Been reading author and pulp fiction expert Will Murray's novels from Steeger Books (formerly Altus Press) where he takes on Popular Publications' long-running pulp vigilante
The Spider. As he explains in the afterwords to these, he and the late gentleman who owned the rights to various Popular Publications pulp heroes were deciding which character to bring back in novels, strongly considering
Operator No. 5, but decided upon The Spider. The first novel
Legion of Doom has a meteor with strange and deadly properties crash in Central Park, attracting the attention of wealthy playboy and criminologist Richard Wentworth (The Spider) and Jimmie Christopher, Operator No. 5 of America's most top secret intelligence outfit, and another man Wentworth, a veteran of the Great War, figures must be the notorious Allied operative
G-8, ace pilot and spy. It also attracts the attention of an old enemy of The Spider's and other old foe of one of the other heroes.
The second novel,
Fury in Steel, is set in 1941 and Wentworth fears German operatives are planning to stir up trouble, and once again the Spider's NYC and other parts of America another apocalypse, a crazed scheme by another villain to wreak havoc, panic the nation, and cause the deaths of thousands. Killer robots are on the loose, killer robots that can bite men's' heads off with their powerful jaws, tear men from limb to limb, ignore bullets and tear into the foundations of skyscrapers with their jaws and hands like steel termites and bring buildings down. To complicate matters for Wentworth and his people, the FBI has sent in the three man team known as
The Suicide Squad, and Agents Kerrigan, Murdoch and Klaw would also be more than happy to bring in The Spider, or put him down.
The third novel,
Scourge of the Scorpion, brings in obscure pulp hero The Skull Killer. The Skull Killer is obscure for two reasons: he was never the star of his own pulp but rather functioned as the hero in a couple of pulps that spotlighted the villains, The Octopus and The Scorpion, and there was only one issue of each, and it’s a common belief in pulp fandom that the lead novel in The Scorpion was a rewritten story that had been intended for the never published second issue of The Octopus, since that magazine sold poorly. Murray comes up with a way to tie together the mystery of The Octopus and The Scorpion that's actually kind of clever, and brings in the Cult of the Purple Eyes, the brainwashed minions of both The Octopus and The Scorpion, still under the mysterious Scorpion's command. The Scorpion's mad plans include leaving hundreds and hundreds of various booby-trapped everyday items around New York City that infect hundreds, if not thousands of people with a deadly combination of scorpion venom and tetanus.
Most recently there was
The Hangman from Hell, where one of Wentworth's European contacts is bringing him some important information but the man's been murdered, and Wentworth's loyal Sikh assistant Ram Singh is attacked by a masked giant wielding a hangman’s noose attached to a razor-sharp sickle. Wentworth’s investigation reveals that this attacker, a deadly assassin known as The Hangman, is an operative for the Purple Shirts, a burgeoning Central European fascist movement with allies in the States and he’s come to the United States for the specific purpose of killing Operator No. 5, Jimmie Christopher, America's ace secret agent. Wentworth/The Spider and Christopher have an uneasy relationship as Christopher considers himself a legitimate operative of the US government and cannot condone a vigilante like the Spider, but they must work together as the Purple Shirts have a plan involving a big rally at Central Park, involving a weapon with gruesome effects.
