotting or coincidences, so an escaping Wentworth just happens to fall into the graces of a kindly old house robber named O’Brien who takes him in and nurses him to health. How you’d nurse a guy who has been machine gunned is beyond me. But months pass and Wentworth discovers he has been exposed as the Spider in the papers; what’s more, his erstwhile companions have been tossed in prison for abetting a criminal and Nita Van Sloan has only escaped jail after a lawsuit for the “crime” of defending herself against a crook. 

Again, folks, the connotations with today are just off the charts. For Page soon reveals that The Mayor Of Hell takes place in a surreal world in which every cop is a criminal and all the sinners are saints. Wentworth learns about this via a newspaper – an outdated paper from a month before, when he was comatose, because now all the papers are run by the bad guys and “the news” is nothing but propaganda for the corrupt ruling party(!!): 

Now friends I am going to try hard to restrain myself and not venture into my world-famous political musings, because I know some of you don’t like it. (“I deride your truth-handling abilities!” – Sideshow Bob) I promised I would stop, and I intend to uphold that promise.  Of course I made the promise like seven years ago, but better late than never.  And hell, I could even be wrong in my sentiments...I mean, those starving people in the crime-ridden dystopia of Solyent Green seemed happy...  But if you will indulge me one (perhaps) final time...just take a look at that excerpt. Change “new United States Senator” to “new President” and “Governor of the State” to “former President” and you basically have the gist of the political spectrum in modern-day America. Hell, Page somehow even manages to use the word “trump!” 

Page develops gripping drama here with Wentworth committing himself to the fight; despite being branded as a criminal by the papers and all his followers thrown in prison by a corrupt government, Wentworth will not relent. (That sound you hear is me clearing my throat in a meaningful fashion.) Apropos of nothing Wentworth dubs himself “Corporal Death” and he unites O’Brien, O’Brien’s pretty young daughter, and the last good cop on the New York force (the fiance of O’Brien’s daughter) as “the Long Knives.” This is a great scene where Wentworth hands over each of the men a long knife and announces, “We must become killers.” Then the girl, Kathleen, demands her own knife, much to the surprise of her dad and fiance – and of course Wentworth has a knife for her, too! Sure, it’s “smaller” than the knives he gave the men, but still – a cool scene of these hounded innocents making the solemn decision to take on an enemy that vastly outnumbers them. One might even venture to say that they are determined to make the city great again. Of course I wouldn’t say that, as I’m trying hard not to offend any sensitive readers out there. 

But the helluva it is, Page does absolutely nothing with “Corporal Death and the Long Knives.” They don’t even share an action scene together, and as ever Page just focuses on his hero throughout. Wentworth, despite having his own team this time, still operates in a solo capacity. I was a let little down by this, as Page does not build on the gripping drama he establishes with the formation of the Long Knives. However that’s not to say that Page doesn’t deliver more emotional content – anyone who reads The Spider knows how we are often told of the love Wentworth and Nita have for one another, how Nita will sacrifice anything for the man she loves and vice versa, but this time Page actually shows it. 

Wentworth, as ever beleaguered and incognito, poses at one point as a street performer, playing a cheap violin. Nita just happens to pass him by in a taxi and rushes out to watch. Though she gives no outward indication – as a former acquaintance of Wentworth she is of course being shadowed by the gestapo that works for the corrupt new government – it is clear she knows this bum is really Wentworth in disguise, if only due to his playing. This is probably the most dramatic scene yet in The Spider. But the only problem is Page again undoes his own effort, with Wentworth and Nita rounded up and taken away, with our hero gaining a brief audience with the Mayor of Hell. After yet another action scene, Nita is again removed from the narrative. 

In fact The Mayor Of Hell becomes increasingly fractured as Page hops from one action setpiece to another. However Page doesn’t waste our time with the usual “secret identity mystery” of the titular villain. From the get-go Wentworth learns that a corrupt politican named Hoey has taken over New York, and he’s clearly “in league” with the Mayor Of Hell. If you work for Hoey, you work for the Mayor, and that includes all the city’s cops, who as mentioned now exist merely to protect the interests of the rulers. This leads to an awesome speech Wentworth gives to some New Yorkers on the street – the words just as relevant in 2022 as in this fictional 1936: 

What concerns me is that Page doesn’t just hit on relevance with our modern day, he also manages to predict where we may be headed. There is a part where Wentworth is walking around Times Square, all this taking place before Christmas day, and he muses to himself: 

Also, note the cross on the guy’s face in the illustration. Whereas the Spider’s schtick was branding an image of his namesake on the forehead of his victims, Corporal Death is a bit more sadistic – he carves a cross on the faces of his enemies. While he never uses the term, Page basically turns our hero into a terrorist in The Mayor Of Hell, or perhaps rabble-rouser would be as good a term. For Wentworth really acts in this capacity, going around the city and stirring up the masses against Hoey and his corrupt ruling party. Wentworth knows that elections cannot save them: “They would never succeed against [Hoey] in the crooked ballotings.” In a novel filled with relevance, this sole comment has the greatest relevance of all. 

But like I keep repeating, Page just squanders all this gravitas with incessant action and plot digressions. He also works in more coincidence; while in yet another disguise, Wentworth just happens to come across none other than Stanley Kirkpatrick, who is about to perpetrate his own terrorist action against Hoey. It’s all very much in the vein of other Spider yarns, with copious action taking precedence over any plotting, but this time it irritated me because the setup was so well done. I mean I really wanted to read about Corporal Death leading his Long Knives in commando assaults on the Mayor’s army. Instead, the Long Knives stay off-page for the duration of the novel, and it’s Wentworth going about in various disguises as he gets in one-off firefights. 

As mentioned, The Mayor Of Hell kicks off a trilogy. While the book climaxes with the expected outing of the main villain’s identity, and security finally being returned to the city (until next time), there’s a cliffhanger that Wentworth is still a wanted man and must continue to hide. Also he has not reunited with his erstwhile companions by novel’s end. Overall though, The Mayor Of Hell, at least for the first half, was one of my favorite volumes yet…who knows how great it could have been if Norvell Page had been able to focus solely on it instead of all the other yarns he had to write that month.

The Spider #27: Emperor Of The Yellow Death

The Spider #27: Emperor Of The Yellow Death, by Grant Stockbridge

December, 1935  Popular Publications

The Spider delves into a “ Yellow Peril” storyline once again, but this one’s not as wild as a previous entry in this subgenre: The Red Death Rain. Otherwise we have the same trimmings: a dastardly plot that sees thousands of New Yorkers die, a nefarious “Oriental” villain whose mental powers seem to dwarf those of our hero, and also most importantly a sexy Oriental henchwoman. But none of these elements are as exploited as they were in The Red Death Rain (which unforgettably climaxed with the sexy henchwoman being raped to death by an orangutan), and also the villain’s kind of lame…I mean his name is “The Turtle.” 

One thing I’ve noticed about these Yellow Peril storylines in The Spider is that no narrative space is wasted on the usual red herring-chasing that you find in the volumes that don’t feature Asian villains. You know what I mean…practically every volume will have a cast of one-off characters and Richard “The Spider” Wentworth will suspect several of them of being that volume’s villain, only for it to turn out to be some random guy, revealed on the very last page, the revelation making no impact on the reader because we have no idea who the hell this guy is. But this doesn’t happen in Emperor Of The Yellow Death, Dragon Lord Of The Underworld, or The Red Death Rain. The villains in these tales are Chinese…and folks, elite rich guy Richard Wentworth doesn’t know any Asians, except for hired staff. I found this an interesting insight into the culture of the ‘30s, where Asians were still seen as remote and mysterious. 

And as to be expected Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page doesn’t write with the cultural sensitivity you’d expect from today’s authors: the Turtle, for example, is introduced as “yellow-skinned Wang-ba.” His name, which we’re informed translates as “Turtle,” is sort of a joke, as he’s given himself a lowly name despite being the usual Spider supervillain…would you believe, the worst threat the Spider has yet faced? Of course we’re told that every single volume, but regardless Wang-ba has an army at his disposal, he can control various animals and reptiles, and he has his own personal submarine which he travels around the New York area in. Also his mental powers are so grand that he even manages to put none other than Wentworth under his control, however to do so he has to cheat a little. 

It’s clear though that Page was recycling ideas at this point to meet his ungodly monthly word count. There’s a long sequence in Emperor Of The Yellow Death where Wentworth is a mind-controlled vassal of Wang-ba’s, plotting to kill his best friend/enemy Stanley Kirkpatrick…who himself was mind-controlled by the villain in Overlord Of The Damned. And Wang-ba’s mastery of animals is a retread of Ssu His Tze’s mastery of vermin in Dragon Lord Of The Underworld. In addition to that we also have the usual events that occur each volume: Wentworth’s own vassals get waylaid early on and removed from the narrative until the end, lovely Nita van Sloan is captured by the villain, and thousands of innocent New Yorkers die in freak attacks. But Emperor Of The Yellow Death is faster-moving than some of the preceding volumes, mostly because as mentioned Page has removed the lame “mystery” angle that has slowed them down. It’s clear from the get-go that Wang-ba is the villain and there’s no fooling around trying to find out his secret identity. 

Another recurring schtick is that the novel opens with Wentworth arlready on the job, as it were. He’s walking along Fifth Avenue at 2:30 in the AM, hoping to lure an attacker – we’re told earlier that evening he prevented a “Chinese houseboy” from poisoning a judge aquaintance of Wentworth’s, and now our hero is sure he’ll be attacked himself for foiling the plot. This happens, but randomly enough it’s courtesy a Bengal tiger. This is our first indication of the control Wang-ba has over the animal kingdom. After stopping the tiger Wentworth returns to his penthouse, where he’s visited by a pretty young Chinese woman; Page twice uses “langurous” to describe her, and we’re told she has a “cruel smile.” 

It won’t be until later in the novel that we learn her name is White Flower. She’s not as depraved as the Chinese henchwoman in The Red Death Rain, and Page ultimately develops a subplot in which White Flower is drawn to Wentworth due to his charisma. But at the start the relationship, such as it is, is more centered around White Flower trying to test Wentworth as being worthy to join Wang-ba’s army. Because yet again, the villain knows of course that Richard Wentworth and the Spider are one and the same, and wants to offer him the chance to rule at his side. However he goes about his invitation rather strangely, kidnapping Nita and luring Wentworth to his submerged submarine – even trapping Wentworth inside at one point to see if our hero will kill himself or wait patiently for Wang-ba to visit him. 

Page is very fond of taking his hero through the wringer, and that’s brought to the fore here. Wentworth is trapped in a chamber that’s submerging with water. He’s here to save Nita, but he knows that Wang-ba must also be on the submarine. Here we learn that Wentworth always carries on his person two vials of an experimental liquid explosive which, were the two liquids to be combined, would be able to destroy the entire sub. Wentworth struggles with himself whether he should combine the liquids and destroy the sub, thus stopping Wang-ba’s plot – but also killing himself and Nita in the bargain. Of course our hero cares nothing for the loss of his own life, but it is Nita’s fate he worries about. No surprises then that Wentworth decides it’s more important to stop Wang-ba…and of course the villain finally appears at that moment. This too had been one of Wang-ba’s tests. 

“We are two mighty killers, thou and I,” Wang-ba announces. The Turtle doesn’t have a fancy costume or mask, going around in the expected “Oriental” style robes, but he does have the unusual gimmick of a mysterious green light always shining in his face. His murdering of innocents almost comes off as perfunctory; there’s a hellish part where his minions kill everyone in a tenement building, and later in the novel his attacks become more frequent, culminating in his ultimate plan to ransom New York City for one hundred million dollars. The green light gimmick extends to the “guns of devil flame” he’s armed his soldiers with; they spout green flames. In a curious subplot we learn that Wang-ba’s soldiers, Chinese all, are under his mental sway, and there are parts in the end where Wentworth is trying to save them. 

As mentioned Wang-ba challenges Wentworth to a mental duel; if he wins, Wentworth too will become his vassal. But our hero has more than enough mental power to defeat Wang-ba, so the villain pricks Wentworth with a dart, thus distracting our hero and conquering him in the challenge. The Oriental fiend! Now follows a long stretch where Wentworth becomes the willing proxy of Wang-ba. This sequence climaxes in a cool bit that comes off like a prefigure of the scene in John Milius’s Conan where Conan is brought back to life by his friends. Here Ram Singh and Nita reclaim Wentworth’s soul, Nita the key to the affair as she shares the “same karma” as Wentworth. Cool stuff, and one of the best scenes yet in the series. 

Wentworth only dresses up in his Spider digs once in the book; this is another typical element of Page’s novels. But it’s another sterling sequence where Wentworth, with the hunchback and fangs Spider getup, runs a train filled with food into New York, braving Wang-ba’s soldiers, who throw grenades at the train. This sequence reveals that Wentworth also carries special cigarettes in his case – four “narcoticized” ones. Unfortunately he never lights one of them up; we’re informed they are there solely for emergencies. I was hoping we’d get a coke-fueled Spider moment. We do get the usual Page craziness, though, in particular a bit where Wang-ba, ever the host, shows Wentworth how he punishes soldiers who fail him: Wentworth watches in disgust as the poor men are torn apart by turtles. Of course Wentworth himself will need to get past these same bloodthirsty animals later on. 

Page also does a good job of tying together all the subplots in a typically-harried finale, which sees Wentworth prove to White Flower that her master is a bit of a fake in the mental powers department. As I say, these Yellow Peril storylines really inspired Page to cut back on the fluff. The fate of the various characters is not unexpected, but touching in some ways. With a cooler villain and a more depraved villainness, Emperor Of The Yellow Death could’ve given The Red Death Rain a run for its money, but it comes down as relatively meek in comparison. Still, yet another entertaining Spider yarn, and it’s a testament to Page’s skill that he could turn out memorable tales month after month, in addition to the plethora of stories he was writing for other pulp mags.

The Spider #25: Overlord Of The Damned

The Spider #25: Overlord Of The Damned, by Grant Stockbridge

October, 1935  Popular Publications

I wasn’t expecting much out of this volume of The Spider; all I knew about it was that Richard “The Spider” Wentworth’s best friend/arch enemy Governor Kirkpatrick (formerly the commissioner) might be the latest villain sowing death and destruction across the country. It turned out though that Overlord Of The Damned was one of the more outrageous installments of the series I’ve yet read, with copious amounts of violence and gore. There was also a bit more emotional content to the book in that throughout Wentworth not only questions his own ease with killing, but the fact that this time he might have to kill his best friend. 

The template though is firmly in place; we open on a big action scene, then jump through several more quick ones before the plot takes the expected detour midway through. One change though is that the finale actually follows on from the established plot, instead of coming out of left field like so many past ones have. One thing I’ve noticed though is that while these Spider yarns sound so crazy, with crazily-garbed and monikered villains, in reality we don’t see the main villains very much in the novels themselves; for the most part it’s just Wentworth, often in his hunchbacked Spider garb, blowing away random crooks and thugs. This volume in particular is like that, as Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page seems to have run out of steam so far as the latest colorfully-named villain goes. It’s just “The Boss,” and the few times he appears he wears nothing more than a black mask over his face. The greater concern is whether it’s really Kirkpatrick in disguise. 

As mentioned this one opens on the usual action scene, but this time there’s a nightmarish extra layer – courtesy some “acid bullets” the bad guys start shooting when they hit a bank, resulting in some of the most OTT gore yet in this series. As ever New York has been under another round of attacks, masterminded by some mysterious supervillain, and Wentworth has gotten the scoop on where the next hit will be. He watches as the raid on the bank goes down, shocked by the brutality of the crooks; men and women are both hit by acid, with Page not shirking on the messy details – faces melting off, even risque-for-1935 mentions of the “breasts” of women being eaten away by the acid bullets. Wentworth mows down a bunch of crooks with his ever-present .45s, and humorously enough is unable to keep any of them alive for later questioning; he’s so good a shot he kills them with a single hit. 

But the acid alone isn’t nightmarish enough; once the cops arrive, under the supervision of new commissioner Flynn, a few of them go nuts and start attacking innocent passersby. Wentworth immediately deduces that they’ve been driven nuts by “narcotics” in their cigars; yet another chilling plot of the mysterious “Boss” who is apparently behind this latest siege on New York. This will be the dual threat the Boss wields throughout: acid bullets for attacks, and insanity-causing drugs to create cannon fodder of maniacal rapists. Speaking of risque for 1935, we’re informed in no uncertain terms that women are “maltreated” by these psychotics; later in the book Wentworth catches one of them about to rape a woman – right after he slams her six year old son’s head into a brick wall, that is. Luckily Wentworth is able to stop the madman before he carries out either act, but afterward Wentworth bitterly reflects that the ”madman” was just as innocent as his would-be victims. 

As if all that weren’t enough, trouble is close to home for Wentworth: Jackson is nuts within the first few pages, one of the earliest victims of the Boss’s insanity-causing drugs. Later on Wentworth’s penthouse will also be trashed by the Boss’s minions, the “Negro” at the door killed (poor guy isn’t even given a name) and old Jenkyns hurt badly. Even ever-stalwart Ram Singh nearly succumbs to the madness, dosed in one memorable sequence which sees him struggling to retain his sanity as Wentworth urges him on, commanding him to remember who he is. But it’s Wentworth’s ever-suffering fiance, Nita, who saves Ram Singh in a sequence that’s borderline magical realism; the glowing force of her love is enough to help Ram Singh completely fight off the madness which threatens to overtake his mind. As for Nita herself, she’s abducted as usual – not just once, but a couple times throughout the narrative. I’m missing an earlier volume where Nita supposedly became the Spider herself, but so far as these early volumes go she’s very much a damsel in distress, and not nearly the female badass she’d become in later installments. 

Something I love about these Spider yarns is that, even if thousands are being massacred across the country, people still go about their daily business; innocents might be getting their faces melted off by acid bullets in random bank robberies, but by god we’re going to that gala event tonight in Times Square. Surely this is in-jokery on Page’s part, yet at the same time it’s an indication that people were just made of sterner stuff in earlier days; the people of the ‘30s sure as hell wouldn’t have shut down their entire society for a virus that’s about as deadly as the seasonal flu. But then again, individual liberty was still a thing back then. Anyway I bring this up because as ever there are massacres throughout the book, as the Boss’s endless supply of crooks ambush various affairs and melt innocent people into puddles of gore. Early on Wentworth remembers that rubber is impervious to acid, and soon enough comes up with some rubber augmentations for his Spider costume – which is again the ensemble formerly known as “Tito Caliepi,” with the cape, the hunchback, and the fangs. 

Actually Wentworth spends a lot of the novel in Spider costume, more so than many of the previous volumes. He also only goes around in disguise once: as a thug named Tony Marino, hoping to get offered a job in the Boss’s legion. Here’s where Wentworth first suspects Kirkpatrick might be part of the plot; at a party of “the great who might wish to be criminal,” Wentworth as Marino catches glimpse of Kirkpatrick, visiting some of the people Wentworth suspects might be involved with the Boss. Even worse, Ram Singh, who has been monitoring the party outside, relays that he saw Kirkpatrick talking to some of the thugs there, even ordering the death of the Spider. And it’s made clear this time that Kirkpatrick does indeed know Wentworth is the Spider; actually I think this has been implied from the first Page installment, but I was just too dense at the time to get it. 

There’s nothing subtle about it here, as a major plot point of Overlord Of The Damned is Wentworth’s growing certainty that he’ll have to kill his best friend, Stanley Kirkpatrick, who clearly knows that “Dick” is the Spider. This plays out in one of the stronger moments in the novel, when Wentworth – again in Spider costume – sneaks into Kirkpatrick’s country estate and waits for him in his darkened study. But Wentworth doesn’t seem to be very sharp this time around; every time he confronts Kirkpatrick, the man complains that he’s “tired,” or he’s just woken up, and Wentworth can’t get over how worn-out his old buddy looks. Of course, by novel’s end Page will pull out a convenient excuse for Kirkpatrick’s involvement in the massacres of the Boss, but still throughout most of the book Wentworth struggles with whether he’ll be able to waste him. A later sequence even has Kirkpatrick begging Wentworth to kill him, but Wentworth is still unable to pull the trigger. There’s also a memorable bit – only a few paragraphs in the endless barrage of action-focused narrative – where Wentworth ponders over how many he’s killed in his career as the Spider, realizing he no longer knows the answer. 

Action is as ever constant, and gets to be a little fatiguing. Even the part where Wentworth initially confronts Kirkpatrick turns into an endless action scene, as some dudes in a beer truck show up with a shipment for Kirkpatrick (!?), and Wentworth realizes this is how the acid is being transported around the city (!?), and he gets in a chase with them to a brewery, where a fullscale gun battle ensues. For the most part Wentworth as ever dispenses bloody justice with his .45s; there’s even a neat trick he pulls when he shoots a gun out of Kirkpatrick’s hand, to keep his friend from blowing his own head off. We also get a little proto-zombie massacre action when Wentworth realizes that the only way to stop the drug-crazed maniacs is to shoot them in the head, thus ensuring a kill. Ram Singh gets in on the gory action as well; one part later in the book has him getting in an (off-page) knife battle with some massive brute, Ram Singh ultimately cutting off the guy’s head. 

As for the Boss, he isn’t as memorable in the costume or name department, but he’s possibly more sadistic than many of the previous villains. A darkly humorous bit has him punishing flunkies who failed to kill the Spider; he has them walk across a plank in his domain, and with a push of a button the Boss sends them falling to an acid tank below. Nita witnesses all this, the Boss relishing her (mostly reserved) terror; we get more skirting of those 1935 boundaries when the Boss subtly threatens Nita with rape, vowing to give her to one of his “amiable madmen.” He’ll get more sadistic with her later, when he prepares to inject a syringe of madness drug directly into her eyeball. She’s only saved by the heroic appearance of Wentworth – though humorously this overlong action sequence ends with both Nita and Wentworth captured yet again! 

The Boss’s big final plan is kind of goofy; he’s got catapaults set up to launch acid into the capitol building. Here in the last pages per the template we get last-second reveals of who the Boss really is, but for once it isn’t a total copout on Page’s part, as this character was actually introduced early in the book. It of course isn’t Kirkpatrick, not to spoil the surprise or anything…but “c’mon, man!”, probably everyone except Wentworth already knew that already. The finale is a little too pat, a suddenly vindicated Kirkpatrick now fighting by Wentworth’s side. But this too is typical of the formula, and you can’t blame these people for being happy at the end of each volume – they need all the respite they can get, given that next volume thousands more will be massacred in the latest supervillain plot.

The Spider #22: Dragon Lord Of The Underworld

The Spider #22: Dragon Lord Of The Underworld, by Grant Stockbridge
July, 1935  Popular Publications

This volume of The Spider repeats the Yellow Peril vibe of the earlier (and superior) #15: The Red Death Rain; as expected, Richard “The Spider” Wentworth never once reflects on that previous caper, but then the entire series operates on a sort of reset mentality. I mean at one point Wentworth worries over the “teeming millions” who live in New York, but you’d figure after the previous twenty-one volumes of slaughter, massacre, and devastation the population would be down to just a few thousand survivors.

I enjoy the Yellow Peril storylines of vintage pulp, but this one’s a bit unspectacular, at least when compared to The Red Death Rain. Our villain is Ssu His Tze, the self-proclaimed Emperor of Vermin; he resides on a throne and wears a yellow robe and other traditional Chinese garb, lacking the more outrageous refinements of the average Spider foe. His gimmick is he controls the “vermin” of the world – snakes and spiders and such – and he’s come here to put together the underworld of America so that he can control it and use the goons to get the invading Japanese out of China. The novel opens with his plot already in motion; Wentworth, in Spider garb, interrogates a crook and his goons just as they return from a meeting with Tze. The crook is one of the few who turned Tze down, and sure enough a few Chinese hatchetmen show up to take him and his thugs out.

There’s a fair bit of “yellow” being used as an adjective for various Chinese thugs in this one, as well as the old standby “chink,” but I imagine anyone reading a 1935 pulp will be prepared for this and not too much put off by it. And hell for that matter, it’s still not as over the top as the average installment of Mace. Wentworth takes out the hatchetmen, who meanwhile kill off the American thugs they’ve come here for—this part features the memorable moment of a woman’s unconscious form being used as a decoy. Later (once she wakes up, that is) she’ll return to muddle up the plot and constantly try to kill the Spider: her name is Flo Delight, apparently a nightclub singer or somesuch, and she happens to be the woman of the crime boss the hatchetmen just killed, though she mistakenly believes the Spider killed him.

Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page keps the narrative ball rolling in what turns out to be an extended action scene; Wentworth and Ram Singh get in a car chase with an escaping hatcetman, and when Wentworth, now in normal clothing, goes immediately thereafter to Nita van Sloan’s fashionable apartment he finds that he’s been followed. In the ensuing melee Nita’s captured and taken off by car, and as Wentworth fires at her kidnappers Nita’s Great Dane Apollo jumps in the way, gets shot by Wentworth, and falls in the car with Nita! No worries, though; Nita’s later freed – Tze actually pissed off that his subordinates would even abduct her – and as for Apollo, we’re eventually informed Wentworth just hit the dog’s shoulder and he’s doing fine now!

As mentioned Tze regrets Nita’s abduction; this is relayed by the man himself in a nicely-rendered sequence in which Wentworth visits Tze’s underground domain, deep under Chinatown. It’s a veritable dungeon of traps, as Wentworth will discover later in the book, and a blindfolded Wentworth is led through the labyrinth by a woman. Page again skirts the limits of ‘30s pulp by ensuring that we readers know this woman is hot and built without outright saying so, employing phrases like “high breasts” and all that good stuff; we’ll learn her name is San-guh Lian-guh, and she offers herself to Wentworth in another effectively-rendered sequence. Of course, he turns her down due to his steadfast uprightness (one of the many reasons I never would’ve made it as a pulp hero). After this she sort of disappears from the narrative, showing up once or twice to vow that the Spider will die – and of course true to the pulp template her fate is not delivered by Wentworth.

As for our main villain, Wentworth is escorted into his inner sanctum, where Tze sits on a throne, resplendent in his gold robe. Honestly I thought he was a boring Spider villain. He considers himself an emperor and claims to only be here long enough to assemble the underworld to defeat Japan, after which he’ll return to China; he asks Wentworth to help him. And yes, of course Tze knows that Richard Wentworth is the Spider; practically everyone knows this except for the authorities. I mean this dude who just entered the country even knows it. Anyway, Wentworth of course knows Tze is lying and immediately refuses to help him, swearing to take him down. Page nicely plays up the “Oriental respect” motif with Wentworth confident he’ll be able to leave his mortal enemy’s domain without any fear of a threat on his life, and could return here at any time to talk to the man in peace. 

Tze’s attacks follow the outline of previous installments – he hits banks and other business establishments, employing his endless army of hatchetmen, with the novel addition of poisonous spiders and snakes. Given the “vermin” tag I was expecting something more along the lines of rats and stuff, but Page does a fine job capturing a creepy crawly vibe. Sometimes though it’s a bit humorous, like when one of those hatchetmen lets loose some poisonous black widow spiders in Nita’s apartment, and Wentworth jumps up on a chair and starts shooting them one by one with his .45.

Page also gets pretty ghoulish later on, approaching almost a body horror vibe – in the most memorable sequence in the novel, Wentworth tries to escape Tze’s underworld of traps while the cops, oblivious as ever, chase after him. The poor police set off a variety of traps, including these gross-out “acid flakes” which turn out to be weaponized fungus. In an unsettling bit Wentworth watches as one cop suffers from the fungus, bulges eruping all over his body – and with his usual encyclopedic knowledge Wentworth instantly knows what has assailed the cop, and that innumerble “winged fungi” are now harvesting in the man’s body, soon to erupt from it. Pardon me while I barf!

The other Spider novels I’ve read usually feature a late plot detour, in which the action abruptly moves to some other locale or Wentworth is chasing after some other red herring. Early in the novel Page seems to be going in this direction – we learn that Tze caused some havoc in Florida a few weeks back – but suprisingly Wentworth never follows up on this. Instead the big third act moment is one of Wentworth’s inner circle paying the ultimate price for helping the Spider. SPOILER ALERT: It turns out to be kindly old Professor Brownlee, who we’re informed has been in Wentworth’s debt for the past fifteen years, given that Wentworth, in college at the time, helped Brownlee out of a bad situation. Sadly though, Brownlee is gunned down by Tze’s men as he’s talking to Wentworth on the phone. When Wentworth gets to Brownlee’s upstate home, he finds that his old friend has been shot in the back and in the back of the head. In a previous volume Wentworth’s chaffeur Jackson was killed…then miraculously returned to life a few volumes later…but I don’t think Brownlee is accorded the same miracle. I think this was it for him.

A Spider mainstay who doesn’t show up till near the end is Commissioner Kirkpatrick, who in fact is now Governor Kirkpatrick, with some new guy named Patrick Flynn serving as the commissioner. Kirkpatrick’s appearance is memorable: Tze has captured him and hooked him up to an EKG machine; this is interesting for armchair historians as Wentworth knows this is a “cardiograph machine” which has recently been invented by “heart specialists.” But in a sort of prefigure of Speed (only not as annoyingly dumb), the rate of Kirkpatrick’s heartbeat determines whether New Yorkers die or not. Thus he is almost in a zombie state, having had to control his emotions and his heartbeat for a day or so.

The finale plays out on this theme, with Wentworth marshalling his will against the assembled yellow perils of Tze, San-guh, and the other hatchetmen, with Flo Delight among them (she keeps showing up to annoy Wentworth and the reader, stubbornly determined to get revenge on the Spider for something he didn’t even do). Like a ‘30s Jedi Wentworth uses the force of his will to guide Kirkpatrick. But this is another Spider yarn where someone else does Wentworth the favor of killing off all the villains, which kind of annoyed me. But then overall Dragon Lord Of The Underworld was only passable so far as The Spider goes, not rising to the level of previous volumes, and while it wasn’t bad by any means I didn’t enjoy it as much as some others.

The Spider #20: Reign Of The Death Fiddler

The Spider #20: Reign Of The Death Fiddler, by Grant Stockbridge
May, 1935  Popular Publications

I had low expectations for this volume of The Spider – I mean it’s got “Death Fiddler” in the title – but it turned out to be one of my favorites yet. Despite the goofy premise, Reign Of The Death Fiddler is actually one of the more ghoulish titles in the series, complete with a titular villain who likes to dress up as his intended victims (complete with bullet holes in his head and body) and decorates his lair with corpses. 

One thing to note is that this time Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page takes a little time to focus on continuity, mentioning previous adventures and also confirming that the Spider’s “look,” ie the hunchback, fangs, and scraggly hair, is now no longer known as the old “Tito Caliepi” disguise (which Page mentions everyone has forgotten), but has become the standard Spider ensemble. We also get lots of reminders how Richard Wentworth’s loyal pal Jackson was killed in a previous volume (one I haven’t read). Also, this volume dispenses with the “story takes place in the same month as publication” setup the others have followed; the events occur over several weeks.

This one opens three months after the previous volume, and as usual things have already gone to hell. Wentworth has spent all these months trying in vain to figure out who the new crime boss is in New York; whoever it is has organized the crooks into such a lightning force that the cops are, as ever, incapable of stopping them, with blatant acts of violent crime staged on city streets in open daylight. Plus there seems to be some corruption in the city’s political realm which is enabling the criminals. As for Wentworth, he’s stymied because, due to this same corruption, he’s lost the license to carry his pistols. So he has resorted to his other mainstay: disguise. For the past several weeks he’s lived in the Bowery, posing as “Limpy Magee,” which by novel’s end will be known to the public as one of the Spider’s many alternate names.

The book opens already displaying the brutal tone which will recur throughout; Wentworth, in the Bowery, spots a carjacking in progress, and takes out the hoodlums in vicious manner, using their own guns against them. Things get even more ghoulish when the infamous Fiddler finally appears at a grungy underworld bar Wentworth, still as Limpy, has won access to, given his assistance to a low-level criminal. The Fiddler looks like a corpse, with a gash in his head and bloody clothes. He’s dressed as his next victim, Wentworth realizes.

Page has this annoying bit early on where Wentworth has the chance to kill the Fiddler a few times, but always decides not to, so as to gauge how big the criminal’s empire really is – yet there are also recurring scenes where Wentworth will wish in frustration that he could kill the Fiddler and be done with it. Meanwhile our hero further ingratiates himself into the underworld by staging the murder of a cop who wanders into the bar; defying all laws of reality, Wentworth shoots the poor guy right in the face, yet angles the shot so it just knocks him out(!), then squirrels away the “body.” The cop will gradually figure out that Limpy and the Spider are one and the same, and will become an ally/opponent of our hero as the narrative ensues.

Meanwhile Wentworth is also busy fending off the advances of a “trollop of the underworld:” Snakey Annie, a hotstuff gun moll (curiously always described as “dark”) who hangs out in the bar, has murdered a few people herself, and who is all hot and bothered over how Limpy is such a rising star in the criminal sphere. Brace yourself for this one, folks – I do believe Richard Wentworth gets laid. Seriously! Late in the narrative, even though he “shudders” inwardly at the thought of even touching Annie, Wentworth actually goes off with her, taking her back to his place in the Bowery…and Page ends the scene there. I mean to say, no part where we find out that he knocked her out when he got her there, or pulled some other Spider-madatory duplicity to get out of something the plot is leading toward. Indeed he sees it all as part of his “duty,” even though he detests her. But after this she disappears from the narrative. Hmmm…

As for Wentworth’s actual girlfriend, Nita van Sloan as ever is given short shrift in these early volumes; she has a memorable entrance, proving her own gift for disguise. Going about as Limpy, Wentworth runs into an old woman, who turns out to be none other than Nita. She’s come here, expressly against Wentworth’s orders, to see how her fiance is faring in the Bowery. Later she plays a part in the climactic event, which concerns a Fiddler hit on Macy’s. As for other recurring characters, Commissioner Kirkpatrick is basically bullied into quitting his post, and also advised to run for Senator, but then he’s shot in the gut and spends the rest of the novel in ICU, at death’s door. No doubt none of this will be mentioned in the next book.

But for such a basic setup, Reign Of The Death Fiddler has a lot of entertaining scenes, like when Wentworth, who as Limpy is being groomed as a new flunky, visits one of the Fiddler’s headquarters and finds gruesome effigies of past victims all over the place There is also the usual supernatural vibe to the tale, like when Wentworth discovers that bullets can’t kill the Fiddler – who by the way is “the most cunning and evil foe” the Spider has ever gone up against. That’s a line used in practically every volume, but the Fiddler is pretty cunning, apparently keeping the entire city government in tow, but this plot will be squandered by volume’s end.

The last quarter features several lightning raids the Fiddler’s men make on various places, from the Metropolitan to Penn Station to Macy’s. Early on Wentworth realizes he’s being tested by the Fiddler, being given info on that night’s hit, the villian clearly seeing if “Limpy” will blab the info. So there is added tension where Wentworth must decide if he will indeed spread the word, and if so how he could do so without giving himself away. In the end though he can’t take it anymore and outs himself in typical fashion for the series – he takes a knife right to the Fiddler’s head, only to discover it’s just a wax dummy.

Throughout these raids Wentworth keeps seeing a figure in the melee that looks sort of like Jackson, his dead best bud. Then in the climactic fight at Macy’s, guess what – it is Jackson, who is tearfully reunited with Wentworth and crew. Apparently he faked his death for some convoluted reason, having to do with protecting Wentworth’s name or something, and Ram Singh was aware of the ruse all along. This though isn’t as memorable as what comes before, when the Spider catches the Fiddler in a noose, uses him as bait to keep his men at bay, and then breaks the bastard’s neck – but, as again is typical for the series, it’s not the Fiddler after all, but another stand-in.

In fact the finale is pretty underwhelming, featuring the usual red herring “surprise reveal” of who the Fiddler really is. And Wentworth doesn’t even deliver justice; that honor goes to one of this volume’s supporting characters. But overall this one’s pretty fun, with action that doesn’t get as repetitive as such scenes normally do in the series. There is also a ghoulish tone throughout which adds an extra spark. Too bad though that Snakey Annie isn’t better featured in the narrative (she basically disappears), but there’s always the chance she could appear again in a future volume, if Wentworth continues his “Limpy Magee” double life.