The Sky Walker

The Avenger #3

by Kenneth Robeson (House Name)

A harsh, droning sound from an invisible plane. A man mysteriously walking in the sky, and huge skyscrapers collapse like matchsticks. Can the Avenger halt a master criminal's reign of death and destruction?

In the roaring heart of the crucible, steel is made. In the raging flame of personal tragedy, men are sometimes forged into something more than human.

It was so with Dick Benson. He had been a man. After the dread loss inflicted on him by an inhuman crime ring, he became a machine of vengeance dedicated to the extermination of all other crime rings.

He turned into the the person we know now: A figure of ice and steel, more pitiless than both; A mechanism of whipcord and flame; A symbol to crooks and killers; A terrible, almost impersonal force, masking chill genius and super normal power behind a face as white and dead as a mask from the grave. Only his pale eyes, like ice in a polar dawn, hint at the deadliness of the scourge the underworld heedlessly invoked against itself when crime's greed turned millionaire adventurer Richard Benson into The Avenger.

Genres: Pulp, Adventure, Fiction, Thriller

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Kenneth Robeson was the house name used by Street and Smith Publications as the author of their popular character Doc Savage and later The Avenger. Though most Doc Savage stories were written by the author Lester Dent, there were many others who contributed to the series, including:

William G. Bogart
Evelyn Coulson
Harold A. Davis
Lawrence Donovan
Alan Hathway
W. Ryerson Johnson

Lester Dent is usually considered to be the creator of Doc Savage. In the 1990s Philip José Farmer wrote a new Doc Savage adventure, but it was published under his own name and not by Robeson. Will Murray has since taken up the pseudonym and continued writing Doc Savage books as Robeson.

All 24 of the original stories featuring The Avenger were written by Paul Ernst, using the Robeson house name. In order to encourage sales Kenneth Robeson was credited on the cover of The Avenger magazine as "the creator of Doc Savage" even though Lester Dent had nothing to do with The Avenger series. In the 1970s, when the series was extended with 12 additional novels, Ron Goulart was hired to become Robeson.

Reviews

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 3rd novel in The Avenger series finally brings the overall series to the finale of its origin material. We get the final members of the team of five associates with the addition of Josh and Rosabel Newton, a married black couple who, like the other team members have been victims of crime and therefore want to assist in fighting it. Note: there will be an additional team member to come along but that is not until mid-series.

The plot of this one zeroes in on a common trope of the adventure pulps of the 1930’s and 40s: invisibility. The concept of invisibility and its uses in fiction ranged from the HG Wells novel The Invisible Man to the Universal movies that spun off the idea, all the way to Wonder Woman and her invisible plane. The science behind the idea presented here in this novel does not, of course, stand up to scrutiny but it sounds good and let’s face it, we’re not reading these books for our general advancement of knowledge.

Paul Ernst, of course, is the author behind the Kenneth Robeson house name this time as he is for the first 24 Avenger novels. I feel that in this third novel he has fully found his footing with the characters and the plot reflects this, with Dick Benson (The Avenger) efficiently directing his team in various tasks to solve the mystery. The series is more and more Doc Savage-like, especially now that he has five associates. Benson’s moralistic approach to fighting crime is very much like Doc’s. I do find it interesting that Benson’s five associates include two females and two blacks, quite a mix by the standard of 1939.

Overall, I am starting to enjoy these books more and more. I’m not sure they will ever reach a par with Doc Savage in my book but nevertheless, they are fun reads.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't sure about this third entry in the Avenger series at first. Paul Ernst is writing under the Street & Smith house name of Kenneth Robeson. This was due to an attempt by the publisher to take advantage of the popularity of Doc Savage, which was supposedly also penned by Kenneth Robeson, but actually was written by Lester Dent. There are points where some of the character's interactions mimic a Doc tale: squabbling between Avenger Dick Benson aides Smitty and Mac to evoke the constant feud between Doc's Monk and Ham; Mac's training as a chemist; Avenger Benson's superhuman strength. But this isn't Doc Savage by any means.

That's not to say there aren't some good pieces -- train wrecks, collapsing buildings -- but it lacks the color one excepts from a "Kenneth Robeson" and left me wanting more. I kept telling myself Doc/Dent was knocking stories out of the park by three tales into the series, but then I remembered reading Doc out of order. First, with the Golden Press editions and later with the Bantam reprints. The former had the The Spook Legion (retitled as The Ghost Legion) and the latter had The Meteor Menace. Those were the 26th and 13th Doc Savage adventures, respectively. Ernst's third outing as Kenneth Robeson does bear more resemblance to Doc's third, Quest of the Spider, when it comes to pacing. Despite that similarity, which lets me give Ernst a pass, he still isn't Lester Dent and my rating drops to one of my lowest.

Ernst has big shoes to fill with his fourth tale, as Dent followed this third outing with The Polar Treasure, considered by many a classic Doc tale that introduces his submarine, the Helldiver.

And actually, I've changed my rating up to three stars, because Ernst does something here that's unusual for its time, by introducing two African-American characters as part of Benson's team. Doc's five aides were in that series from the start. Ernst developed Benson's team through the course of these first three novels. So the fourth book -- The Devil's Horns -- will be the first true debut of Justice, Inc. Which is the next book up in my 52-book reading challenge for 2020 as part of the double-volume reprint put together by Sanctum Books.

[Mh430 · Rating 4 out of 5]

With this novel Josh and Isabel Newton join the Avenger's crime-fighting team and the ranks of Justice, Inc. are complete. Recruiting Nellie Gray in the previous installment of the series was radical enough, but now a black man and woman come on board as well. Amazing for the times. Of course, however accomplished this quintet may be, they all pale in comparison to their super-human, icy-eyed leader, Richard Henry Benson. If anything the Avenger is even more infallible than his Street & Smith 'cousins' Doc Savage and The Shadow and so the ultimate victory here is of course an absolute certainty. The greatest attraction to these stories then, is seeing Benson through the eyes of his proficient and yet still human agents. Their respect for him is undeniable but there remains an impassible divide between he and they that gives this series its special uniqueness among the hero pulps. Recommended.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in the 70s. Pulp adventure in the Doc Savage vein.

[Kendal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretend that its Doc, Pat, Monk, and Renny. Also, notice the title, eh?

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Avenger, Richard Benson, was one of the greatest pulp crime-fighters. He and his band of associates comprised Justice, Inc., and, armed with keen gadgets, clear genius, stout hearts, good humor, and the force of right set forth from their Bleek Street headquarters to thwart evil, defend goodness, and protect American society. The adventures were published as "by Kenneth Robeson, the creator of Doc Savage," (which may have led to the perception that The Avenger was something of a second-rate Doc), though the originals were actually written by Paul Ernst and then continued by Ron Goulart many years later. Armed with Mike & Ike, a very special knife and gun, Benson was teamed with Mac and Smitty (analogous to Monk and Ham from the Doc Savage series) from the beginning, and then joined by blonde and diminutive Nellie Grey (who could definitely have held her own with Pat Savage or Nita van Slaon) in the second book, Josh and Rosabel Newton, perhaps the best-depicted African-American couple from the era in The Sky Walker, and light-hearted Cole Wilson in the thirteenth adventure. The stories were well-paced and exciting and very well-written for the context of the era. Benson's origin, as recounted in Justice, Inc., the first story, was similar to Bruce Wayne's in that the loss of his family spurred his decision to fight crime; his wealth and physical prowess allowed him to do so. The loss of his wife and daughter resulted in a weird facial
deformity that made his skin lose its pigmentation and left it malleable like wax so that he could reform it and made him "the man of a thousand faces"; the loss of this ability in the thirteenth novel was a downturn in the series. The series continued for a second dozen adventures in the 1940's, and then revived for a third dozen in the 1970's when Warner Books had Goulart continue the series for another dozen volumes after they put out the first two dozen in paperback. It was a fun and thrill-packed intelligent series, more down-to-Earth than the Doc Savage books and much less crazy than The Spider series.

[Greg Trosclair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun pulp fiction, nuff said.

[Julie Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Via Uvula Audio where I greatly enjoyed the weekly episodes and the narration of this adventure.

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like Doc Savage the Avenger fights crime with the help of his aids. While the stories aren't as exciting and world ranging as Doc he is still a great pulp character and read. Very recommended

[Ronald · Rating 4 out of 5]

read some time in 1984