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The Spider
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The Spider is my favorite pulp hero character, more so than the Shadow or Doc Savage. I really enjoy the slam bang action and Norvell page is a very good writer in my opinion
I'm a big Spider fan as well. I think for me ... the biggest difference between the Spider's world and those of the other pulp heroes is this real apocalyptic sense to them. Doc Savage is out to save, to redeem, and to a lesser sense the Avenger, and even the Shadow can be seen as heroic, keeping the status quo together. The Spider seems more like a thumb in the dyke of anarchy and chaos ... and a rather destructive one at that. I like them ... but I don't recommend them as whole-heartdly as the others. They aren't for all tastes. Their like Paul Cain, short fast and brutal. People die vile deaths. Lots of them. The Spider as just as brutal... it's a dark world he lives in... and he's not necessarily brightening it up...
Mod
I'm halfway through Satan's Murder Machines and I'm really liking it. The Spider is like how I imagined the Shadow before I read any of the books; dark, gritty, and full of action. The Spider's supporting cast actually helps him, as opposed to Joe Cardona and the rest of the Shadow's crew who mostly serve as bait for the traps of the Shadow's enemies.
Although I devoured a lot of "superhero" comic books as a child (Superman, Batman, Supergirl, the Flash, Spiderman, etc.), as an adult I've never been into the whole superhero thing. I think that's because I tend to prefer protagonists whose example of heroism is something ordinary humans could emulate (even if we usually don't!), not something that comes easily to them because they "cheat" by having special powers.In discussing the movie Batman Begins with my daughter and son-in-law recently, though, I saw the Batman character in a bit of a new light. Despite all the "superhero" trappings and over-the-top comic book characteristics, Batman is an ordinary human being; he's not a super-powered alien nor infected with spider DNA. He's just a person very dedicated to what he does, and achieves what any normal person can with similar dedication and guts (plus, in his case, a lot of money! :-)) From what I've read here, I'd say the same general comments would also apply to the Spider?
Though I've read a lot fewer Spider stories than some of the other guys in the group, I'd say the Spider is definitely in the Batman vein of pulp heroes.
I love The Spider.Much as I love Doc Savage and The Shadow, I actually think Norvell Page was a better writer stylistically than Lester Dent or Walter Gibson. His stories are instantly involving, and visceral. The action is over the top, and the scenarios are epic and strange, the most pulpish of the hero pulps.
Richard Wentworth is also a mature grown-up hero in a way that Doc Savage and The Shadow never were, with his utterly devoted and romantic relationship with Nita van Sloan (which always reminds me of the relationship Spenser has with Susan Silverman in Robert Parker's novels, though Nita's much handier in a scrap).
The Spider: City of Doom
I agree completely with Tim, except I'd go further and say I'm not all that enamored of The Shadow and Doc Savage. The Spider character by Page is much, much better written.
I do think the four-issue arc in which The Shadow faces Benedict Stark represent some of the best of the Shdow stories, darker than Gibson's tales. Otherwise The Spider and The Shadow are kind of a toss-up for me.
Werner wrote: "Although I devoured a lot of "superhero" comic books as a child (Superman, Batman, Supergirl, the Flash, Spiderman, etc.), as an adult I've never been into the whole superhero thing. I think that'..."I felt that way as a kid. If I worked out and trained hard I could BE Batman. You had to be born on Krypton to be Superman. Of course, I was no fan of Robin; he was also a kid, and he was ALREADY better than me. But that inclination guided my choices of comics as a child. I much preferred Batman to Superman and, when the reduced the cost and size of World’s Finest Comics by shoehorning Batman and Superman into the same story, my favorite aspect of their joint efforts was the way in which Batman matched Superman’s exploits, each by each, with no superpowers. I was also a big fan of the Blackhawks and other heroes with no powers.
One of my favorites was Ghost Rider (from whom, I suggest, the design of Spiderman’s hood was swiped). He had no superpowers nor ghostly ones, but he had a lot of tricks to make the superstitious crooks (and Indians) of the day THINK he did. Again, with a little cleverness – and good marksmanship – I could have duplicated his exploits. Imagine my disgust when they resurrected him WITH supernatural powers and a motorcycle in place of a horse. And The Spirit! One of my favorite comics, wherein, again, the hero fooled criminals into believing he had superpowers. Apparently when they did the movie the Creativity Committee decided that today’s kids would insist on real superpowers. Completely ruined the whole timbre of the comic books/strips; I couldn’t stand more than 15 minutes or so of it. Possibly the worst big budget movie of all time, worse, even, that Fifth Element.
Dan wrote: "Though I've read a lot fewer Spider stories than some of the other guys in the group, I'd say the Spider is definitely in the Batman vein of pulp heroes. "I’m pretty sure I remember hearing that the Spider was one of the influences on Batman, as was the costumed character in the play The Bat. But I won’t swear to it.
I read several of the Spider novels years ago, and did enjoy them. Haven't seen one in ages--where did you find them?
I’m reading the last of my small collection of double Spider novels. The stories aren’t quite the masterpieces they seemed to me as a lad, but they’re still pretty darned entertaining. I always, even as a boy, thought the Doc Savage novels were pretty silly (a tradition carried on today by Clive Cussler). But Dent was skilled in certain ways, one of the most impressive being his ability to tie together half a dozen loose ends on the last page. In fact, that was part of the fun, seeing how the devil he could possibly explain all the subplots THIS time. Page simply didn’t bother. I just finished The Pain Master. The super villain is a supremely cruel aristocrat, Baron Crispi. WHY is he so cruel? What is his ultimate goal (plainly he is already rich). Why is he assisted by a cadre of little, brown Hindus? We’ll never know.But, as Page seems to recognize, it doesn’t much matter. My late friend, the writer Karl Wagner, was a fan of both. He commented that Doc Savage and company always seem to be having a great old time, while The Spider’s back is usually against the wall.
His relationship with Nita van Sloan has been mentioned and I think it must have been remarkable at the time. Wentworth was a wealthy young man about town, but he was no playboy. He was passionately devoted to Nita, though he was willing to sacrifice even her in his quest against crime and brutality. And she was no clinging vine. She could shoot straight,and more that once it was Nita who rescued the Spider.
Mary JL wrote: "Haven't seen one in ages--where did you find them?"I’m afraid I bought these many years ago, and even then they were, apparently, OOP. They were $2 apiece, found at a bookstore that specialized in new but remaindered books. They were the Carroll and Graf editions, published “by arrangement with Argosy Communications and copyrighted by that company – when’s the last time anyone saw a copy of Argosy magazine? – in 1991. They featured two spider novels each, with covers straight from the old pulps, though in only one case, as I recall, did the PB’s cover have anything to do with either of the stories within. I bought about seven of them, all I could afford at the time, but there were more. Only recently have I found time to finish reading them.
The quality of the covers varied. But the first Spider paperback reprints, and my introduction to the character, came out in the late sixties or early seventies (I think). I remember best their very well executed covers, on a par with the Bama Doc Savage covers. The man who modeled for The Spider, or the artist’s rendition of him, was most remarkable, in that he did not seem a man of great bulk, but the small muscles of the face were pronounced enough that we could believe this was a powerful man who was constantly repressing his violent passions and forsaking a loving home for the good of mankind, New Yorkers in particular.
John: Yes, in the sixties, when Bantam began Doc Savagereprints and did pretty well for a time, other pulp reprints were available then--The Sahdow, G-8 and His Battle Aces, The Spider, Operator 5 and many other.They're just hard to find now!
Look to Amazon. There have been several three book collections from The Spider Magazine and a number of the reproductions of the actual magazines with artwork, ads, and previews of the next issue. A good number of them are available on the used book sites.
There are 19 Spider stories on iPulpFiction.com. They are reprinted from Moonstone Books' 2007 anthology of new short stories, The Spider Chronicles, that was published in 2007. One story was written by John Jakes.[image error]
Randy wrote: "Look to Amazon. There have been several three book collections from The Spider Magazine ..."Thanks, Randy. I was one of the earliest customers of Amazon, and they were a mainstay for years. I even bought my girlfriend a KitchenAid mixer from them. But I’m boycotting them, now, due to their continued support of dog and cock fighting (to say nothing of their selling paté de foie gras). But I’ve found there are many other fine sources of everything they carry, often at better prices. And other companies need my business more.
iPulp looks intriguing, KB, and I guess it’s good we’re giving our forests a break. But I still prefer my pulp in pulp form. As far as I know Moonstone is still publishing the old fashioned way: I got some comics from them just a few months ago. Are these, in fact, the comic book versions of The Spider? I bought some of the squarebound Spider comics published by somebody or other a few years back; as I recall they were pretty good. Some here mentioned how they never cared for superheroes (referring to characters with superhuman powers). I did my thesis on comic books, back in the early days of comic book shops, when it looked like comic books might actually blossom into a true art form here. Alas, direct sale comic shops are a plague of superheroes. Moonstone is a breath of fresh air in that regard, with a number of titles featuring heroes with normal human limitations, many of them the great pulp and radio heroes of yesteryear. Dark Horse also has a number of non-superheroes, including my favorites, Little Lulu and Tubby.
These are not the SPIDER comics. They are short stories, like the originals, with nice pen and ink illustration by Tom Floyd. And, yes, you can still buy the print volume from moonstonebooks.com or you favorite online book vendor. On iPulp you acquire the stories individually and don't need to invest in the whole book.As for digital publishing, I started iPulpFiction.com out of concern for the growing reading gap between boys and girls and the decline of short story writing as an art form. It was a way to provide the type of stories that interest boys very cheaply and in a format they are used to. Here's why I think the digital reinvention of the dime novel is important:
In the past, dime novels and other forms of pulp fiction provided affordable entertainment for the masses and cultivated generations of influential writers of genre fiction such as Ray Bradbury, Raymond Chandler, and H. P. Lovecraft. It was a time when kids carried a dime novel folded in their hip pocket or nestled out-of-site in their school book. Orson Scott Card, the Hugo Award-winning author of Ender’s Game and an iPulp contributor says, “Cheap short fiction—it’s the lifeblood of literature.”
Today, the pulps are mostly gone, and short story writing is a dying art. iPulpFiction.com wants to reinvigorate the genre short story market and inspire new generations of writers by taking pulp fiction to the mobile generation—to be hidden among their digital textbooks on their tablet computers, and on smart phones tucked in their hip pockets. Kathleen Duey, National Book Award-finalist author of the YA novel Skin Hunger says, “iPulp takes fast-paced fiction to the kids, where they live, on the Internet. What a perfect idea. Home delivery. May it do for literacy what it did for pizza.”
If we want to see pulp fiction survive, we need to draw the young readers in.
John wrote: "...I was one of the earliest customers of Amazon, .... But I’m boycotting them, now, due to their continued support of dog and cock fighting..."How exactly are they doing that? I've read that they sell a few how-to books on those disgusting practices, but for most, if not all, they are just the store front. Are you suggesting they stop selling some books due to content that you find offensive?
Jim wrote: "John wrote: "...I was one of the earliest customers of Amazon, .... But I’m boycotting them, now, due to their continued support of dog and cock fighting..."How exactly are they doing that? I've..."
Good point. I find such things disgusting and I know things I like other people find disgusting(Science fiction for one), but I would seriously object if Amazon quit selling SF because some folks were against it.
No, dog and cock is certainly heinous, but selling books doesn't equate with support.
Jim wrote: Are you suggesting they stop selling some books due to content that you find offensive? Yes, Jim, I’m suggesting they stop selling some books that I – and, in this at least, most Americans – find offensive. I’m not suggesting they be put into jail for it – though facilitating a crime is a crime itself – but I am suggesting that people of good will stop buying books – or mixers, or coffee or anything at all – from them. Just as in a democracy they are not REQUIRED to stop selling offensive books, neither are they OBLIGED to sell offensive books. I’m pretty sure they don’t sell any child pornography, so they don’t have to represent EVERY point of view (of course, I suspect it is only the fact that it’s illegal that prevents them from selling child porn); plainly they value profit over principle. If I had a corner bookstore and carried a shelf of racist and Nazi literature I’d like to think that everyone on this list would stop patronizing me. And that’s what I’m doing with Amazon.
Randy said, “No, dog and cock is certainly heinous, but selling books doesn't equate with support.” Sure it does. Amazon is now the only national source of one Cockfignting magazine (it was forced by law – don’t know the details – to quit selling another; only the cockfighters squealed that free speech was being abridged). The magazines advertised fighting cocks for sale, gaffs (the razor-sharp blades with which they replace the spurs), etc. They also have dog-fighting materials. “Heinous,” you say. You bet it is. I can direct you to photos online (some on my own VSET site) of dogs who somehow survived with limbs and big parts of their faces ripped off. Dog fighters also steal pets to use for blooding. Perhaps if you discovered Fluffy or Duke had been torn to ribbons you’d feel less charitable toward Amazon. I’ve rescued several pit bulls myself – trying to place one now – and they are by nature so playful and loyal it breaks my heart to know what some of them have endured. It’s important to distinguish good from evil and, if not actively opposing the latter, not to tacitly endorse it. It’s not that hard to bypass Amazon. If our fathers and grandfathers could storm the beaches at Normandy, I think we can go so far as to refuse to patronize evil-doers. The Spider would have understood.
KB wrote: "Here's why I think the digital reinvention of the dime novel is important: ...Today, the pulps are mostly gone, and short story writing is a dying art."
Ah. I didn’t realize you, yourself, had founded iPulp. I hope you dont think I as belittling your efforts; I approve whole-heartedly. It’s just that I prefer the old-fashioned random interface of books of real paper (if not real pulp). Sitting at my desktop reading a story, to me, is not nearly as pleasant as capping off my day reading one in bed. I truly hope people of all ages are introduced to the wonderful world of pulps by your site – which looked great, btw – it’s just hard for me to imagine reading a whole novel that way. Maybe when I have an Apple Tablet I can read in bed I’ll be a more likely customer. Maybe I can find a pulp paper sachet to provide a whiff of authenticity.
And I am as concerned as you are about the disappearance of the short story. Strange, in a way, in our day of shortened attention spans. As a boy I much preferred short stories. It seemed I was getting more for my money with a book of short stories than with a novel: more concepts, more characters, more dramatic finishes. If you didn’t care for one of them the day was not yet lost; the next story might redeem your purchase. Today not only can one not find collections of short stories at the newsstand, it’s hard even to find a novel that stands on its own; they’re all Volume N of the Smegma Trilogy. Seeing the word trilogy, especially on the FIRST volume, is enough to cause me to take a pass on a book. If one starts a novel knowing s/he will follow it with two more, that first book is not likely to arrive at anything approaching a satisfactory denouement.
Not that authors have a lot of say in it. Frank Belknap Long once told me he much preferred writing short stories, but that publishers wouldn’t even look at them; he had to expand everything into a novel, often robbing a decent story of its vitality. I think Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd/Grey Mouser stories were not nearly so perfect when he padded them out to make them into novels.
Along with the vanishing of the short story has come the end of the anthology series, that was once so common on TV and, before that, on radio. I am always excited when someone tries to reintroduce such a series – The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, Masters of Science Fiction – but they seem doomed to failure. Only Tales from the Crypt, ths show based on old comic books, had a good, long run. The Outer Limits survived for quite a while, but it became hag-ridden by special effects to the near exclusion of good writing.
In short, more power to you. I truly hope a new generation of scholars will be, as you suggest, hiding fast-paced adventure yarns from your site in their notebook computers and secretly reading them in class as I once hid reprinted pulp paperbacks in my three-ring notebook for the same purpose.
It's funny this should come up now, John. I was just thinking about it last night. I finally got a copy of Zelazny's "Home is the Hangman" - a novella in book form. (I was disappointed in that I'd hoped for more artwork.) That same story is the third of three that make up "My Name is Legion", which is a regular sized book. Zelazny made his reputation on shorter works. I was reading the forward & one of the points made was that Zelazny's ability to write shorter works makes his novels even better.The market for stories seems quite limited as to length now. I couldn't find anything for the 20,000 word range. Short stories markets are very limited, but a few are still around. There doesn't seem to be any for novellas at all, though. I've heard that series are what publishers really want now. Even that is tough since everyone seems to be writing now.
John wrote: "Randy said, “No, dog and cock is certainly heinous, but selling books doesn't equate with support.” Sure it does. Amazon is now the only national source of one Cockfignting magazine (it was forced ..."I disagree that selling the books equates with support or that Amazon should be pressured to stop. Neither books nor ideas are bad, only the actions of the people are, IMO. I base that on a combination of personal responsibility & the ease with which ANY abridgment of the First Amendment can & will be misused.
Let me be clear that I consider dog & cock fighting despicable. Flogging such people & putting them in the stocks for a few days seems a reasonable punishment for such activities to me.
There is no worthwhile impact on such activities by going after the books about it, though. Books about it are good for research, if nothing else. ("Know they enemy.") I read religious & racist literature occasionally, if only to try to understand how others think, not because I believe in either one.
The biggest problem with banning some books due to content is there is no end to it. Well meaning people can find reasons to ban far too many books for that reason, e.g. "Huckleberry Finn" due to 'nigger'. Google for 'banned book list' or check out http://www.banned-books.com sometime. It's plain scary.
Your reasoning about dog/cock fighting could very easily be expanded to remove The Call of the Wild & White Fang from distribution since both have graphic dog fighting scenes in them. The same reasoning could be used to take books about sex, religion, violence or any other controversial subject off the shelf or have them severely edited.
This same reasoning has been used historically by governments & religions. That includes religions that preach tolerance, but have killed people that don't believe as they do. Without a shred of real evidence, with all the logical inconsistencies & various interpretations of the same texts - they're still so sure of their beliefs that they kill people, burn books & commit other heinous crimes against others simply because their beliefs or emphasis vary slightly.
I don't find that acceptable at all & neither do most people in this country, thus the First Amendment is still enduring fairly well. I find calls like yours to abridge it to be ill considered, at best.
Where did I ever call for an abridgement of the First Amendment? Please? In fact, I specifically said that Amazon has the RIGHT to sell these books and magazines – though, apparently, one of the cockfighting magazines has been withdrawn due to civil or legal action, I forget which. We can see that Amazon’s fierce devotion to free speech stops short of actually going to the mat for it by defying that court action. The issue there, as I recall, was that the magazine was facilitating crime with its advertising. You see, the right of free speech, which I also ardently defend, is not absolute in our country (still less so in, say, Britain). The most familiar exception is yelling fire in a crowded theater. We are also not allowed to own or publish child pornography or to incite to violence (riot). That last prohibition is of special interest to me since a fool in my hometown of Knoxville responded to such incitement, according to his own statements, and walked into my church and started shooting people because he felt that church was full of liberals. It’s pure chance that I didn’t attend that day; I’d have been sitting exactly where his victims were clustered, including Greg McKendry, a better man than I, who stepped deliberately in front of his shotgun blast to allow others a chance to subdue the creep. For those who doubt his conservative heroes ever actually called for violence against liberals, I’ve got a whole list of examples. So my absolute defense of freedom os speech is not as great as it once was. My awareness of the great importance of freedome of speech arose early in my childhood, when I watched that burgeoning art form the comic book destroyed creatively by the Comics Code. My aversion to that group and to John Goldwater – or to Dr. Wertham’s dubious field of psychiatry and the psychology integral to it – has not diminished with the years. But every freedom has its limits, or my fist would be encountering noses on a regular basis. Striking that balance is a large part of what society is all about.
I also never for a moment suggested that no mention of cock fighting or dog fighting should be permitted; that is a huge straw man. In fact, an acquaitance of mine, the celebrated Dr. Bass of Body Farm fame, has written a novel wherein cock fighting plays a big part. (His fictional Cook County is, in reality, Cocke County, ironically enough, where the largest cock fighting bust in history, at that time, was made a couple of years ago). Obviously, one cannot condemn such an activity without writing and speaking about it.
In my hypothetical example of my small, independent book store, it is one thing to carry books ABOUT the Ku Klux Klan, quite another to carry books BY the Ku Klux Klan. Any reader who entered my store and saw pamphlets with stereotyped, 30’s style caricatures of black people and statements of approval of the lynching of uppity “niggers” would have no trouble distinguishing that from Mark Twain’s use of the word in _Huckleberry Finn_, and no one here would condemn them for boycotting my store. It is also standard practice for groups to boycott advertisers on TV shows they find objectionable. Sometimes I agree with such groups, sometimes not, but I have never thought their actions constituted an abridgment of the first amendment.
In fact, it is not those who tacitly endorse animal cruelty who are in danger of having their free speech rights curtailed, but those who speak out against such cruelty. There are animal rights defenders in jail right now whose only crime is condemning animal cruelty online. They were prosecuted under the so-called Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, legislation that seeks to do for all free speech related to animal issues what the Comics Code did for the comic book. I’m not sure what its current provisions state, but local versions, in Texas for example, have sought to characterize undercover reporting and photography of cruelty in meat production and puppy mills, the picketing of any animal product enterprise if that picketing results in loss of revenue (that cause and effect relationship to be determined by the merchant) or even contributing to any group that does those things, as terrorism. If you’re really concerned about freedom of speech, I urge you to examine the AETA. A site called Green is the New Red is a good place to start.
Amazon has the right – but not the obligation – to carry any legal literature they choose. I have the right – AND the obligation – to urge compassionate people to boycott them. Which I do now.
BTW, there is an account that I think some might find amusing of my effort to discuss this with an Amazon spokesperson. It’s on my own, neglected webpage, http://www.vset.net. There is a green link about halfway down the homepage titled “Standing Up to Amazon.” My account of my conversation is linked from the article that opens from there.
By a coincidence the Spider novel I’m reading right now, The Secret City (nothing to do with nearby Oak Ridge, which was also once called that) has several mentions of dog fighting. The cruel and vicious master criminal in ths story keeps, for his own amusement, several “pit fighting dogs” (no use of the word “bull,” which comes, of course from the pit bull’s bulldog ancestor, once used for bull-baiting). I haven’t finished the story, yet, but I’m hoping the villain’s demise is especially grisly.
You certainly managed to take #29 pretty far afield & in a scary direction. I've never equated freedom of speech with shooting folks. Incitement doesn't mean coercion & I'm sure the man would say anything to try to get the charges lowered. He's responsible for his actions - end of story. You're making a similar leap when you say Amazon is supporting dog fighting by selling books on the subject. Nut jobs have used the same logic to shoot doctors who perform abortions. This is typical of fanatic idealists - their reality check has bounced.
Amazon is a business & I'd be surprised if they were very idealistic or terribly familiar with every product. I can understand them resisting until they got a lawsuit handed to them & the folding. Insurance companies do it constantly. As a store front for thousands of other businesses & probably millions of items, I'd think your efforts would be better spent going after the originators; the manufacturers, publishers & such.
Calling for the ban of any book is too dangerous. When one is banned, the door is open to ban others for similar reasons. That's where fanatics & misguided idealists lose touch with reality. They don't realize that others have similar feelings about their pet projects or that theirs may go further than they want. It's not a huge leap from banning a book on dog fighting to banning one that graphically describes it.
- Guns banned from schools led to an elementary kid getting suspended for bringing in a G.I. Joe toy pistol, a 1" plastic gun.
- Child pornography laws led to a grandmother being arrested for having pictures of her naked grand baby.
Those are just two examples, using similar logic, to arrive at ludicrous conclusions.
No, it's best keep all books free of censorship, as much as possible. Sure, there will be a few rotten ones, but that's better than the alternative, IMO.
I’ll try to make the point again, then I must close for a while; my freedom of speech is curtailed by lack of time.I haven’t called for the banning of any book; only for the boycott of those businesses that make a profit selling the most odious ones. Boycotts are a useful and legal form of political expression (as opposed to economic boycotts which are, properly, illegal), and the endorsement of them is a perfectly proper use of free speech.
I’ll realize that not everyone will want to be bothered. In fact, plainly, most will not. I don’t think Amazon is much concerned with the loss of the business of a few animal lovers. Some will feel they need to support Amazon’s rights; that’s the case Amazon (and Bezos) themselves make. Others simply can’t be bothered.
Even though my participation in the boycott of Amazon may not have much effect on them, though, it has some effect on how I feel about myself. At least none of my money is advancing the harm they do.
Gotta go.
This discussion thread has been hijacked.
KB, I don't think it has been hijacked, but you are right in some of the discussion probably being better off having its own, seperate thread.
Sorry. Banning or limiting book sales is a hot button. I'll shut up now.
Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans
Books mentioned in this topic
White Fang (other topics)The Call of the Wild (other topics)
The Spider: City of Doom (other topics)
The Spider, Master of Men! #1: Satan's Death Blast (other topics)
The City Destroyer (other topics)
More...
Anyway, I really enjoyed this one, and am looking forward to reading more Spider reprints. Any other Spider fans out there? How do you think he compares with Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Avenger, etc.? One thing I was struck by were all the similarities to Batman, who was created after The Spider was a well-established character. Both are wealthy playboys by day, both work closely with Gotham's police commissioner, both wear an outfit designed to strike fear into the hearts of evildoers, both have a faithful butler/driver who aids them. Not to say that they're identical, of course. The Spider's twin .45s are something Batman would never use, and the description of his Spider disguise reminded me more of Lon Chaney's makeup and dress in London After Midnight than anything else. And the scene in which he works through his terrible emotions following a terrorist attack by playing his pipe organ seemed influenced by Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera.