The City Destroyer by "Grant Stockbridge" (Norvell W. Page) (first published in The Spider, January 1935, as the 16th of what would be 118 magazine novels; published in book form by Pocket Books as #3 in their Spider series; republished by Sanctum Books, 2003; republished in 2019 as #16 in the Spider series by Altus Press; also published in the Baen omnibus The Spider: City of Doom as by7 Norvell Page, 2008; also available in e-book format)
For many, The Spider is the third greatest pulp magazine hero, following Doc Savage and The Shadow. Don't believe them. The Spider is Number One! Doc Savage tends to descend into juvenile territory and The Shadow is burdened by cumbersome prose. The Spider, however, just zips along, despite all odds as he wades through a large swarth of bodies and blood. The Spider doesn't kid around; his adventures don't score up a few bodies, or even a few dozen -- death lurks in the thousands here with only a few caused by The Spider himself -- the rest can be laid to the most blood-thirsty villains in pulpdom.
The Spider. known as The Master of Men, is really wealthy-guy Richard Wentworth, who has vowed to eliminate those who prey on others. He has no problem killing those who deserve it. A master of disguise, he leaves the mark of The Spider on the foreheads of those he has killed as a warning to other evildoers. The police silently cheer on his efforts while at the same time vowing to capture him and try him for murder. One such is Wentworth's friend, Police Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick, who knows Wentworth is The Spider but (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) has never ben able to prove it; until he can, he turns a blind eye to The Spider's activities.
Those in The Spider's inner circle are Nita van Sloan, Wentworth's fiancee, she of the "spun blonde curls and the blue eyes that were like dewy violets;" Ran Singh, Wentworth's mega-loyal manservant, who at various times during the saga was a Sikh or a Hindu; Jackson, Wentworth's chauffeur, who served under him during World War I; Jenkyns, Wentworth's elderly butler who had been in service to Wentworth's family for years -- his main purpose appears to be cooking fine meals and wishing Wentworth would drop all that crime fighting and just marry Nita; and Professor Brownlee, Wentworth's former teacher and war colleague, who can always be relied on for scientific advice, and whose uninghjust arrest had been the spur for Wentworth to become The Spider in the first place.. Over the course of The Spider's adventures, both Jackson and Brownlee are killed, but Jackson is later brought back to life.
Scientist Jim Collins had invented a substance that can turn steel into powder, b ut had died suddenly. Police called the death a suicide, but The Spider thought otherwise, as did Collins's widow and his brother, Anse, a law officer from Culpepper, Virginia. There had been a number of bank robberies lately that used this formula on bank vaults, allowing crooks to tear their way into the vaults as if the steel was mere paper. Gang leader Devil Hackerson has been sent to the Collins apartment to get whatever papers the dead scientist may have had about his formula. Sadly for him, The Spider was also there. There was a shootout and two of the henchmen lay dead; Hackerson has managed to escape, but The Spider managed to signal to Ram Singh to follow the gang leader. Meanwhile, the police have arrived and have surrounded the building, hoping to arrest The Spider. (Of course they don't; The Spider has escaped many other traps, although one was particularly tricky.)
The evening The Spider gets an urgent call from Ram Singh. He has followed Hackerson andbegins to tell something to Wentworth: "The Sky Building, sahib, They are pl--" Then there was the sound of a gunshot, followed by silence.
It turns out that Devil Hackerson and his gang are merely stooges for a mysterious entity known as the Master. The Master gives them the steel dissolving stuff and allows them to got on their merry bank-robbing way, but the Master demands obedience in return. The Master's orders are given by a strange bald man with a squint in his eye. (This man, previously unknown to the underworld goes by the obvious name of Baldy; I suppose Squinty would also be a good name for him but it just doesn't have the same cachet.) The Master has ordered Hackerson to spread the formula on the steel girders holding up the Sky Building, New York's largest skyscraper, and Hackserson and his crew go ahead and do it, although they cant help but wonder why the Master wants to bring down the skyscraper.
Wentworth and Kirkpatrick rush to the Sky Building where they find the wounded Ram Sing bound on the top floor. Ram Sing tells them of the plot and says that once the wind reaches a certain strength, it will be able to knock the huge building down. And a gale is building. And every one of the ninety-odd floors are heavily occupied. With just minutes to go Wentworth and Kirkpatrick begin evacuating the building, while Kirkpatrick arranges for the area around the building to be cleared. With the help of the police and fire departments, most of the building is cleared before it goes. The falling building smashes an area of some five city blocks, bringing down other buildings. All but a couple of hundred people managed to escape the tower, but the falling damages kills many more. At least a thousand are dead and a true final count will be impossible. The Spider vows vengeance on Hacksern.
But the worst is yet to come. At the same time, another skyscraper in the city, the Plymouth building, has fallen, along with the Grand Central station. At least with the Sky Building, there was a bit of warning and some lives were saved. No such chance was afforded the Plymough building and Grand Central...
The Spider soon manages to track down Hackerson, but the crook pulled a gun and The Spider had to kill him before he could get any information about the Master of about Baldy.
Not long after, an express train non which Wentworth was a passenger derailed -- the rails themselves had turn to fine sugar. Another gang boarded the wreckage, firing machine guns, More senseless deaths.
Through it all, The Spider kept wondering, Why? why all this death and destruction? what was the Master's purpose? And the suspicion grew that the Master knew that Wentworth was The Spider. If that was so, both he and his friends were in deadly peril...
Like I said, the body count in The Spider books are massive. The pace is break-neck and the odds are all but impossible. The hero is unrelenting. This is pulp magazine writing at its finest and most exciting.
The Spider was created by Popular Publications publisher Harry Steeger in an attempt to match the popularity of Street & Smith's The Shadow. Steeger wanted a characte who would emulate the screen persona of Douglas Fairbanks. For his creation, he turned to R. T. M. Scott, a Canadian novelist and pulp writer. Scott transformed his characters detective Aurelius Smith and Hindu assistant Langa Doone into Wentworth and Ran Singh. The first issue of The Spider, with Scott's novel, was dated October 1933; Scott also wrote The Spider's second adventure, but Scott's writing was felt too stodgy, so, beginning with the third, December 1933, issue, Norvell Page took over, eventually writing 92 of The Spider's adventures. Other writers brought in were Donald Cormack, Wayne Rogers, Emile C. Tepperman, and Prentice Winchell. The magazine closed with issue #118, dated December 1943.
A final Spider adventure slated for issue #119 -- Slaughter, Inc., ghosted by Donald Cormack was eventually published in 1979 by Python Publishing, with the characters names changed for copyright reasons; it appeared as Blue Steel: The Ultimate Answer to Evil by "Spider Page"; it was reprinted in its original unedited form in 2012 by Moonstone Books. Since 2007 at least two original pastiche anthologies and four original novels about the character have appeared.
The Spider also appeared in two movie serials, 1938 and 1941, and in numerous comic books and graphic novels.
Many of The Spider's adventures have been reprinted and they always seem to find new fans. Among notable fans of the character were Peanuts-creator Charles M. Schultz (who knew?) and Marvel Comics Stan Lee, who credited the character as a major influence in the creation of (you guessed it) Spider-Man.
And among the non-notable fans of The Spider, you can count --me.
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