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The Spider, Master of Men! #4
A pulp favorite for 60 years--and clearly the inspiration for many superheroes, including Spiderman and Batman--The Spider continues in high style with two blazing crimefighting action The Pain Emperor and Death Reign of the Vampire King.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1935
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Grant Stockbridge
411 books9 followersPen Name asociated with the pulp hero The Spider.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 23, 2021
Possible spoilers...
A very nice Spider volume! DEATH REIGN OF THE VAMPIRE KING (one of the greatest titles ever!) is one of the most famous stories in the series, long figured to have been the inspiration for some famous comic book folk a generation or so later. The second story, THE PAIN EMPEROR, isn't quite as gripping but is still a nice tale in its own right. One confusing point in it is that the character of Jackson dies, but since I know he figures in dozens of subsequent adventures that I've read I hope to find out sometime how he returns from this one. The antagonist here was called The Avenger, but don't confuse him with Richard Benson. The cover of this volume seems to be for a story not included, and features a young lady wearing a yellow dress in peril while The Spider is trying to save her from a (small) menacing horde... I thought that Nita only owned red dresses? I'll have to find out about that, too! Lots of fun! Lots of exclamation points!
A very nice Spider volume! DEATH REIGN OF THE VAMPIRE KING (one of the greatest titles ever!) is one of the most famous stories in the series, long figured to have been the inspiration for some famous comic book folk a generation or so later. The second story, THE PAIN EMPEROR, isn't quite as gripping but is still a nice tale in its own right. One confusing point in it is that the character of Jackson dies, but since I know he figures in dozens of subsequent adventures that I've read I hope to find out sometime how he returns from this one. The antagonist here was called The Avenger, but don't confuse him with Richard Benson. The cover of this volume seems to be for a story not included, and features a young lady wearing a yellow dress in peril while The Spider is trying to save her from a (small) menacing horde... I thought that Nita only owned red dresses? I'll have to find out about that, too! Lots of fun! Lots of exclamation points!
February 1, 2012
This might be the best of the Carroll & Graf two-adventure reprints of the magnificent pulp hero from the 1930s and '40s, The Spider, aka Richard Wentworth. "Death Reign of the Vampire King" (one of the all-time great pulp titles; note how it dances on the tongue!) features a nefarious bat man who glides in on wings and has a horde of bloodthirsty vampire bats who do his bidding. Awesomely fun and wild.
"The Pain Emperor" features massive bloodshed (not unusual with our cowled adventurer's exploits) and a supposed vigilante who upstages The Spider (but we know the score). Makeup that hideously disfigures women; tainting of food so that masses suffer and die; all in all, bizarre, pulse-pounding and occasionally nonsensical fun.
It's hard for me to give this five stars, since it hardly is high-brow entertainment, but I was tempted.
"The Pain Emperor" features massive bloodshed (not unusual with our cowled adventurer's exploits) and a supposed vigilante who upstages The Spider (but we know the score). Makeup that hideously disfigures women; tainting of food so that masses suffer and die; all in all, bizarre, pulse-pounding and occasionally nonsensical fun.
It's hard for me to give this five stars, since it hardly is high-brow entertainment, but I was tempted.
November 23, 2021
Two Spider stories, both full of pulp action. Death Reign of the Vampire King is interesting because it introduces a villain named "The Bat Man" years prior to the comic book character of the same name. The second story, The Pain Emperor, piles so much grief on The Spider that I really could not guess how he was going to get out of the mess. Both stories are by Norvell Page and both show why The Spider made The Shadow and Doc Savage seem tame by comparison, maybe because the streak of insanity is more overt in The Spider than it is in the other two characters, though one has to admit it is present in them too. If you haven't been introduced to The Spider, and you like pulp literature, than these two tales would be a good introduction indeed.
September 15, 2013
This volume contains two reprinted novellas, Death Reign of the Vampire King and The Pain Emperor. Intriguingly, when Carroll and Graf, publishers of this set of reprint books, decided to choose the cover of this paperback, they chose the cover illustration of The Spider magazine with the cover line “Master of the Night-Demons.” One wonders if this was an original title for the first novella and it was changed after the cover was finished (I remember Harlan Ellison once telling me that he wrote for Amazing Stories at a time when several cover illustrations were commissioned at a time and authors would pitch story ideas based on the paintings by looking at a half-dozen at a time.) because the covers were often painted in advance. That doesn’t entirely explain it because the cover lines would have been added on different plates well after the paintings were complete.
Be that as it may, these two novellas are classic examples of the pulp avenger/detective/faux criminal genre. To me, The Spider is more ruthless than either The Shadow or The Green Hornet because The Shadow sometimes uses his mental tricks to catch the thieves and Green Hornet sometimes makes them pass out with his gas gun. So, for me, a reader who grew up during the comics code era of comic book heroes who always subdued rather than killed, it’s almost a shock to see vigilante heroes with a secret identity going around and killing off criminals. Don’t get me wrong. I love pulp fiction with its exaggerations and wild, extravagant plots. It just surprises me sometimes when The Spider simply assassinates a villain. And, as this semi-relevant discussion may make clear, he does so in at least one of these stories.
Death Reign of the Vampire King is the lead novel in this two-novel volume. The overall plot has to do with an onslaught of vampire bats and the main complication, of course, has The Spider accused of being responsible for the bat plague (speaking of comics, that has a familiar ring to it—“Loose the bat plague, Robin!”). Since he is also accused of being responsible for the deaths in The Pain Emperor, that isn’t surprising or intriguing. What is intriguing is the number of ways he manages to get blamed for the vampire bat epidemic. Even when he is saving lives, things go awry.
Both novels have some additional factors in common. Both plots involve greed as the basis for the plot events. The first involves killing off business partners and the second involves killing off innocent civilians in order to cover other crimes as well as collect protection money from other companies in the same business. Both plots involve a lot of airplanes being destroyed. Both plots have beautiful, dangerous women who want to avenge the deaths of their brothers—even if they are misled in how they are going about it. Both involve (as do all of The Spider stories I’ve read from this era) improbable costume changes.
Truthfully, I really like reading these adventures as a change of pace, but having both of these stories with so many repetitive elements in them side-by-side was just a little much. I read them both with relish, but I wish I had put more space between them so that the second one would have felt fresher.
Be that as it may, these two novellas are classic examples of the pulp avenger/detective/faux criminal genre. To me, The Spider is more ruthless than either The Shadow or The Green Hornet because The Shadow sometimes uses his mental tricks to catch the thieves and Green Hornet sometimes makes them pass out with his gas gun. So, for me, a reader who grew up during the comics code era of comic book heroes who always subdued rather than killed, it’s almost a shock to see vigilante heroes with a secret identity going around and killing off criminals. Don’t get me wrong. I love pulp fiction with its exaggerations and wild, extravagant plots. It just surprises me sometimes when The Spider simply assassinates a villain. And, as this semi-relevant discussion may make clear, he does so in at least one of these stories.
Death Reign of the Vampire King is the lead novel in this two-novel volume. The overall plot has to do with an onslaught of vampire bats and the main complication, of course, has The Spider accused of being responsible for the bat plague (speaking of comics, that has a familiar ring to it—“Loose the bat plague, Robin!”). Since he is also accused of being responsible for the deaths in The Pain Emperor, that isn’t surprising or intriguing. What is intriguing is the number of ways he manages to get blamed for the vampire bat epidemic. Even when he is saving lives, things go awry.
Both novels have some additional factors in common. Both plots involve greed as the basis for the plot events. The first involves killing off business partners and the second involves killing off innocent civilians in order to cover other crimes as well as collect protection money from other companies in the same business. Both plots involve a lot of airplanes being destroyed. Both plots have beautiful, dangerous women who want to avenge the deaths of their brothers—even if they are misled in how they are going about it. Both involve (as do all of The Spider stories I’ve read from this era) improbable costume changes.
Truthfully, I really like reading these adventures as a change of pace, but having both of these stories with so many repetitive elements in them side-by-side was just a little much. I read them both with relish, but I wish I had put more space between them so that the second one would have felt fresher.
May 16, 2009
These are fun, fast paced mysteries. I look forward to reading my next Spider novel. Good for laid back summertime reading.
August 12, 2009
Norvell Page
September 5, 2016
The Spider vs. the Bat Man(!!!) and the Avenger(!!!)
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews