Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham » (Reprint)

Norvell W. Page is regarded as one of the leading writers in pulp fiction. He was a newspaper reporter after college, then successfully entered the world of pulp fiction, becoming a regular contributor to the legendary Black Mask, where Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett first achieved recognition. Popular Publications lured Norvell Page to write for Dime Mystery magazine. Soon, Popular Publications, noting the popularity of the best-selling hero pulps Doc Savage and The Shadow, launched The Spider magazine in 1933, with a new novel of the exploits of the masked crime fighter appearing every month, written by Norvell Page under the pseudonym of “Grant Stockbridge.” The magazine was published between October 1933 and December 1943 and ran for 118 issues, ceasing only when the services of Norvell Page were needed for the war effort. During his run, the Spider starred in two Columbia Pictures action serials and his image was successfully merchandised. (Today, a Spider ring in fine condition has a $10,000 value to collectors.) And the pulp is fondly remembered by many of its readers. The late Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip, once wrote, “I still remember how he used to leap into a room doing a somersault while his two heavy 45’s jumped into his hands. They were great stories.” He added, “I could hardly stand to live from one month to another when the new Spider novel would come out.”

Two complete novels in one volume of the adventures of the mysterious masked crime fighter known as The Spider, hunted by the underworld and the police alike. In one, the Spider battles an army of giant robots that has New York City under siege—a storyline so fraught with action and peril, that the very creators of Superman had borrowed it for one of the Man of Steel's comic strip adventures. It also was the inspiration for the major motion picture, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. In the second novel, the spider battles a criminal mastermind who threatens the entire northeast with thousands of poison-fanged vampire bats unless his terms are met. Can even the Spider—hunted by the law as never before after faked evidence has branded him as the master of the killer bats—unmask the identity of the Vampire King before thousands die horribly?Plus a special bonus third novel—The Octopus, another pulp character created by Norvell W. Page, but this time a diabolical villain, bent on seizing control of the nation unless the only man who knows of the danger can stop him. But can a mere man stop a mastermind whose very appearance, from which comes his name, is anything but human?