The Spider
Encyclopedia
The Spider was one of the major pulp magazine
heroes of the 1930s and 1940s.
at Popular Publications
in 1933 as competition to Street and Smith Publications' vigilante hero, The Shadow
. Similar to the character of The Shadow, The Spider was in actuality millionaire playboy Richard Wentworth living in New York and unaffected by the Great Depression. Wentworth fought crime by donning a black cape, slouch hat, and vampiric makeup job or face mask to terrorize the criminal underworld with extreme prejudice and his own brand of vigilante justice.
The stories often involved a bizarre menace and a criminal conspiracy and were often extremely violent, with the villains engaging in wanton slaughter of literally thousands as part of their crimes. The first story was written by R. T. M. Scott, but later stories were published under a house name, Grant Stockbridge. Most of the Spider novels were written by Norvell Page
. Other authors of the Spider novels included Emile C. Tepperman, Wayne Rogers, Prentice Winchell, and Donald C. Cormack. The
cover artists for the Spider magazine were Walter M. Baumhofer
for the debut issue, followed by
John Newton Howitt and Raphael De Soto. The Spider was published monthly and ran for 118 issues from 1933 to 1943. A 119th Spider novel manuscript had been completed but was not published until decades later, then as a rewritten mass-market paperback (see paperback novels section, below).
Ram Singh was Wentworth's manservent. A Sikh
(originally Hindu
), Ram Singh was a deadly knife thrower and usually carried several knives with him, including the deadly Kukri
. He never saw his position as servant as demeaning or having a negative impact on his self respect, feeling that he served a man totally above other men. Ronald Jackson was Wentworth's chauffeur. Jackson had served under Wentworth in World War I and often referred to him as "the Major". Harold Jenkyns was Wentworth's butler, a man who had been in the Wentworth family's service for a long time. Wentworth's main ally/antagonist was the Police Commissioner
Stanley Kirkpatrick or simply "Kirk", who suspected Wentworth was The Spider but could never prove it. An old war colleague and inventor named Professor Ezra Brownlee featured heavily in the early stories before being killed off ("Dragon Lord of the Underworld", July 1935). Brownlee's son made some appearances afterwards.
's long-running 1936 sydicated comic strip hero, The Phantom
, left a distinct skull mark in the faces of those enemies he fought, made by the ring he wore. The Spider's seal, however, was concealed in the base of his cigarette lighter and was invented by Professor Brownlee.
Brownlee also invented the lethal and almost silent air pistol the Spider used for 'quiet' kills. He acted as a sort of on-call technical wizard for Wentworth, who he looked upon as being close to a son.
In Timothy Truman's 1990s comic-book version, Brownlee also created the "Web-Lee," a non-lethal 'stun' pistol that fired projectiles that erupted into a spiderweb-like mass, inundated with microscopic barbs of frozen curare.
Like The Shadow, The Spider's usual weapons of choice were a pair of Browning .45 automatic pistols.
produced, the first being 1938's The Spider’s Web; Spider pulp magazine
novelist Norvell Page worked on that first serial's screenplay. The second serial was 1941's The Spider Returns
; it was written by adventure and science fiction
pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard
. Both were 15-chapter cliffhangers produced by Columbia Pictures
, starring Warren Hull
as Richard Wentworth. Both serials featured a dramatic wardrobe enhancement to the Spider's magazine appearance: his simple black cloak and head mask were now over-printed with a white spider's web pattern and then matched to his usual plain black fedora. This striking addition gave the silver screen
Spider an appearance more like that of a traditional superhero
, like other comics heroes being adapted for the era's movie serials; it also made the serial Spider look less like the very popular Street and Smith pulp hero The Shadow
, which also had been produced by Columbia and starred Victor Jory
.
Berkley Books
(then Berkley/Medallion) first reprinted the Spider in 1969 and 1970, intending to reprint all 118 novels in order, hoping to tap into the reprint phenomenon of the Doc Savage
novels being published by Bantam Books
. But these first paperback reissues met with poor sales after only four volumes, and the planned series was canceled.
In the mid-seventies, Pocket Books
reprinted four Spider novels, this time featuring "modern" pulp artwork on their covers: Each featured a non-costumed, heavily armed Spider depicted as a muscular blonde hero holding a gorgeous woman. These mass-market paperbacks also failed to find an audience and the series was canceled. It seems likely that these four books were edited and modernized reprints, one of several reasons why they may have never caught on with their intended audience. In one, Death and the Spider, with an original publishing date of 1940, Nita Van Sloan is shown driving an Jaguar E-type
X-KE, a sportscar not created and on the streets until 1961, some nineteen years later.
At roughly the same time in England, Mews Books/New American Library
reprinted four Spider novels sporting new cover artwork, each being different in style and execution from those used by Pocket Books. This Spider mass-market series also ended after only four titles had been published.
Then, three years later, in 1979, an unusual Spider publishing event happened out of the "blue." Python Publishing put into print the never-before-published last original Spider novel, Slaughter, Inc., originally to have been published as Spider pulp magazine #119. Python finally published it as a one-shot, mass-market paperback. For copyright reasons, all characater names were changed and the novel was retitled Blue Steel ("The Ultimate Answer To Evil"). In it, the Spider was recast as Blue Steel. Just like the previous Pocket Book editions, it also sported a "modern" pulp cover featuring a very similar, non-costumed, but heavily armed blonde hero.
A year later, in 1980, Dimedia, Inc. reprinted three Spider pulp novels in the larger trade paperback format. Then beginning four years later, they continued with three mass-market Spider novel reprints, one in 1984 and two in 1985. These last three sported new cover paintings of the original costumed Spider by fantasy artist Ken Kelly.
In the early 1990s, Carroll & Graf Publishers
began issuing a series of eight mass-market Spider paperbacks, each one in a double-novel format. All used original Spider pulp magazine artwork for their covers. These 16 novels became the longest running Spider reprint series done for the mass-market trade.
After Carol and Graf, several specialized small press pulp reprint houses tried a complete reprinting of the Spider series before finally stopping. Bold Publications started this multiple small press revival during the mid-1990s with a series of affordable Spider trade paperback reprints. Others soon joined in with Spider reprintings. In later years, the prolific Wildside Press
started offering Spider reprints. But Girasol Collectibles has been the most dogged of them all. It has reissued the novels as both a series of single pulp novel facsimile editions, as well as retypeset stories in 'pulp double' trade paperbacks. Both series use Spider pulp magazine artwork for their covers. More than five dozen Spider novels have been put back into print as part of Girasol's ambitious program, which still continues.
New York science fiction publisher Baen Books
published in 2007 a single trade paperback featuring three Spider novel reprints. Then in 2008 they released a second companion trade paperback of Spider reprints. Baen then issued both volumes as mass-market paperbacks. One of the three novels in that second omnibus stars another Street and Smith pulp character, the Octopus. The Baen editions sported new Spider cover paintings by noted graphic designer and comics artist Jim Steranko
. Steranko had illustrated all 28 covers for the 1970s mass-market reprint volumes of rival pulp hero The Shadow
, published by Pyramid Books
and HBJ/Jove Books.
In late 2009, Doubleday's Science Fiction Book Club reprinted in hardcover Baen's second Spider three-in-one volume from the previous year. This became the first Spider hardcover edition ever published.
In August 2009, Age of Aces reprinted the Spider's "Black Police" novel trilogy in a single volume. Moonstone Books
also published an original anthology
of brand new Spider short stories entitled The Spider Chronicles the same year.
The Vintage Library has thirty-four licensed Spider novel reprints available in the PDF format. For a small fee, each one can be downloaded from their website.
for Eclipse Comics
. As noted in Comics Scene #19, Truman decided to set his version of the Spider in the "1990s as seen by the 1930s". In other words, he tried to anticipate how a writer from the 1930s would anticipate sociological and technological developments of the 1990s, with obviously some elements not matching the actual 1990s. Elements of this version of the Spider's milieu included airships as common transportation, the survival of the League of Nations into the near past (Wentworth meets Ram Singh during an intervention into India/Pakistan), and World War II, if it ever happened, taking place differently. This series featured an African-American Commissioner Kirkpatrick.
Moonstone Books
has started a new Spider graphic novel series, which are structured more like illustrated prose stories than traditional panel-by-panel comics. In March 2011, the same publisher offered the first issue of a more traditional Spider comic book, with art by veteran creator Pablo Marcos
.
), Origins of Marvel Comics
, Stan Lee
states that, in the creation of the Spider-Man
character, he adapted the name of The Spider for Marvel's character. "It was the name that grabbed me."
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
heroes of the 1930s and 1940s.
Background
The Spider was created by Harry SteegerHarry Steeger
Henry "Harry" Steeger co-founded Popular Publications in 1930, one of the major publishers of pulp magazines, with Harold S. Goldsmith. Steeger handled editorial matters while Goldsmith took care of the business side. Both were veterans of the pulp magazine business. Steeger had edited war pulps at...
at Popular Publications
Popular Publications
Popular Publications was one of the largest publishers of pulp magazines during its existence, at one point publishing 42 different titles per month. Company titles included detective, adventure, romance, and Western fiction. They were also known for the several 'weird menace' titles...
in 1933 as competition to Street and Smith Publications' vigilante hero, The Shadow
The Shadow
The Shadow is a collection of serialized dramas, originally in pulp magazines, then on 1930s radio and then in a wide variety of media, that follow the exploits of the title character, a crime-fighting vigilante in the pulps, which carried over to the airwaves as a "wealthy, young man about town"...
. Similar to the character of The Shadow, The Spider was in actuality millionaire playboy Richard Wentworth living in New York and unaffected by the Great Depression. Wentworth fought crime by donning a black cape, slouch hat, and vampiric makeup job or face mask to terrorize the criminal underworld with extreme prejudice and his own brand of vigilante justice.
The stories often involved a bizarre menace and a criminal conspiracy and were often extremely violent, with the villains engaging in wanton slaughter of literally thousands as part of their crimes. The first story was written by R. T. M. Scott, but later stories were published under a house name, Grant Stockbridge. Most of the Spider novels were written by Norvell Page
Norvell W. Page
Norvell Wordsworth Page was an American pulp fiction writer, journalist and editor who later became a government intelligence worker. He is best known as the author of the majority of the adventures of the ruthless vigilante hero The Spider, which he and a handful of other writers wrote under the...
. Other authors of the Spider novels included Emile C. Tepperman, Wayne Rogers, Prentice Winchell, and Donald C. Cormack. The
cover artists for the Spider magazine were Walter M. Baumhofer
Walter M. Baumhofer
Walter Martin Baumhofer was an American illustrator notable for his cover paintings seen on the pulp magazines of Street & Smith and other publishers....
for the debut issue, followed by
John Newton Howitt and Raphael De Soto. The Spider was published monthly and ran for 118 issues from 1933 to 1943. A 119th Spider novel manuscript had been completed but was not published until decades later, then as a rewritten mass-market paperback (see paperback novels section, below).
Supporting characters
Richard Wentworth was aided by his fiancé, Nita Van Sloan. Though they were as close as man and wife, they knew that they could not marry, as Wentworth believed that he would eventually be unmasked or killed as The Spider and his wife would suffer for it.Ram Singh was Wentworth's manservent. A Sikh
Sikh
A Sikh is a follower of Sikhism. It primarily originated in the 15th century in the Punjab region of South Asia. The term "Sikh" has its origin in Sanskrit term शिष्य , meaning "disciple, student" or शिक्ष , meaning "instruction"...
(originally Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
), Ram Singh was a deadly knife thrower and usually carried several knives with him, including the deadly Kukri
Kukri
The kukri is a curved Nepalese Knife, similar to the machete, used as both a tool and as a weapon...
. He never saw his position as servant as demeaning or having a negative impact on his self respect, feeling that he served a man totally above other men. Ronald Jackson was Wentworth's chauffeur. Jackson had served under Wentworth in World War I and often referred to him as "the Major". Harold Jenkyns was Wentworth's butler, a man who had been in the Wentworth family's service for a long time. Wentworth's main ally/antagonist was the Police Commissioner
Police commissioner
Commissioner is a senior rank used in many police forces and may be rendered Police Commissioner or Commissioner of Police. In some organizations, the commissioner is a political appointee, and may or may not actually be a professional police officer. In these circumstances, there is often a...
Stanley Kirkpatrick or simply "Kirk", who suspected Wentworth was The Spider but could never prove it. An old war colleague and inventor named Professor Ezra Brownlee featured heavily in the early stories before being killed off ("Dragon Lord of the Underworld", July 1935). Brownlee's son made some appearances afterwards.
Enemies
Despite The Spider's tendency to kill his enemies, he encountered several foes more than once, such as The Fly and MUNRO, a master of disguise. Some storylines featuring a struggle against a single villain lasted for several consecutive issues, such as The Spider's four-part battle against The Living Pharaoh. Among the enemies he encountered once were predecessors of the costumed supervillains of comic books, such as The Red Mandarin, The Brain, The Bloody Serpent, The Wreck, Red Feather, The Silencer, Judge Torture, and The Emperor of Vermin. The names of two Spider villains, The Bat Man and The Iron Man, would be used for comic book superheroes years later.The Spider's seal and weapons
One distinguishing feature of The Spider was his "calling card." Wentworth often left a red-ink "spider" image on the foreheads of the criminals that he slew. During the same time period, in a much more benign fashion and perhaps inspired by the Spider's calling card, Lee FalkLee Falk
Lee Falk, born Leon Harrison Gross , was an American writer, theater director, and producer, best known as the creator of the popular comic strip superheroes The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician, who at the height of their popularity attracted over a hundred million readers every day...
's long-running 1936 sydicated comic strip hero, The Phantom
The Phantom
The Phantom is an American adventure comic strip created by Lee Falk, also creator of Mandrake the Magician. A popular feature adapted into many media, including television, film and video games, it stars a costumed crimefighter operating from the fictional African country Bengalla.The Phantom is...
, left a distinct skull mark in the faces of those enemies he fought, made by the ring he wore. The Spider's seal, however, was concealed in the base of his cigarette lighter and was invented by Professor Brownlee.
Brownlee also invented the lethal and almost silent air pistol the Spider used for 'quiet' kills. He acted as a sort of on-call technical wizard for Wentworth, who he looked upon as being close to a son.
In Timothy Truman's 1990s comic-book version, Brownlee also created the "Web-Lee," a non-lethal 'stun' pistol that fired projectiles that erupted into a spiderweb-like mass, inundated with microscopic barbs of frozen curare.
Like The Shadow, The Spider's usual weapons of choice were a pair of Browning .45 automatic pistols.
Master of Men
The Spider's by-name was "Master of Men", indicating that he had a voice commanding enough to get many people to do his bidding. Wentworth could also imitate other people's voices. When he imitated Kirkpatrick's voice, he could give orders to lesser policemen during a stake-out, even during one intended to capture the Spider, so he could himself escape.Movie serials
There were two Spider movie serialsSerial (film)
Serials, more specifically known as Movie serials, Film serials or Chapter plays, were short subjects originally shown in theaters in conjunction with a feature film. They were related to pulp magazine serialized fiction...
produced, the first being 1938's The Spider’s Web; Spider pulp magazine
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
novelist Norvell Page worked on that first serial's screenplay. The second serial was 1941's The Spider Returns
The Spider Returns
The Spider Returns is a Columbia movie serial based on the pulp magazine character The Spider. It was the fourteenth of the 57 serials released by Columbia and a sequel to its 1938 serial The Spider's Web. The first episode runs 32 minutes; the rest are about 17 minutes each.-Plot:Amateur...
; it was written by adventure and science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard
L. Ron Hubbard
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard , better known as L. Ron Hubbard , was an American pulp fiction author and religious leader who founded the Church of Scientology...
. Both were 15-chapter cliffhangers produced by Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
, starring Warren Hull
Warren Hull
John Warren Hull was an actor and TV personality, active from the 1930s through the 1960s. He was one of the most popular serial actors in the action-adventure field....
as Richard Wentworth. Both serials featured a dramatic wardrobe enhancement to the Spider's magazine appearance: his simple black cloak and head mask were now over-printed with a white spider's web pattern and then matched to his usual plain black fedora. This striking addition gave the silver screen
Silver screen
A silver screen, also known as a silver lenticular screen, is a type of projection screen that was popular in the early years of the motion picture industry and passed into popular usage as a metonym for the cinema industry...
Spider an appearance more like that of a traditional superhero
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
, like other comics heroes being adapted for the era's movie serials; it also made the serial Spider look less like the very popular Street and Smith pulp hero The Shadow
The Shadow
The Shadow is a collection of serialized dramas, originally in pulp magazines, then on 1930s radio and then in a wide variety of media, that follow the exploits of the title character, a crime-fighting vigilante in the pulps, which carried over to the airwaves as a "wealthy, young man about town"...
, which also had been produced by Columbia and starred Victor Jory
Victor Jory
Victor Jory was a Canadian actor.-Biography:Born in Dawson City, Yukon, Jory was the boxing and wrestling champion of the Coast Guard during his military service, and he kept his burly physique. He toured with theater troupes and appeared on Broadway, before making his Hollywood debut in 1930...
.
Novel reprints
Many of the original 119 Spider pulp magazine novels have been reprinted over the years in both mass-market and trade paperback editions. They continue being republished today and seem likely to continue for some time to come.Berkley Books
Berkley Books
Berkley Books is an imprint of Penguin Group that began as an independent company in 1955. It was established by Charles Byrne and Frederic Klein, who were working for Avon and formed "Chic News Company". They renamed it Berkley Publishing Co. in 1955. They soon found a niche in science fiction...
(then Berkley/Medallion) first reprinted the Spider in 1969 and 1970, intending to reprint all 118 novels in order, hoping to tap into the reprint phenomenon of the Doc Savage
Doc Savage
Doc Savage is a fictional character originally published in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. He was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L...
novels being published by Bantam Books
Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
. But these first paperback reissues met with poor sales after only four volumes, and the planned series was canceled.
In the mid-seventies, Pocket Books
Pocket Books
Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.- History :Pocket produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry...
reprinted four Spider novels, this time featuring "modern" pulp artwork on their covers: Each featured a non-costumed, heavily armed Spider depicted as a muscular blonde hero holding a gorgeous woman. These mass-market paperbacks also failed to find an audience and the series was canceled. It seems likely that these four books were edited and modernized reprints, one of several reasons why they may have never caught on with their intended audience. In one, Death and the Spider, with an original publishing date of 1940, Nita Van Sloan is shown driving an Jaguar E-type
Jaguar E-type
The Jaguar E-Type or XK-E is a British automobile, manufactured by Jaguar between 1961 and 1975. Its combination of good looks, high performance, and competitive pricing established the marque as an icon of 1960s motoring...
X-KE, a sportscar not created and on the streets until 1961, some nineteen years later.
At roughly the same time in England, Mews Books/New American Library
New American Library
New American Library is an American publisher based in New York, founded in 1948; it produced affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works, as well as popular, pulp, and "hard-boiled" fiction. Non-fiction, original, and hardcopy issues were also produced.Victor Weybright and Kurt...
reprinted four Spider novels sporting new cover artwork, each being different in style and execution from those used by Pocket Books. This Spider mass-market series also ended after only four titles had been published.
Then, three years later, in 1979, an unusual Spider publishing event happened out of the "blue." Python Publishing put into print the never-before-published last original Spider novel, Slaughter, Inc., originally to have been published as Spider pulp magazine #119. Python finally published it as a one-shot, mass-market paperback. For copyright reasons, all characater names were changed and the novel was retitled Blue Steel ("The Ultimate Answer To Evil"). In it, the Spider was recast as Blue Steel. Just like the previous Pocket Book editions, it also sported a "modern" pulp cover featuring a very similar, non-costumed, but heavily armed blonde hero.
A year later, in 1980, Dimedia, Inc. reprinted three Spider pulp novels in the larger trade paperback format. Then beginning four years later, they continued with three mass-market Spider novel reprints, one in 1984 and two in 1985. These last three sported new cover paintings of the original costumed Spider by fantasy artist Ken Kelly.
In the early 1990s, Carroll & Graf Publishers
Carroll & Graf Publishers
Carroll & Graf Publishers, an American publishing company centered in New York City, was an imprint of the Avalon Publishing Group,Publisher Kent Carroll, the editorial director of Grove Press from 1975 to 1981, co-founded Carroll & Graf in 1982...
began issuing a series of eight mass-market Spider paperbacks, each one in a double-novel format. All used original Spider pulp magazine artwork for their covers. These 16 novels became the longest running Spider reprint series done for the mass-market trade.
After Carol and Graf, several specialized small press pulp reprint houses tried a complete reprinting of the Spider series before finally stopping. Bold Publications started this multiple small press revival during the mid-1990s with a series of affordable Spider trade paperback reprints. Others soon joined in with Spider reprintings. In later years, the prolific Wildside Press
Wildside Press
Wildside Press is an independent publishing company located in Maryland, USA. It was founded in 1989 by John Gregory and Kim Betancourt. While the press was originally conceived as a publisher of speculative fiction in both trade and limited editions, it has broadened out somewhat since then, both...
started offering Spider reprints. But Girasol Collectibles has been the most dogged of them all. It has reissued the novels as both a series of single pulp novel facsimile editions, as well as retypeset stories in 'pulp double' trade paperbacks. Both series use Spider pulp magazine artwork for their covers. More than five dozen Spider novels have been put back into print as part of Girasol's ambitious program, which still continues.
New York science fiction publisher Baen Books
Baen Books
Baen Books is an American publishing company established in 1983 by long time science fiction publisher and editor Jim Baen. It is a science fiction and fantasy publishing house that emphasizes space opera, hard science fiction, military science fiction, and fantasy...
published in 2007 a single trade paperback featuring three Spider novel reprints. Then in 2008 they released a second companion trade paperback of Spider reprints. Baen then issued both volumes as mass-market paperbacks. One of the three novels in that second omnibus stars another Street and Smith pulp character, the Octopus. The Baen editions sported new Spider cover paintings by noted graphic designer and comics artist Jim Steranko
Jim Steranko
James F. Steranko is an American graphic artist, comic book writer-artist-historian, magician, publisher and film production illustrator....
. Steranko had illustrated all 28 covers for the 1970s mass-market reprint volumes of rival pulp hero The Shadow
The Shadow
The Shadow is a collection of serialized dramas, originally in pulp magazines, then on 1930s radio and then in a wide variety of media, that follow the exploits of the title character, a crime-fighting vigilante in the pulps, which carried over to the airwaves as a "wealthy, young man about town"...
, published by Pyramid Books
Pyramid Books
Jove Books, formerly Pyramid Books, is a paperback publishing company, founded in 1949 by Almat Magazine Publishers . The company was sold to the Walter Reade Organization in the late 1960s. It was acquired in 1974 by Harcourt Brace which renamed it to Jove in 1977 and continued the line as an...
and HBJ/Jove Books.
In late 2009, Doubleday's Science Fiction Book Club reprinted in hardcover Baen's second Spider three-in-one volume from the previous year. This became the first Spider hardcover edition ever published.
In August 2009, Age of Aces reprinted the Spider's "Black Police" novel trilogy in a single volume. Moonstone Books
Moonstone Books
Moonstone Books is an American comic book, graphic novel, and prose fiction publisher based in Chicago focused on pulp fiction comic books and prose anthologies as well as horror and western tales....
also published an original anthology
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
of brand new Spider short stories entitled The Spider Chronicles the same year.
The Vintage Library has thirty-four licensed Spider novel reprints available in the PDF format. For a small fee, each one can be downloaded from their website.
Spider comics and graphic novels
In the early 1990s, the Spider and its characters were reinterpreted in comic book form by Timothy TrumanTimothy Truman
Timothy Truman is an American writer, artist and musician. He is best known for his stories and Wild West-style comic book art, and in particular, for his work on Grimjack , Scout, and the reinvention of Jonah Hex, with Joe R. Lansdale...
for Eclipse Comics
Eclipse Comics
Eclipse Comics was an American comic book publisher, one of several independent publishers during the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1978, it published the first graphic novel intended for the newly created comic book specialty store market...
. As noted in Comics Scene #19, Truman decided to set his version of the Spider in the "1990s as seen by the 1930s". In other words, he tried to anticipate how a writer from the 1930s would anticipate sociological and technological developments of the 1990s, with obviously some elements not matching the actual 1990s. Elements of this version of the Spider's milieu included airships as common transportation, the survival of the League of Nations into the near past (Wentworth meets Ram Singh during an intervention into India/Pakistan), and World War II, if it ever happened, taking place differently. This series featured an African-American Commissioner Kirkpatrick.
Moonstone Books
Moonstone Books
Moonstone Books is an American comic book, graphic novel, and prose fiction publisher based in Chicago focused on pulp fiction comic books and prose anthologies as well as horror and western tales....
has started a new Spider graphic novel series, which are structured more like illustrated prose stories than traditional panel-by-panel comics. In March 2011, the same publisher offered the first issue of a more traditional Spider comic book, with art by veteran creator Pablo Marcos
Pablo Marcos
Pablo Marcos Ortega, known professionally as Pablo Marcos is a comic book artist and commercial illustrator best known as one of his home country's leading cartoonists and for his work on such popular American comics characters as Batman and Conan the Barbarian, particularly during the 1970s...
.
Pop culture trivia
In his 1974 Fireside Book (Simon & SchusterSimon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
), Origins of Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
, Stan Lee
Stan Lee
Stan Lee is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, producer, publisher, television personality, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics....
states that, in the creation of the Spider-Man
Spider-Man
Spider-Man is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15...
character, he adapted the name of The Spider for Marvel's character. "It was the name that grabbed me."
External links
- Index of Spider stories with authors
- The Spider Returns, fan site with detailed information
- The Spider Pulps at the Vintage Library
- The Spider at ThePulp.Net
- Magazine Datafile for The Spider