Meet the Spider — master of men! More just than the Law... more dangerous than the Underworld. Hated, wanted, feared by both! Alone and desperate, he wages deadly, one-man war against the super-criminal whose long-planned crime-coup will snuff a thousand lives! Can the Spider prevent this slaughter of innocents?
In the summer of 1933, Popular Publications President Harry Steeger and his executive editor, Rogers Terrill, decided to enter the new field of magazines built around a single hero. They wanted to publish a crimebuster to rival a famous pulp juggernaut. Steeger frankly admitted in later years, “The reason we started the title The Spider was because of the success of Street & Smith’s The Shadow. At this point in pulp history individual titles became very popular, so we decided to try out a few ourselves.”
The author chosen to pen the first Spider tale was a famous mystery and suspense novelist whose preferred byline was R. T. M. Scott. More than a dozen years before, Scott became famous for his stories and novels featuring Secret Service Smith, a government agent who later became a consulting detective for hire. It's clear that Scott modeled this new hero for the Depression generation after his previous protagonist.
The Spider Strikes establishes the essentials of this exciting series. Richard Wentworth is reckless, cold-blooded, and perfectly willing to play dangerous game between the law who seeks his capture and the enemies of the law he is sworn to track down. While his motivations are unclear, his single-minded determination is without question. He is a hunter of criminals, and in his debut novel he becomes a hunter of supercriminals in the form of the mysterious Mr. X.
So go now with Richard Wentworth, alias the Spider, as he tackles his first great case and comes face-to-face with the diabolical Mr. X.
Nick Santa Maria brings the action to electrifying life. Originally published in The Spider magazine, October, 1933.
