Spider (pulp fiction character)
This article is about the pulp magazine/comic book hero. 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. 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.
Created by R.T.M. Scott as competition to Street & Smith's, The Shadow, 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, his Hindu manservant Ram Singh, who was a deadly knife thrower, an inventor named Professor Brownlee, his old war colleague, Jackson, and his faithful butler, Jenkins.
While Scott's character 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, The Spider's weapons of choice were a set of blued steel .45 automatics. Dogging Wentworth's steps was his friend and foil police commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick, who suspected Wentworth was The Spider, but could not prove it. 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. While this scuttling horror 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. 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.
There are also two movies about The Spider:
These were 15-chapter serials produced by Columbia Pictures, and starring Warren Hull as Richard Wentworth.
The Spider pulps have been reprinted in both paperback and magazine format, and the characters were reinterpreted in comic book form by Tim Truman in the 1990s.