FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE OCTOPUS: THE CITY CONDEMNED TO HELL

The Octopus:  The City Condemned to Hell by "Randolph Craig" (Norvell Page)  (1939)

The Octopus was a one-issue pulp title (dated February-March 1939) from Popular Publications that had taken over the numbering of Popular's The Western Raider, which ran for three issues and featured novels about Silver Trent, the Rio Robin Hood by "Stone Cody" (western pulpster Thomas Ernest Mount).  The title of the magazine came from that issue's supervillain, known only as The Octopus.  The City Condemned to Hell was by-lined "Randolph Craig."  The magazine again changed its title with the next issue (April-May 1939) as The Scorpion, the name of that issue's supervillain; the novel in that issue was Satan's Incubator, again by-lined by "Randolph Craig," which had the hero of the previous issue battle the new super-villain.   And that was it.  Randolph Craig and The Scorpion vanished after that issue, joining Silver Trent and The Octopus in pulp magazine limbo.

"Randolph Craig" was most surely veteran pulpster Norvell Page, who had penned most of the pulp magazine The Spider novels, and also contributed to the Black Bat and The Phantom Detective pulp series.  James Van Hise, however, in Pulp Heroes of the Thirties, places the authorship of the two "Randolph Craig" tales to Edith and Ejler Jacobsson.  Radio Archives Pulp Classics credits all three as "Randolph Craig."  (Ejler Jakobsson was a pulp writer who joined the editorial staff of Popular Publications in 1943.  He briefly served as editor of Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories in the 1940s, as well as the short-lived revived Super Science Stories from 1949-1951.  From 1969 to 1974 he was editor of Galaxy and If magazines during the period between Frederik Pohl and Jim Baen.)

[It should go without saying that "Randolph Craig" is not mystery author Craig Rice, whose real name was Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig.  What the heck?  I'll say it anyway.]

Back to The Octopus, a frenetic mishmash  of hastily written. pulse-pounding action and confusion -- I loved it.  As stated above, The Octopus is the villain.  The hero is Jeffrey Fairchild, a rich man about town, who had studied medicine but was never licensed, preferring instead to devote his time to charity work, such as funding the Mid-City Hospital.  No one realizes that, with a little make-up, a false wig, and some cloth-bound wire in his jaw, that Jeffrey was also the elderly Doctor. Skull, a kindly medico whose skill and compassion has made him one of the most renowned doctors in the city.  But there is also another side of Jeffrey Fairchild and Doctor Skull, he is also the notorious Skull Kill, a costumed vigilante who goes against "those who have no compassion, and who prey upon the defenseless and helpless,"  As the name implies, the Skull Killer has no compunction about killing criminals.  Like Norvell Page's The Spider, the Skull Killer has an acid filled ring that he uses to brand his victims with his mark -- a skull.

As we open, Dr. Skull is treating a young woman, Mrs. Pervins, who had been dragged out of the river and was covered with some sort of malignant cancer-like growth.  Dr. Skull is convinced that he can safely remove the growth, but he is more puzzled by the fact that the woman has no heartbeat and that be blood has been replaced by sea water.  (Yeah, that would puzzle me, too.)   Then Mrs. Pervins suddenly changed into a shiny, inhuman monster that clasped its mouth onto a nurse's bosom, removing a three-inch circle of flesh over her heart.  Dr. Skull pulls the thing that had been Mrs' Pervins from the nurse and the monster leaps out of the window onto the hospital fire escape.  Descending, it reaches the floor of the maternity ward when a long tentacle reaches out and pulls her in.  On that floor a man pulls out a knife and begins to attack Dr. Borden, the head of the hospital.  Dr. Skull pulls out a pistol and kills the attacker.  The dead attacker was Mrs. Pervins husband, who, Borden said, had a reason to hate Dr. Skull because of "what he had done to his wife."  Borden accuses Dr. Skull of deliberate murder.  Skull escapes to the hospital basement, where he enters a secret passage leading to a labyrinth of unknown tunnels hidden under the city.  Phew!

Dr. Skull had noticed that most of the doctors at the hospital -- save for Borden -- had suddenly got purple eyes.  Pretty soon, the city was bathed in a purple light and, perhaps (it's not exactly clear) a purple gas, that renders people slaves.  Too much of the light (or the gas) turns people in monsters like Mrs. Pervins, and the monsters need fresh blood to sustain themselves.  Two such monsters attack Jeffrey Fairchild, blaming him for their condition.  Luckily for Fairchild, about half the monsters -- including the couple that attacked him -- have retained some sense of logic and he convinces them to stand  down (and not to stand up).  Anyway, hundreds upon hundreds of these monsters appear at the beck and call of the supervillain The Octopus.  Who, or what, The Octopus is is never made clear.  Is he a man (as described in part of the book) or an actual giant octopus with a purple eye and tentacles that can grab a man (also as described in the book).  His/its purpose is never really solved.  Is this just a giant extortion scheme (as described in the book) or an attempt to control the city (as is also described in the book?  The death count keeps rising as The Skull Killer goes forth to rescue Dr. Skull's pretty nurse Carol Endicott and Bob Fairchild, Jeffrey's young (and crippled) brother.  Did I mention that Dr. Borden is The Octopus' right hand man?  And that the hospital is destroyed, as well as Fairchild's home and Dr. Skull's office?  Things are looking pretty bleak.

You can drive a truck through the plot holes in this story, but you really don't want to do that because you're having too much fun just reading the story and going along for the ride.  Page knows how to write an exciting tale packed with hundreds (if not thousands) of corpses, even if he does a slipshod job of it sometimes.