The Spider

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This article is about the pulp magazine character. For the comic character, see Alias the Spider, and for other meanings, see Spider (disambiguation).

The Spider was the violent, relentless hero of a pulp magazine series produced by Popular Publications from 1933 to 1943. There were 118 stories in the pulps and another one, "Slaughter Incorporated" was published privately. It had been previously published under the title "Blue Steel" by Spider Page with all the names changed. Often the adventure in a Spider pulp would start on page one of a story and would go full speed to it's conclusion where on the last page, the villain would be killed then unmasked. There was no wasted space in Spider stories. The Spider was billed "Master of Men" on the covers of the pulps.

Richard Wentworth, a wealthy socialite and amateur detective, led a double life as The Spider, a mysterious and fearsome vigilante who killed criminals and stamped their foreheads with the seal of a crimson spider he kept concealed in a special cigarette lighter. The mark of The Spider was said to resemble a drop of blood and was placed on the foreheads of people he killed, often at risk to himself as police were nearby, so that no one else would be wrongly blamed for his kills. The lighter was invented by Professor Brownlee. Richard WQentworth was an ordinary man who had previous served in WWI, also a rich socialite who lived in a penthouse. He had many doubts and fears but when in the guise of The Spider, he fought fearlessly and relentlessly in a two-gun battle against evil, often being injured or wounded, even near to death sometimes as he dodged in and out of life or death situations.

Created by Harry Steeger as competition to Street and Smith Publications's The Shadow, and at first written by R.T.M. Scott. Several years earlier Scott had written a number of fast paced books about a character named Secret Service Smith who embodied the character of The Spider as he chased after deadly criminals. The Spider began as a mysterious, but uncostumed, avenger who operated after the fashion of a secret agent.

Scott's Wentworth was aided by his fiance, Nita Van Sloan who was anything but a shrinking violet. She featured in his deadliest adventures, sometimes fighting side by side with The Spider and even impersonating him when he was out of action. She and Wentworth were lovers but knew that they could not marry while super-criminals stalked America and murdered thousands of innocents. His Hindu manservant Ram Singh, who was a deadly knife thrower. Though Ram Singh referred to Wentworth as "the Master", he happily served someone who was the greatest warrior he had ever known and would have laid down his life for him, as he knew Wentworth would have done for him in turn.

An inventor named Professor Brownlee, his old war colleague featured in the early stories before being killed off. Brownlee's son made some appearances afterwards. Jackson, and his faithful chauffeur was like Ram Singh. He had served under Wentworth in World War One and often referred to him as "the Major". Jackson fought the good fight too against the underworld. Jackson was killed off in : "The Pain Emporer" where after confessing to the police that he was really The Spider, to cover for Wentworth, he died. But Norvell Page must have had second thoughts and in the midst of battle in : "Reign of the Death Fiddler", Jackson reappears to save Wentworth from the guns of the Underworld. It was later revealed in that same story that he had just been injured and Ram Singh had spirited him away to a secret location to be treated. But no one had thought to tell Wentworth who thought him dead, as did the readers. Jenkyns was an elderly butler who was part of the Wentworth style. Having money and living in a penthouse, a butler was part of his charade for the public but he did occasionally help Wentworth and sometimes suffered for being close to him, like when he, Ram Singh and Jackson were crucified by one of the fiends The Spider was fighting.

While The Spider used such secretive weapons as a silent air pistol that could be broken down and concealed in a hollow shoe tree, and a sword cane, his weapons of choice were a set of blued steel .45 automatics. The air pistol was only in the very early stories. Later The Spider killed his cold blooded enemies ruthlessly, often as they shot at him or to stop a slaughter. Needless to say, Wentworth was a dead shot, as was Nita Van Sloan. The Spider also carried a coil of nylon rope which though thin as a pencil could hold several hundred pounds weight. This he called his "Web".

Dogging Wentworth's steps was his friend and foil Police Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick, who suspected Wentworth was The Spider, but could not prove it. The police were after The Spider for his many bloody murders as was Comissioner Kirkpatrick. Though privately he approved of what The Spider did, often saving the city, officially he had to arrest Wentworth if he ever found evidence that he was The Spider. There was many close calls before Kirkpatrick was eventually pushed into the job of governership by the politicians he hated (in Reign of the Death Fiddler). The Commissioner's job was taken over by Flynn who Wentworth first thought might just be a political flunkey but turned out to be an able man for the job.

After two issues, the series was handed over to Norvell Page, who wrote under the house pen name Grant Stockbridge. Page's changes included making Ram Singh a burly, bombastic Sikh, and giving The Spider a 'public' persona: a disguise that made Wentworth look like a cloaked, slouch-hatted and hunchbacked 'monster' with a fright wig, hooked nose, bushy brows and fanged teeth. This disguise may have been copied from a 1921 Harold Lloyd film, Dr Jack where Lloyd dressed up in 'exactly the same disguise' as The Spider later wore, though other sources say it may have been a blending of John Barrymore's Mr. Hyde and Lon Chaney's vampire from London After Midnight. This character had been one of Wentworth's earlier aliases, Tito Caliepi who he used as an alias in "The Citadel of Hell", pretending to be a street violinist while on the run from criminals. He dropped this as an alias and used it for The Spider to make himself more fearsome. Another alias was Limpy Magee, a man with a heavy limp who owned a small shop where he fenced stuff for the Underworld and under whose guise he could listen in on conversations between crooks and pick up Underworld gossip. While this scuttling horror of the hunchback graced the ink sketches illustrating the inside of the magazine, it only graced a few of the covers. Most of the magazine's covers muted The Spider's look by depicting him in cloak, slouch hat and a black domino mask, akin to the mask of The Lone Ranger. In one of the early Page stories, before Wentworth created the 'vampiric' disguise, The Spider wore a full-face "curtain" mask with eyeholes. Unlike The Shadow, which focused on mystery, The Spider stories focused on frenetic action and desperation, with Wentworth battling to foil some of the most vile and sadistic villains in pulp history. Probably the most violent and action-packed of any of the major pulp series, The Spider perhaps retains more appeal to modern audiences than other, more dated pulp hero stores because of this.^{[citation needed]}

There were two movie serials produced about The Spider which were nothing like the pulps. Fans were extremely disappointed with them, and in one scene, two crooks are seen playing the children's game "patta-cake" in the background, slapping their palms together :

The Spider’s Web (1938)

The Spider Returns (1941)

These were 15-chapter cliffhangers produced by Columbia Pictures, and starring Warren Hull as Richard Wentworth. The film depiction had The Spider wearing a web-patterned black cloak and full-head hood which nowadays looks closer to Spider-Man's costume rather than the pulp 'monster' image. These are not currently available on the home video market. They are available on the video collector market.

The Spider pulps have been reprinted in both paperback and magazine format, with mass-market paperback reprints appearing as recently as the 1990s. Berkeley tried some reprints in the early seventies, intending to reprint all 118 stories in order but immediately hit poor sales and of the four reprinted, number four was given away free with number three. Small boutique publishers such as Girasol have been releasing facsimile editions of the original stories in limited runs up to the present time.

The characters were reinterpreted in comic book form by Timothy Truman in the 1990s from Eclipse Comics.

The Spider is a member of the Wold Newton family.

The Spider will make his return with a short story collection from Moonstone Books, a small independent publisher best known for their stories about Lee Falk's famous hero The Phantom.