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The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham
Combines two novels chronicling the exploits of a mysterious crime fighter known as "The Spider" as he battles an army of giant robots and a criminal mastermind whose weapon of choice is poisonous vampire bats, in a volume that also features a novel about the diabolical villain "Octopus."
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1935
About the author
Norvell W. Page
214 books14 followersNorvell Wordsworth Page (1904–1961) was an American pulp fiction writer, journalist and editor who later became a government intelligence worker.
He was born in Virginia the son of Charles Wordsworth Page (1880 – 1947) and Estlie Isabelle Bethel Page (1880 – 1946). The name Norvell came from his maternal grandmother Elvira Russell Norvell Page.
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 house name of Grant Stockbridge. He also contributed to other pulp series, including The Shadow and The Phantom, and supplied scripts for the radio programs based on the characters he wrote, science fiction and two early sword and sorcery fantasy novels under forms of his real name, Norvel Page and Norvell W. Page. His 1940 Unknown novel, But Without Horns is considered an early classic explication of the superman theme. Under the pen name of N. Wooten Poge, Page wrote the adventures of Bill Carter for Spicy Detective Stories. His works only saw magazine publication during his lifetime, but his fantasies and some of the Spider novels were later reprinted as paperbacks.
The Spider was a crime-fighter in the tradition of The Shadow, wanted by the law for executing his criminal antagonists, and prefigured later comic book superheroes like Batman. Page's innovations to the series included a hideous disguise for the hero and a succession of super-scientific menaces for him to combat. One of these, involving an invasion of giant robots, was copied by an early Superman story and helped inspire the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
The setting of Page's sword and sorcery novels is central Asia in the first century A.D., when the legendary Prester John supposedly established a Christian kingdom there. In Page's conception, the man behind the legend was hard-bitten Mediterranean adventurer Hurricane John, or Wan Tengri, a hero in the mold of Robert E. Howard's Conan, though more humorous, verbose, and exaggeratedly omnicompetent as a warrior. He comes close to taking over two cities in the course of his travels, but the series concludes before he establishes his empire. He was featured two stories Flame Winds and Sons of the Bear God. The magic John encounters is unconvincingly rationalized
He was born in Virginia the son of Charles Wordsworth Page (1880 – 1947) and Estlie Isabelle Bethel Page (1880 – 1946). The name Norvell came from his maternal grandmother Elvira Russell Norvell Page.
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 house name of Grant Stockbridge. He also contributed to other pulp series, including The Shadow and The Phantom, and supplied scripts for the radio programs based on the characters he wrote, science fiction and two early sword and sorcery fantasy novels under forms of his real name, Norvel Page and Norvell W. Page. His 1940 Unknown novel, But Without Horns is considered an early classic explication of the superman theme. Under the pen name of N. Wooten Poge, Page wrote the adventures of Bill Carter for Spicy Detective Stories. His works only saw magazine publication during his lifetime, but his fantasies and some of the Spider novels were later reprinted as paperbacks.
The Spider was a crime-fighter in the tradition of The Shadow, wanted by the law for executing his criminal antagonists, and prefigured later comic book superheroes like Batman. Page's innovations to the series included a hideous disguise for the hero and a succession of super-scientific menaces for him to combat. One of these, involving an invasion of giant robots, was copied by an early Superman story and helped inspire the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
The setting of Page's sword and sorcery novels is central Asia in the first century A.D., when the legendary Prester John supposedly established a Christian kingdom there. In Page's conception, the man behind the legend was hard-bitten Mediterranean adventurer Hurricane John, or Wan Tengri, a hero in the mold of Robert E. Howard's Conan, though more humorous, verbose, and exaggeratedly omnicompetent as a warrior. He comes close to taking over two cities in the course of his travels, but the series concludes before he establishes his empire. He was featured two stories Flame Winds and Sons of the Bear God. The magic John encounters is unconvincingly rationalized
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
September 5, 2013
Satan's Murder Machines: The story opens with the Richard Wentworth, the Spider's alter ego, already having been framed for robbery and murder. He's in the process of trying to clear his name when he's accosted by rampaging giant robots. Without giving too much away, the robots are robbing people and slaughtering whomever gets in their way. One particularly memorable scene sees one of the robots pluck the head from his captive.
The thing that immediately jumped out at me about The Spider is the sense of desperation. Even thought I knew he wouldn't be killed, part of me still thought it might happen. It seemed as if the Spider was constantly having to think on his feet just to keep his head above water, just barely staying ahead of the police and the nigh-invulnerable robots. If I had to rate the book based on this story right now, I'd give it a four.
Death Reign of the Vampire King: Someone's releasing ravenous vampire bats with poisonous bites, killing hundreds of people. Of course, everyone suspects the Spider. Throw in some South American Indians with blowguns and a Bat Man with glider wings and you have an exciting story. There are plane crashes, gun fights, and a one point Wentworth and Jackson are stripped naked and thrown into a room full of vampire bats. Not as good as the first story but still a gripping read.
The Octopus: Not a Spider story but still really good. Jeffery Fairchild lives a triple life, one as the aged Dr. Skull and another as the mysterious Skull Killer, a man of justice who brands a skull on the forehead of his victims as a calling card. In his Dr. Skull guise, he encounters a woman who's slowly being transformed into an octopoid horror. Little does he know that he's only touched the tip of the iceberg. Before he knows it, the whole city is crawling with mutated monstrosities, led by the mysterious Octopus. Creepy as hell and a pretty good story.
Later: In conclusion, the Spider is everything I had hopes the Shadow would be. His adventures are a lot grittier and better written.
The thing that immediately jumped out at me about The Spider is the sense of desperation. Even thought I knew he wouldn't be killed, part of me still thought it might happen. It seemed as if the Spider was constantly having to think on his feet just to keep his head above water, just barely staying ahead of the police and the nigh-invulnerable robots. If I had to rate the book based on this story right now, I'd give it a four.
Death Reign of the Vampire King: Someone's releasing ravenous vampire bats with poisonous bites, killing hundreds of people. Of course, everyone suspects the Spider. Throw in some South American Indians with blowguns and a Bat Man with glider wings and you have an exciting story. There are plane crashes, gun fights, and a one point Wentworth and Jackson are stripped naked and thrown into a room full of vampire bats. Not as good as the first story but still a gripping read.
The Octopus: Not a Spider story but still really good. Jeffery Fairchild lives a triple life, one as the aged Dr. Skull and another as the mysterious Skull Killer, a man of justice who brands a skull on the forehead of his victims as a calling card. In his Dr. Skull guise, he encounters a woman who's slowly being transformed into an octopoid horror. Little does he know that he's only touched the tip of the iceberg. Before he knows it, the whole city is crawling with mutated monstrosities, led by the mysterious Octopus. Creepy as hell and a pretty good story.
Later: In conclusion, the Spider is everything I had hopes the Shadow would be. His adventures are a lot grittier and better written.
July 2, 2018
In my recent review of the anthology volume "Rivals of Weird Tales," I mentioned that one of my favorite stories therein was the novella-length "But Without Horns," which was written by Norvell Page and first appeared in the June 1940 issue of "Unknown" magazine. I also expressed a desire to read some of Page's many tales dealing with his most famous character, the Spider. Well, I am here to tell you: Mission accomplished! Thanks to the fine folks at Baen Publishing, two volumes of Spider tales have been released for modern-day audiences, and this reader was fortunate enough to pick up the first, 2007's "Robot Titans of Gotham," which collects three Page novels from the mid- to late-'30s under one cover. To be succinct, this volume is a must-read for all lovers of superhero pulp fiction.
But who, or what, is the Spider, you may justifiably be asking at this point. In a nutshell, the Spider is Richard Wentworth, a debonair man-about-town who, when disguised with hat, mask, cloak and hunchback garb, makes it his business to fight crime and bring justice to evildoers when the law just can't. Aided by his two loyal servants--a powerful and knife-wielding Sikh named Ram Singh, and a former Army buddy from the WW1 trenches, Ronald Jackson--as well as by his beautiful and quick-witted galpal Nita van Sloan, Wentworth, although based in NYC, fights a startling array of nemeses wherever trouble arises. From 1933 - '43, and over the course of 118 issues, The Spider magazine provided Depression-era audiences with a monthly dose of fantastic and gruesome mayhem; of those 118 issues, Norvell Page, writing under the house name of Grant Stockbridge, was responsible for no fewer than 92! With beautifully garish cover artwork and over-the-top, hyperbolic titles for the novels themselves--such as "Green Globes of Death," "The Devil's Death Dwarfs," "King of the Fleshless Legions," "Rule of the Monster Men" and "Volunteer Corpse Brigade"--"The Spider" magazine was hugely popular...on a par with "The Shadow" and "Doc Savage" magazines. The Spider himself, besides being remarkably quick witted and capable of withstanding an astonishing amount of physical abuse ("...It was like the Spider that he should press on this way while his body still had not recuperated from a struggle that had nearly cost his life," we learn at one point), also comes equipped with a length of rope of amazingly high tensile strength. The character was indeed an inspiration for Marvel god Stan Lee almost three decades later, when he was trying to come up with a name for his latest web-slinging superhero. (Can you guess which one?)
Page, I should add in all fairness, was a serviceable writer at best, and his prose is often clumsy. Much of the action that he dishes out can strike the reader as highly unlikely, and the three novels gathered here all suffer from one common problem: the fact that we never get to satisfactorily learn just why the villains in each have taken their criminal paths, or what their backgrounds are. All three tales desperately cry out for the kind of beautifully written, villainous gloating that Ian Fleming always gave us in his 007 novels. To be sure, Page was a true pulp author who obviously wrote 'em down and dirty, at full speed, with few if any rewrites; yes, these are novels that could surely benefit from the services of a good copy editor. But you know what? The books also have great drive and panache that propel the reader from one cliff-hanger chapter to the next. And all three dish out some astonishingly violent action sequences, as well as a very high body count. And oh, as regards Page's writing skills, let's see you think up and write a 120-page short novel month after month, year after year. Then tell me how simple it is.
OK, now, as to the novels themselves: The first tale that we have here dates from the December '39 issue of "The Spider," and is entitled "Satan's Murder Machines." In this one, giant metal men that appear to be robots go on a killing rampage throughout Manhattan, knocking down buildings, murdering the citizenry and causing untold pandemonium. These killing machines are being sent out by a villain known only as the Iron Man (another bit of nomenclature that would later by "homaged" by Marvel). Highlights of this fast-moving novel include the fight that the Spider has with one of the metal monsters beneath the surface of the East River; the Spider's rescue of Nita from an abandoned ferry building on the Hudson, followed by a duke out with three of the robotlike things; and the final climactic battle in front of the New York Library, with those iconic stone lions being tossed about like baseballs. Wentworth suffers a ridiculous amount of physical punishment in this outing (a blackjack beating, being blasted by a hand grenade, a near drowning, hypothermia) but never stops for rest or a breather; the story is that breathless. As usual, Page gives us some wonderfully pulpy verbiage here ("...in his white-gloved hand there lay an automatic pistol, its snub nose brutal as a rattlesnake's head..."; "...his will was a flame of naked steel...") and some action bits that needed to be rewritten (for example, in that final battle, the Spider seemingly manages to go from Riverside Drive to 5th Avenue in a matter of seconds). Still, good fun, in all. By the way, the plot device of this Spider novel was lifted for the Superman Sunday comic strip "Bandit Robots of Metropolis," which ran from October - December 1940. Page sued in court and won, garnering more money than the $550 that he'd originally earned for the story's initial sale!
Next up in this collection is the novel entitled "Death Reign of the Vampire King," from the November 1935 issue (why these tales are here presented out of chronological order is anybody's guess), and it's even better than the first. In this one, a winged villain known as the Bat Man (still another character name that would be later appropriated; in this case, four years later) has begun, for no apparent reason, to release thousands of vampire bats around the country. But not just your typical, nonlethal, garden-variety vampire bats, but rather, ones that have been specially treated with a highly toxic venom, so as to deliver instantly fatal bites! The action in this one travels from Philadelphia, to the barrens of New Jersey, to the Allegheny Mountains, on to a Chicago amusement park, and finally, to the Bat Man's hideout in the Rockies. Highlights include an aerial battle that Wentworth has with the Bat Man in midair...the Bat Man zooming around on his man-made wings, Wentworth ensconced in his Lockheed airplane; another near drowning that the Spider suffers, this time while fighting off a gaggle of the Bat Man's Jivaro Indian accomplices under the Delaware River; the ridiculously thrilling fight that the Spider and the Bat Man have on a careering roller coaster; and, most especially, the grisly scene in which Wentworth and Jackson are trapped in a room with hundreds of blood-sucking vampire bats (of the nonlethal variety, but still!). This particular Spider installment features an exceptionally high body count (over 3,500 are killed in the Chicago segment alone!), some more wonderfully pulpy writing ("...his blue-gray eyes were almost black with fury..."), and, unfortunately, some more unanswered questions. How did the Bat Man acquire the services of those South American headhunters? How were all those thousands of bats made lethal, and with which poison? How does the Spider know the name of his eventual ally, June Calvert, before she even mentions it? Or am I thinking about these things a bit too much?
To continue, the third Norvell Page novel in "Robot Titans of Gotham," surprisingly, does not feature the Spider at all. Rather, it is a tale that appeared in the one and only issue of "The Octopus"; the February - March 1939 issue. In this true collector's item, the reader is introduced to another man-about-town, Jeffrey Fairchild; a youngish man who not only has one secret identity, but two! When in his old-man disguise, Jeffrey plays the role of Dr. Skull, a benevolent physician who does his best to help the needy sick and poor. But in his other guise, Fairchild becomes the Skull Killer, a crime fighter who, after killing the villainous elements in NYC, uses an acid-filled ring to brand his skull mark into their foreheads! Although this collection would have us believe that the name of this tale is merely "The Octopus," back in 1939, the name of the novel was actually given as "The City Condemned to Hell"...an appropriate title, as things turn out.
In this one, a demonic, tentacled entity known as the Octopus uses his newly invented ultraviolet light gizmo to make obscenely mutated monsters out of hundreds of the populace! (And why this short-lived magazine was named after the villain of the piece, when "Dr. Skull" or "The Skull Killer" would have made just as cool sounding a magazine title, is beyond me!) Highlights of this tale, which is surely some kind of bona fide classic of the "weird menace" genre, include Jeffrey being locked in a room by the Octopus and subjected to those mutating rays, and the absolutely bonkers final sequence, in which the Skull Killer, along with Dr. Skull's young, pretty nurse, are trapped in a ward with hundreds of the slavering mutants, who have by this time become blood feasters! And during that final sequence, we see the Octopus sitting next to a nearly nude girl who is suspended by her wrists from the ceiling, while one of the deformed monstrosities sucks on her blood via a metal pipe that he has inserted into her side! Trust me, this is some seriously wackadoodle stuff here; garish, lurid pulp shocks to the extreme! Unfortunately, again, Page does not deign to tell us how the Octopus became the monstrosity that he is, although it is hinted that more might be explained in future issues...issues that were never to be. A pity, really.
Anyway, there you have it...three remarkable novels written during the height of the pulp magazine era. I was sufficiently entertained by "Robot Titans of Gotham"'s trio of tales to want to search out that other collection from Baen, called "City of Doom." Stay tuned…
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Norvell Page....)
But who, or what, is the Spider, you may justifiably be asking at this point. In a nutshell, the Spider is Richard Wentworth, a debonair man-about-town who, when disguised with hat, mask, cloak and hunchback garb, makes it his business to fight crime and bring justice to evildoers when the law just can't. Aided by his two loyal servants--a powerful and knife-wielding Sikh named Ram Singh, and a former Army buddy from the WW1 trenches, Ronald Jackson--as well as by his beautiful and quick-witted galpal Nita van Sloan, Wentworth, although based in NYC, fights a startling array of nemeses wherever trouble arises. From 1933 - '43, and over the course of 118 issues, The Spider magazine provided Depression-era audiences with a monthly dose of fantastic and gruesome mayhem; of those 118 issues, Norvell Page, writing under the house name of Grant Stockbridge, was responsible for no fewer than 92! With beautifully garish cover artwork and over-the-top, hyperbolic titles for the novels themselves--such as "Green Globes of Death," "The Devil's Death Dwarfs," "King of the Fleshless Legions," "Rule of the Monster Men" and "Volunteer Corpse Brigade"--"The Spider" magazine was hugely popular...on a par with "The Shadow" and "Doc Savage" magazines. The Spider himself, besides being remarkably quick witted and capable of withstanding an astonishing amount of physical abuse ("...It was like the Spider that he should press on this way while his body still had not recuperated from a struggle that had nearly cost his life," we learn at one point), also comes equipped with a length of rope of amazingly high tensile strength. The character was indeed an inspiration for Marvel god Stan Lee almost three decades later, when he was trying to come up with a name for his latest web-slinging superhero. (Can you guess which one?)
Page, I should add in all fairness, was a serviceable writer at best, and his prose is often clumsy. Much of the action that he dishes out can strike the reader as highly unlikely, and the three novels gathered here all suffer from one common problem: the fact that we never get to satisfactorily learn just why the villains in each have taken their criminal paths, or what their backgrounds are. All three tales desperately cry out for the kind of beautifully written, villainous gloating that Ian Fleming always gave us in his 007 novels. To be sure, Page was a true pulp author who obviously wrote 'em down and dirty, at full speed, with few if any rewrites; yes, these are novels that could surely benefit from the services of a good copy editor. But you know what? The books also have great drive and panache that propel the reader from one cliff-hanger chapter to the next. And all three dish out some astonishingly violent action sequences, as well as a very high body count. And oh, as regards Page's writing skills, let's see you think up and write a 120-page short novel month after month, year after year. Then tell me how simple it is.
OK, now, as to the novels themselves: The first tale that we have here dates from the December '39 issue of "The Spider," and is entitled "Satan's Murder Machines." In this one, giant metal men that appear to be robots go on a killing rampage throughout Manhattan, knocking down buildings, murdering the citizenry and causing untold pandemonium. These killing machines are being sent out by a villain known only as the Iron Man (another bit of nomenclature that would later by "homaged" by Marvel). Highlights of this fast-moving novel include the fight that the Spider has with one of the metal monsters beneath the surface of the East River; the Spider's rescue of Nita from an abandoned ferry building on the Hudson, followed by a duke out with three of the robotlike things; and the final climactic battle in front of the New York Library, with those iconic stone lions being tossed about like baseballs. Wentworth suffers a ridiculous amount of physical punishment in this outing (a blackjack beating, being blasted by a hand grenade, a near drowning, hypothermia) but never stops for rest or a breather; the story is that breathless. As usual, Page gives us some wonderfully pulpy verbiage here ("...in his white-gloved hand there lay an automatic pistol, its snub nose brutal as a rattlesnake's head..."; "...his will was a flame of naked steel...") and some action bits that needed to be rewritten (for example, in that final battle, the Spider seemingly manages to go from Riverside Drive to 5th Avenue in a matter of seconds). Still, good fun, in all. By the way, the plot device of this Spider novel was lifted for the Superman Sunday comic strip "Bandit Robots of Metropolis," which ran from October - December 1940. Page sued in court and won, garnering more money than the $550 that he'd originally earned for the story's initial sale!
Next up in this collection is the novel entitled "Death Reign of the Vampire King," from the November 1935 issue (why these tales are here presented out of chronological order is anybody's guess), and it's even better than the first. In this one, a winged villain known as the Bat Man (still another character name that would be later appropriated; in this case, four years later) has begun, for no apparent reason, to release thousands of vampire bats around the country. But not just your typical, nonlethal, garden-variety vampire bats, but rather, ones that have been specially treated with a highly toxic venom, so as to deliver instantly fatal bites! The action in this one travels from Philadelphia, to the barrens of New Jersey, to the Allegheny Mountains, on to a Chicago amusement park, and finally, to the Bat Man's hideout in the Rockies. Highlights include an aerial battle that Wentworth has with the Bat Man in midair...the Bat Man zooming around on his man-made wings, Wentworth ensconced in his Lockheed airplane; another near drowning that the Spider suffers, this time while fighting off a gaggle of the Bat Man's Jivaro Indian accomplices under the Delaware River; the ridiculously thrilling fight that the Spider and the Bat Man have on a careering roller coaster; and, most especially, the grisly scene in which Wentworth and Jackson are trapped in a room with hundreds of blood-sucking vampire bats (of the nonlethal variety, but still!). This particular Spider installment features an exceptionally high body count (over 3,500 are killed in the Chicago segment alone!), some more wonderfully pulpy writing ("...his blue-gray eyes were almost black with fury..."), and, unfortunately, some more unanswered questions. How did the Bat Man acquire the services of those South American headhunters? How were all those thousands of bats made lethal, and with which poison? How does the Spider know the name of his eventual ally, June Calvert, before she even mentions it? Or am I thinking about these things a bit too much?
To continue, the third Norvell Page novel in "Robot Titans of Gotham," surprisingly, does not feature the Spider at all. Rather, it is a tale that appeared in the one and only issue of "The Octopus"; the February - March 1939 issue. In this true collector's item, the reader is introduced to another man-about-town, Jeffrey Fairchild; a youngish man who not only has one secret identity, but two! When in his old-man disguise, Jeffrey plays the role of Dr. Skull, a benevolent physician who does his best to help the needy sick and poor. But in his other guise, Fairchild becomes the Skull Killer, a crime fighter who, after killing the villainous elements in NYC, uses an acid-filled ring to brand his skull mark into their foreheads! Although this collection would have us believe that the name of this tale is merely "The Octopus," back in 1939, the name of the novel was actually given as "The City Condemned to Hell"...an appropriate title, as things turn out.
In this one, a demonic, tentacled entity known as the Octopus uses his newly invented ultraviolet light gizmo to make obscenely mutated monsters out of hundreds of the populace! (And why this short-lived magazine was named after the villain of the piece, when "Dr. Skull" or "The Skull Killer" would have made just as cool sounding a magazine title, is beyond me!) Highlights of this tale, which is surely some kind of bona fide classic of the "weird menace" genre, include Jeffrey being locked in a room by the Octopus and subjected to those mutating rays, and the absolutely bonkers final sequence, in which the Skull Killer, along with Dr. Skull's young, pretty nurse, are trapped in a ward with hundreds of the slavering mutants, who have by this time become blood feasters! And during that final sequence, we see the Octopus sitting next to a nearly nude girl who is suspended by her wrists from the ceiling, while one of the deformed monstrosities sucks on her blood via a metal pipe that he has inserted into her side! Trust me, this is some seriously wackadoodle stuff here; garish, lurid pulp shocks to the extreme! Unfortunately, again, Page does not deign to tell us how the Octopus became the monstrosity that he is, although it is hinted that more might be explained in future issues...issues that were never to be. A pity, really.
Anyway, there you have it...three remarkable novels written during the height of the pulp magazine era. I was sufficiently entertained by "Robot Titans of Gotham"'s trio of tales to want to search out that other collection from Baen, called "City of Doom." Stay tuned…
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Norvell Page....)
November 26, 2019
See, I _want_ to love the old pulps, but they make it so damn hard. You can say summaries like "Army of Marauding Robots" and "Vampire King Death Bats Something Something" and I'll be all on board, only to chicken out after cracking the cover and seeing what is actually involved. I didn't even get through "Satan's Murder Machines" (aforementioned "marauding robots").
The writing is bad. But you knew that. It's a classic pulp, churned out on a tight schedule. There are exclamation marks in narration, so many that it becomes a distraction. I took a random sample of page 10 as an experiment, and found ten of them, at least one per paragraph. And that page was not the worst offender.
But beyond this is the sheer lack of pacing. It is action action action without pause to provide contrast or build suspense. It starts in medias res with some adventure and then the robot attacks (spoiler: robots) and then Wentworth, the Spider, is framed for a frankly unbelievable theft by villains unknown (spoiler: probably relating to robots) and that's an entire thing that has him running around to foil the official inquiry and arrest. It's frenetic and actually rather wearying.
In all, it was like talking to someone who was much too excited.
The writing is bad. But you knew that. It's a classic pulp, churned out on a tight schedule. There are exclamation marks in narration, so many that it becomes a distraction. I took a random sample of page 10 as an experiment, and found ten of them, at least one per paragraph. And that page was not the worst offender.
But beyond this is the sheer lack of pacing. It is action action action without pause to provide contrast or build suspense. It starts in medias res with some adventure and then the robot attacks (spoiler: robots) and then Wentworth, the Spider, is framed for a frankly unbelievable theft by villains unknown (spoiler: probably relating to robots) and that's an entire thing that has him running around to foil the official inquiry and arrest. It's frenetic and actually rather wearying.
In all, it was like talking to someone who was much too excited.
September 23, 2011
The Spider was a wonderful pulp hero that never got the attention of The Shadow or Doc Davage; he was one of the Other Guys... like in the DC Universe you've got Batman and Superman and the other guys. Nonetheless, it was a terrific series, and heavily influenced later comics superheroes. This volume includes two of the best of the series, SATAN'S MURDER MACHINES and DEATH REIGN OF THE VAMPIRE KING (coolest title ever!), as well as a third stort featuring a character called The Octopus, which isn't very good. I couldn't figure out why they included it, nor the almost completely incomprehensible foreword. Norvell Page wrote most of the Spider adventures; he was a very good pulp writer who also wrote the classic FLAME WINDS. The stories are a bit creaky and campy by current standard, but the Spider and his team were among the best of the pulp heroes, especially Nita, who ranks right up there with Nellie Grey and Pat Savage. Also included! Free of charge! Most exclamation points ever! Ever!!!
December 15, 2015
I'm a fan of hero pulps, and I'd always heard of the Spider, but I'd never read any of his stories. So, I was very happy to find this collection of two of his tales. Both stories were big on action, but thin on plot. Very thin. Extremely thin. Now, this is from a guy who's a big fan of Doc Savage tales, which are just about as formula as you can get. But Doc Savage villains have at least a decent motivation and plan. The villains in these stories, the Iron Man and the Bat Man (yep, really!) seemed like they could've been great villains if they'd been fleshed out a bit more with an actual motivation behind their mayhem.
I'd try another Spider story, just to see if these two are representative of most of his adventures. I may have to go back to Doc Savage or seek out tales of The Black Bat and/or the Green Llama.
I'd try another Spider story, just to see if these two are representative of most of his adventures. I may have to go back to Doc Savage or seek out tales of The Black Bat and/or the Green Llama.
September 19, 2022
Good points: Excellent cover art and design by Jim Steranko with additional excellent interior art by Chris Kalb.
One of the novels included is Death Reign of the Vampire King. One of the best Spider novels. Unfortunately, it's the most frequently reprinted, and the other Spider novels has also been reprinted. It would have been better to include novels that weren't easily found elsewhere.
The bad: Joel Frieman's ridiculous, misguided, misleading, and self-serving introduction. It's the product of his bizarre delusions that a. Norvell Page was almost as crazy as himself and b. that Stan Lee stole the ideas for Spider-Man and Iron Man from the Spider series and therefore owed Frieman millions and millions of dollars.
The ugly: reprinting the lone Octopus pulp story instead of a third Spider novel. The erroneous idea that Page was the author has long been disproven. The novel is awful, excruciating to read. Anyone familiar with Page's ability to sell his over the top plots with pulse-pounding prose could tell he never wrote this boring, weak imitation of the Spider formula.
Buy this for the Steranko cover and the two Spider novels if you don't have them elsewhere, skip the intro and the Octopus novel.
One of the novels included is Death Reign of the Vampire King. One of the best Spider novels. Unfortunately, it's the most frequently reprinted, and the other Spider novels has also been reprinted. It would have been better to include novels that weren't easily found elsewhere.
The bad: Joel Frieman's ridiculous, misguided, misleading, and self-serving introduction. It's the product of his bizarre delusions that a. Norvell Page was almost as crazy as himself and b. that Stan Lee stole the ideas for Spider-Man and Iron Man from the Spider series and therefore owed Frieman millions and millions of dollars.
The ugly: reprinting the lone Octopus pulp story instead of a third Spider novel. The erroneous idea that Page was the author has long been disproven. The novel is awful, excruciating to read. Anyone familiar with Page's ability to sell his over the top plots with pulse-pounding prose could tell he never wrote this boring, weak imitation of the Spider formula.
Buy this for the Steranko cover and the two Spider novels if you don't have them elsewhere, skip the intro and the Octopus novel.
June 1, 2020
Nonstop action, a pace that keeps building, a protagonist always just one step ahead of ruin and death snapping at his heels ... yet also compelling characters, villains performing surreal heights of evil, and a female character who sure as hell is no mere damsel.
October 11, 2018
Top notch pulp insanity!
August 1, 2021
4 for the first two stories, 3 for the third story
June 6, 2008
I have a beautiful coffee table book that consists mostly of covers from pulp novels. Often, when I look through that book, I see fascinating covers from magazines that once serialized stories about The Shadow, The Bat, and Doc Savage (to mention only three). Several of the covers were of The Spider magazine. This was unfortunate because I had never read a novel about this character (who seemed to be very much like The Shadow). I even did a search of websites which specialized in out-of-print novels and didn't find any (Argosy Publications has done a good job of protecting their copyright). I failed.
So, imagine my surprise when I finished a book on the train to work in Chicago and decided to replace said book from the local Barnes & Noble (about a block from the building where I teach in the Loop). I'm looking on the science-fiction shelf and what do I see? Baen Books is putting out a reprint series of The Spider and I was able to pick up the first one. And what a first one it was! It was a reprint of the serialized novel that National Periodicals plagiarized for a Superman story and later, settled out of court.
I don't want to spoil anything, but here's the set-up. Richard Wentworth is the socialite who masquerades as the "Master of Men," a vigilante known as The Spider, complete with metal mask and long flowing black cape. He is romantically involved with a gorgeous (and courageous) socialite named Nita and is, get this, friends with the police chief. However, the police chief is unaware of his alter ego as the "Master of Men." He has an Asian butler (Indian) and a muscular driver. There is plenty of gunplay and, like The Shadow, there are vocal impressions of other men that are important to getting the pseudo-criminal vigilante out of scrapes with the law.
The first novel is about giant robotic men destroying people and buildings in Manhattan. It was written just prior to the entry of the United States into World War II and the behavior of the giant robotic men is extremely suggestive of the jackbooted Nazis that the U.S. was to face in later years.
The second novel features the appearance of a Bat Man, but is built around a "vampire" theme much like the first is built on a robotic theme. The final novel features a mysterious purple-eyed personage known as "The Octopus."
This is pulp-writing to match my favorites!
So, imagine my surprise when I finished a book on the train to work in Chicago and decided to replace said book from the local Barnes & Noble (about a block from the building where I teach in the Loop). I'm looking on the science-fiction shelf and what do I see? Baen Books is putting out a reprint series of The Spider and I was able to pick up the first one. And what a first one it was! It was a reprint of the serialized novel that National Periodicals plagiarized for a Superman story and later, settled out of court.
I don't want to spoil anything, but here's the set-up. Richard Wentworth is the socialite who masquerades as the "Master of Men," a vigilante known as The Spider, complete with metal mask and long flowing black cape. He is romantically involved with a gorgeous (and courageous) socialite named Nita and is, get this, friends with the police chief. However, the police chief is unaware of his alter ego as the "Master of Men." He has an Asian butler (Indian) and a muscular driver. There is plenty of gunplay and, like The Shadow, there are vocal impressions of other men that are important to getting the pseudo-criminal vigilante out of scrapes with the law.
The first novel is about giant robotic men destroying people and buildings in Manhattan. It was written just prior to the entry of the United States into World War II and the behavior of the giant robotic men is extremely suggestive of the jackbooted Nazis that the U.S. was to face in later years.
The second novel features the appearance of a Bat Man, but is built around a "vampire" theme much like the first is built on a robotic theme. The final novel features a mysterious purple-eyed personage known as "The Octopus."
This is pulp-writing to match my favorites!
September 5, 2012
Like The Shadow before him, The Spider is a rich playboy by day and a mysterious crime fighter by night. There's a few differences between them, most notably the Spider leaving his symbol stamped on the foreheads of his victims and he seems a little more eager to brandish his twin pistols. But he also comes off a little more the everyman at times as he doubts himself and his chance of success.
As you can see from the summaries, you've got everything you need to make great pulp stories: a hero with a secret identity who's hunted by the police, a girl Friday, a minority man-servant and over the top villains.
Some reviews describe The Octopus as a "villain pulp" but I wouldn't. It definitely seems Dr. Skull/The Skull Killer is the main character here and The Octopus is lurking in the background putting his plan in motion, much like the Vampire King in the second Spider story. It's still a fun story!
If you like pulps this is definitely worth a look, however, I'd refer you to check out the pulp reprints (if you can find them) instead of the paperback to get the full pulp experience.
As you can see from the summaries, you've got everything you need to make great pulp stories: a hero with a secret identity who's hunted by the police, a girl Friday, a minority man-servant and over the top villains.
Some reviews describe The Octopus as a "villain pulp" but I wouldn't. It definitely seems Dr. Skull/The Skull Killer is the main character here and The Octopus is lurking in the background putting his plan in motion, much like the Vampire King in the second Spider story. It's still a fun story!
If you like pulps this is definitely worth a look, however, I'd refer you to check out the pulp reprints (if you can find them) instead of the paperback to get the full pulp experience.
March 29, 2009
Absolutley loved it. Richard Wentworth is a wealthy "playboy" by day. By night he turns into the mysterious "Spider, Master of Men". Similar to the Shadow and even more ruthless. These Pulp adventure heroes didn't mind taking the law into their own hands and killing the Villains (unlike Doc Savage who became more of a progenitor for the Super heroes).
It's obvious here that the Spider (as well as the Shadow) influenced the creation of Batman.
Highly recommended to all pulp adventure readers.
It's obvious here that the Spider (as well as the Shadow) influenced the creation of Batman.
Highly recommended to all pulp adventure readers.
December 7, 2012
A bit disappointed I must say. There are three really good stories in this collection but not all of them are about the Spider. The first two are and the third is with Dr. Skull. Not that the Octopus was a bad story but it did seem a bit like false advertising. So it gave me a few sour grapes. They are still good stories from the 30's probably not up to the level of the Shadows or Doc Savage but still good quality.
I recommend it if you like that style of writing but be aware of what you are getting. This is really a Norvell Page collection rather than a Spider collection.
I recommend it if you like that style of writing but be aware of what you are getting. This is really a Norvell Page collection rather than a Spider collection.
March 4, 2010
I nearly had a heart attack reading this thing. It's that exciting. Not really great literature but definitely great trash. Norvell Page wrote with the fevered intensity and lack of coherence of a man who's afraid someone's going to take away his typewriter. Also, this man has been poisoned and only has a few hours to live.
January 20, 2016
Reading the Robot Titans of Gotham is exhausting. Trying to keep up with the Spider will wear you out. Norvell Page's pulp craft is at it's peak in the first two stories. The Octopus is incredibly entertaining, but a bit more disjointed than the Spider stories. If you enjoy old-fashioned, two fisted pulp vigilantism, like I do, then you'll enjoy reading this collection.
Currently reading
June 10, 2008actually 3 books in one
Satan's Murder Machines (title story really)
Death Reign of the Vampire King
The Octopus
always remember the Spider is the master of men.
don't be misled by Steranko's cover, The Spider dresses up as a hunched grotesque figure.
oh, now you want to read it.
Satan's Murder Machines (title story really)
Death Reign of the Vampire King
The Octopus
always remember the Spider is the master of men.
don't be misled by Steranko's cover, The Spider dresses up as a hunched grotesque figure.
oh, now you want to read it.
December 24, 2008
This is a collection containing two Spider Novels, "Satan's Murder Machine," and "Death Reign of the Vampire King," and a third book, "The Octopus." The first two are pretty good. The third one is from an aborted series, I guess, about Dr. Skull, and isn't very good.
August 3, 2008
A compilation of three novels by Norvell Page, the chief writer of the Spider pulp novels of the Depression. Two Spider novels and a one-off character called The Octopus. It's a good place to start for a new Spider fan.
March 13, 2010
I wanted to like this book. A trio of pulp tales of action from the 30's, but honestly it was terrible. The hero was uninspiring and one-dimensional. The villains were laughable. It was written in a style that almost made it unreadable.
Not my cup of joe.
Not my cup of joe.
March 15, 2012
Ugh. Crazy ideas with awful presentation. Plotting is haywire. If I can say one good thing, it seemed Page was inventing super-villain nefarious plans before super-heroes and super-spies were the rage. But then shoehorning them into criminal thriller plots that barely hold together.
January 21, 2013
If you're in dire need for some old school adventure noir, here you go!
Non-stop action & cliff hangers- it's like watching an detective/sci-fi serial from way back in the day. Mr. Page is an excellent story writer, knowing just what it took to keep a reader captivated!!!!
Non-stop action & cliff hangers- it's like watching an detective/sci-fi serial from way back in the day. Mr. Page is an excellent story writer, knowing just what it took to keep a reader captivated!!!!
October 15, 2014
Page's stories of The Spider are exactly what you expect crazy old pulp action to be. Lots of excessive violence(bodycounts in the 1000s), insane logic and motives and overuse of exclamation points. I can't wait to read more!
November 23, 2012
Excellent Adventures. I didn't have a chance to read the last story, The Octopus, but I did find out it is not a Spider adventure. The main character is called Dr. Skull.
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