The Wild Adventures of the Spider: Fury in Steel - Will Murray

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that my introduction to The Spider was in 1969, when Berkley Medallion reprinted the first two books in the series, THE SPIDER STRIKES and THE WHEEL OF DEATH, both by R.T.M. Scott. They released these in an odd, “buy one, get one free” scheme which saw the two paperbacks bound together with a paper band around them. I bought them off the spinner rack in a drugstore in Stephenville, Texas. My mother and I were on our way to my aunt’s house in Blanket, Texas, and I usually talked her into stopping at that store in Stephenville because they had good paperback and comic book spinners, as well as a big magazine rack where I saw some of the late issues of RANCH ROMANCES but didn’t buy any because I was spending my money on paperbacks like those two Spider novels.

Anyway, to get back to the subject at hand . . . Berkley reprinted a couple more Spider novels, these by Norvell Page writing under the house-name Grant Stockbridge. Page was far and away the most prolific Spider author and really defined the series’ tone with his wild, over-the-top plots and almost non-stop action. The problem is, I never saw those paperbacks. They just didn’t show up in any my usual book-buying haunts. It was more than a decade before I read any more of the Spider series, although by then I had read quite a bit about it. A few more reprints started trickling out in the early Eighties, a trio of trade paperbacks published by an outfit called Dimedia, and I found an issue of the actual pulp in a thrift store, and I picked up used copies of several novels published by Pocket Books that had been rewritten and “updated” but still retained some of the pulp feel. More actual reprints followed, some in mass market paperback, some in facsimile editions from small press publishers, and I read most of them. I’m not a Spider expert—I’ve read maybe half of the series in one format or another—but I always enjoy the character and his wild exploits.

Which brings us to The Wild Adventures of the Spider, a series of brand-new novels by pulp expert and fine writer Will Murray. The first one, THE DOOM LEGION, guest-starred two other characters from Popular Publications pulps, G-8 (the Flying Spy) and Operator 5, Jimmy Christopher his own self. I loved it. Murray’s latest Spider novel, the recently released FURY IN STEEL, also has some guest stars, in this case Emile C. Tepperman’s intrepid trio of fast-shooting FBI agents, the Suicide Squad: Johnny Kerrigan, Dan Murdoch, and Stephen Klaw. I’ve read half a dozen of Tepperman’s Suicide Squad stories, and they’re great. So seeing them in the same book with The Spider was a big draw for me. They don’t exactly team up—in fact, for most of the book the FBI agents are trying to arrest Richard Wentworth and in fact succeed in doing so at one point—but their efforts against an invasion of New York by giant killer robots makes for some great reading.

That’s right, giant killer robots that can bite off a man’s head, tear him limb from limb, and, like steel termites, gnaw away the foundations of skyscrapers to bring them crashing down. Another week, another apocalypse in the Big Apple, a crazed scheme by another villain to wreak havoc, panic the nation, and cause the deaths of thousands. And the only one who can stop it, of course, is The Spider.

FURY IN STEEL is just pure fun from start to finish. The plot is well-structured, flowing smoothly from great action scene to great action scene, Murray’s prose captures the frantic tone perfectly, and he has a keen sense of the absurd, pushing the boundaries but always stopping short of letting things get silly. I enjoyed this novel a great deal, and if you’re a fan of The Spider, or just a fan of wild pulp adventures in general, I give it my highest recommendation. 

Who's Who in New Pulp - Ron Fortier, ed.

THE ETERNAL PULPS

Since the days of Homer, people have naturally loved a good story. From the oral traditions of heroic sagas all the way to the traveling minstrels of the Middle Ages and the Penny Dreadfuls and Dime Novels of a burgeoning new continent. People have always enjoyed action adventure yarns. Then in the 1930s they evolved as garishly painted monthly magazines printed on rough, cheap paper and they were christened the Pulps.

Today their heritage continues in both the hundreds of paperbacks that entertain the masses as “populace fare.” There’s nothing high-brow here, just plain old-fashioned entertainment as a new 21st century generation has picked up the mantle to continue those amazing tales. In these pages you will find….The 222 Writers, Artists, Editors, & Publishers Who together are — THE WHO’S WHO Of NEW PULP!

(I got my copy of this today and, while I haven't read it cover to cover yet, I've had a great time already just looking through it. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have an entry in it myself since I've written a few things that fall directly into the New Pulp category and probably 95%--or more--of my entire career shows a definite pulp influence. This volume is great because it's already introduced me to writers whose work I need to check out, and in many cases it's nice to be able to put a face with the names I already know. I really need to read more New Pulp, and this book is going to inspire me to do so. Highly recommended!)

The Doom Legion - Will Murray

Back in 1969, there was a drugstore in Stephenville, Texas, where I always asked my parents to stop when we were traveling through there on our way to visit relatives in Brownwood and Blanket. I’ll bet some of you can guess why I wanted to stop. That’s right, the store had a paperback spinner rack, a comics spinner rack, and a magazine rack. That’s where I was one day, turning that paperback rack, when I spied an odd thing: two books with a paper band around them, advertising two for the price of one. They were the first couple of books in a series called THE SPIDER, by somebody I’d never heard of named R.T.M. Scott. I couldn’t look at them that well because of that paper band holding them together, but from what I could see of the first book, it looked pretty lurid, so I thought, sure, for 60 cents I’ll give this a try.

Well, I read both of those books—THE SPIDER STRIKES and THE WHEEL OF DEATH—pretty quickly, and I remember that I enjoyed them but couldn’t tell you anything else about them, and I’ve never reread them. By then I knew about pulps—I was a big fan of Doc Savage and The Shadow—and I realized these were reprints from a pulp magazine. Berkley Medallion published the paperbacks, and they did two more in the series, both under the name Grant Stockbridge. Paperback distribution being what it was in those days, though, I never came across those books, and I guess I must not have liked the first two well enough to try to hunt them down. And so I forgot about The Spider for a few years.

But then I began reading more about the character in various pulp fanzines, and more about “Grant Stockbridge”, who was usually a writer whose real name was Norvell Page, and then I picked up some reprints from an outfit called Dimedia, which also did a few Operator 5 reprints, and before you knew it, I was a fan. Over the years there have been lots of Spider reprints from various companies, and I’ve bought most of them. Wild plots, non-stop action, and a level of heroic angst not many pulp yarns ever matched. It’s great stuff.

Which brings us to THE DOOM LEGION, the latest novel from the modern-day King of the Pulps, Will Murray, which teams up The Spider with two more iconic pulp heroes, Operator 5 (mentioned above, and often in other posts on this blog) and G-8, the Flying Spy, who battled various bizarre enemies during World War I in the pages of his own long-running pulp written by Robert J. Hogan. Needless to say, with heroes like that, you need some good villains to oppose them, and Murray brings back two, one from G-8’s past (just look at that gorgeous cover by Joe DeVito, and if you ever read any of the G-8 series you can probably guess which) and one of The Spider’s old foes as well (one that I hadn’t encountered yet in the original pulp novels, many of which I still haven’t read—but I’m getting to them!).

THE DOOM LEGION begins with a Halloween party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In attendance are socialite Richard Wentworth (long suspected of being the vigilante known as The Spider) and his girlfriend Nita van Sloan. A mysterious green meteorite crashes into nearby Central Park with tragic results that over the next 24 hours fills New York with death and destruction. I don’t really need to go too much into the plot, but it’s a whirlwind of action and danger that never lets up, and Murray captures Norvell Page’s breathless style very well.

If you’re a fan of The Spider, you really can’t afford to miss this one. I’ve said this before, but Will Murray is one of the few writers who can make me feel like I’m back in junior high or high school, eagerly devouring a paperback I bought off a spinner rack for 50 or 60 cents, and I tell you, with the world the way it is today . . . those respites, those visits to the past, are sweeter than ever. I had a great time reading THE DOOM LEGION. I was already reading or rereading Spider and Operator 5 novels fairly regularly, and dang it, now I want to read some G-8, too. Meanwhile, for pulp fans, THE DOOM LEGION gets my highest recommendation.

Mr. Calamity - Kenneth Robeson (Will Murray)

This latest entry in The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage is a sequel to one of the original pulp novels by Lester Dent. I won't say which one because that would be a spoiler of sorts, but anyone who's read it will recognize it right away. I recall reading that particular novel at my aunt's house in Blanket, Texas more than 50 years ago, and I'm sure the thought that I'd be reading a sequel to it half a century later never occurred to me.

That said, I'm really glad I did, because I thoroughly enjoyed MR. CALAMITY. It's one of the rare Doc Savage novels that's also a Western of sorts, being set in Wyoming and featuring cowboys and rustlers galloping around on horseback and firing six-shooters. Of course, there's plenty of the usual Doc Savage superscience, too, in this tale of something that makes gravity go wild so that objects--including human beings--go flying in the air, sometimes all the way to the stratosphere.

This one starts when Pat Savage, Doc's gorgeous, trouble-hunting cousin, is prospecting in the badlands near a ranch that Doc's associate Long Tom Roberts (the electronics genius) inherited from an uncle. Pat spies a man swimming in mid-air, hundreds of feet high. When the effect wears off, he plunges to his death. He won't be the last such victim of this mystery.

Doc, Renny, and Johnny show up eventually. (You know who Renny and Johnny are, right? Colonel John Renwick and William Harper Littlejohn?) Much action ensues. People die, including some you wouldn't expect. Murray does a fine job with the Western setting and elements. I've been to some of the places he writes about in this novel, and he captures them perfectly. There's a big twist that every Doc Savage fan will see coming a mile away, and as far as I'm concerned, that's part of the charm of the series and the way it ought to be. Man, did I have fun reading this book. If you're a Doc fan, you will, too. I guarantee it. Highly recommended.

The League of Dead Patriots - Andrew Salmon

I've read quite a few of the original Dan Fowler novels from the pulp G-MEN and always enjoyed them. THE LEAGUE OF DEAD PATRIOTS is a new Fowler novella written by Andrew Salmon, one of the stalwarts of the New Pulp movement. I haven't read much New Pulp, but I really enjoyed this one.

FBI agents Dan Fowler, Larry Kendal, and Sally Vane are in California trying to break up a black marketeering ring when they come across a connection to a Japanese internment camp in the area. The case is also complicated by the involvement of the beautiful crimefighter known as the Domino Lady, another pulp character who's actually had more stories about her written and published in this era than during her original run. Another, much more well-known pulp hero makes a cameo appearance as well.

Salmon keeps the pace perking along nicely and has a good grasp of the characters. I found the Domino Lady to be pretty interesting and actually bought an e-book collection of the original pulp stories about her. Once I've read that I might give some of the other New Pulp volumes a try.