Interviews with authors of original SPIDERMAN short stories

Interviews with authors of original SPIDERMAN short stories.

This is a roundtable interview conducted by JENNIFER M. CONTINO with the authors of a new collection of original SPIDERMAN short stories from Moonstone Books, which kindly gave us the permission to repost this article.

THE PULSE: When did you first discover The Spider and what was your initial reaction to this character?

CHUCK DIXON: In the 1970s a lot of old pulps were reprinted in paperback. I think it started with Doc Savage in the ’60s and others entered into mining the pulps for material. The Spider was back on the racks alongside the Shadow and Conan and others.

HOWARD HOPKINS: I first discovered him in the mid-80s. My first reaction? “What the hell?!” or maybe, “Holy crap!” Can I say that here? [laughs] Seriously, after being reared on the kinder, gentler adventures of Doc Savage, The Avenger and The Shadow, The Spider came as a bit of a shock. Suddenly there were bodies everywhere, gore galore and plots that…well, maybe there weren’t plots. It was like one big acid trip..er, so I have heard. All sorts of nastiness happened and you just never knew if one of your favorite sidekicks was going to bite the dust (though sometimes when they did they came right back an issue or two later.).

WILL MURRAY: It was in 1969. I discovered the two Berkeley Books reprints of The Spider Strikes! and The Wheel of Death, held together with a white paper band, offering them both for the price of one. I remember the store owner struggling to comprehend that he was only getting $.60 for both volumes.

I liked the early R.T.M. Scott Spider, but I really got into him when the Norvell Page novels started to appear. City of Flaming Shadows was a searing experience for a 16 year old. I can still hear the Tarantula’s death scream: “Spider! You win!”

JOE GENTILE: I first discovered the Spider in a used paperback store many years ago … it was a paperback reprint of one of the pulps. The cover was FAR from what was contained in the book. The cover showed some blonde surfer guy in a tight sweater kind of thing … huh? But I read the back, and realized that the Spider sounded really different … really crazy … which was intriguing. After reading the book, about a giant bat like creature terrorizing the city, I was hooked!

SHANNON ERIC DENTON: The Noel, Missouri Public Library in second grade. I spent that summer in Noel on my grandparents farm. There was a ton to do there during the day like catching crawdads in the creek, finding arrowheads, exploring all the caves they had on the property and getting into trouble with a .22. The usual stuff. But at night there wasn’t TV to watch ( three channels back then and nothing geared towards a second grader) so I read a ton. That local library, unbeknownst to me at the time had the greatest collection of pulp titles, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tom Swift, Hardy Boy and Nancy Drew mysteries. I think I read everything that library had over that summer. The Spider can not help but stick out in your mind. He was great.

ANNIE NOCENTI: When Joe sent me an old reprint book of Spider stories. I loved that he was a bit sly and nasty, yet had this strange ambiguous yet loyal liaison with Nita.

CJ HENDERSON: I first found the Spider back in the sixties in a series of reprint paperbacks. I don’t know how many I read, but I remember grabbing all I could. I have to admit, as a kid I loved this guy–unlike Doc Savage and namby-pamby superheroes, he killed bad guys. Killed them? He slaughtered them. He sent them to well-deserved graves by the bucketload and I thought he was the coolest thing around until DC reinvented Batman and Marvel wised-up and gave us the Punisher.

MARTIN POWELL: Well, I guess it all started with the Doc Savage paperbacks from the 1970s. A neighborhood friend introduced me to them when I was about ten years old and I became addicted. The Shadow and The Avenger followed close behind and about a decade later I was heavily immersed in pulp fandom. I contributed to a lot of pulp fanzines, mostly doing illustrations in those days before I became a professional writer. I learned about The Spider through those `zines and eventually tracked down some of the original stories. They were the wildest, craziest, scariest hero adventures I’d ever read. Obviously, I loved `em. Still do!

STEVE ENGLEHART: I’m not sure when I first discovered him. I first heard about him in Steranko’s History of Comics, where he sounded very cool. I read The Shadow and Doc Savage and The Avenger when their paperbacks began coming out, but he was not part of that onslaught. Still, somewhere along the line I found him because he’s been in my brain for years now, and he’s my favorite pulp character.

ROBERT WEINBERG: I started collected pulp magazines in the early 1960s. Along with Doc Savage and the Spider, I discovered The Spider around 1964. The first novel I read was “The Spider and the Slaves of Hell” from 1939. It was great and I was hooked!

JOHN JAKES: Sometime in the early 1940s I read a Spider tale for the first time. I read a lot of pulps then, preferring the ones from Popular and Fiction House over others. I was particularly fond of Popular’s G-8

series, but discovering the Spider enthralled me. I bought every issue, and scoured old magazine stores for back numbers, which were readily available at reasonable cost. The whole Spider package just knocked

me out — the writing, the illustrations, the covers. Somehow I never got even a small percentage of the same reaction from The Shadow, which I seldom read.

THE PULSE: What do you think it is about The Spider that sets him apart from other “mystery men” of the era?

CHUCK DIXON: He’s direct. The Spider is far closer to later hero types who kill first and ask questions later. He’s FAR more violent than the Shadow and would often lose his cool when confronted with evil and let rage take over.

HOWARD HOPKINS: I think it is the level of violence and intensity. Author Norvell Page wasn’t shy about The Spider’s Messianic fixation, either, and that was a bit unique, at least in the line of hero pulps I was reading–Doc, The Avenger, Shadow, G-8, Black Bat, et al. I mean, this guy was baked. He was just as likely to shoot his own as he was the bad guys. The novels made you sweat…

WILL MURRAY: The Spider had an emotional dimension that sets him apart from The Shadow and others. He had passion, fire and a complex persona that reads as if he might be a manic depressive driven to fight crime. And he had a real girlfriend, not a cartoon chick.

JOE GENTILE: It starts with his thirst for justice. When I say “thirst”, I mean it’s like he has been wandering in a desert for months without a drop to drink! He “craves” it like a hunger that needs to be satisfied. Other mystery men were violent, but the Spider was a step apart in a big way. His villains were insane (Zombie rulers, Egyptian priests, Neanderthal men, etc) and he used his own manic energy to take every part of the villain’s plan down. Other mystery men killed, but not like the Spider. He was upfront and personal about it. He had no compunction whatsoever about doing what he thought had to be done, no matter what the consequences! Plus, he did it with intensity, which many of the other pulp heroes lacked. And THEN, if that wasn’t enough, there was his “look”. Other crime fighters of the time wore cloaks and such, but the Spider put in fangs, a crazy wig, and etc! He was one ugly dude!

Quite a contrast from the Man of Bronze and such. Then, there’s the stories, which were as relentless as the Spider himself…non-stop action without a rest!

Plus, and I gotta say this, the Spider had his girlfriend help out on the adventures! That’s right, Miss Nita Van Sloan often held her own in gun battles, and even had to take up the mantle of the Spider a couple of times while he was incapacitated! For the 1930-40s, that was pretty much unheard of!

SHANNON ERIC DENTON: The over the top nature he personified. All the other Pulp characters at the time were controlled avengers. The Spider was too but the villains didn’t know that. The Shadow also used theatrics but you never thought he might eat you. With The Spider the villains weren’t so sure. He was a psychopath as far as they were concerned.

CJ HENDERSON: The Spider just seemed to be crazy. He didn’t right wrongs because of a deep seated need for justice, or a love of fair play. It felt like he loved the danger, didn’t care if he died, needed the thrill. He was extreme decades before the word took on its modern meaning. There have been very few characters like him.

MARTIN POWELL: To this day I think that Richard Wentworth, the Spider’s alter-ego, is the most fully realized and fascinating personality of the classic pulp crime fighters. This is especially true of the novels written by Norvell Page, the Spider’s most frequent chronicler. Page’s prose is breathless and white-hot, very emotionally driven. For a penny-a-word pulpsmith, Page was a very good and literate writer. None of the other pulp characters of his day were nearly as three dimensional, angst-ridden, nor as human as the Spider. It’s his passion and conviction that I love most about the stories, and the mythically proportioned menaces that loom over him, ever threatening. Also, the Nita Van Sloan, the woman in Wentworth’s life, is very atypical of most pulp fiction females. He not only shares his secrets with her, she actually fights along beside him as an equal. There was no other romantic relationship in the pulps quite like them.

STEVE ENGLEHART: He’s nuts.

ROBERT WEINBERG: Unlike other heroes of the 1930s, the Spider believed in “Gun Justice.” He killed the fiends he fought. He had no mercy. At the same time, he was a man of strong emotions and his anger showed, unlike Doc Savage and the Shadow who were very stoic and unemotional.

JOHN JAKES: The villains, and the threats they posed, were always – there is no better word – apocalyptic. This time, the prose fairly shouted, the U.S. and perhaps all of Western civilization was sure to fall unless the Spider prevented it. Breathless prose contributed to that aura, but nothing so much as the terrific blurbs at the front of the story — matched only by the “coming attractions” box for next month’s episode.

THE PULSE: Why do you think this character is one that today’s comic reading audience will appreciate?

CHUCK DIXON: He still kicks ass! His stories are fast-paced and loaded with very weird stuff. Each story presents a maelstrom of violence with the Spider at the center.

HOWARD HOPKINS: I have a feeling folks sometimes get frustrated with our criminal justice system letting criminals back onto the street. The Spider didn’t mess with the courts. He found a hole and plugged it, pardon the expression. He dealt criminals instant justice. They mostly stayed dead and pillaged no more (with the exception of the occasional Fly in the ointment.) There’s something pervertedly satisfying about that and I think modern readers will relate to it.

WILL MURRAY: The Spider is the literary ancestor of the Marvel Comics realistic approach to depicting superheroes. If you read enough of them, you can see the influence on Stan Lee, who admits having read them back in the 1930s. He battled the kind of depraved foes that make modern terrorists seem tame. (Almost.)

JOE GENTILE: Today is the right time for seeing some justice done I would say, wouldn’t you? How many times have we heard about a criminal getting off on a “technicality” and such? Well, that doesn’t happen in the Spider’s world. He sees to that! Good riddance!

SHANNON ERIC DENTON: Who wouldn’t want to read about a gun toting avenger of the night who just might lose it and rip out the throat of his prey with his teeth instead of using a .45? Spider don’t mess around.

ANNIE NOCENTI: I think most people are aware they have dualities in themselves, but the tropes of “super hero” genre are a fantastical, whereas the kind of gumshoe quality of Richard/Spider is an easier reach, easier to identify with. Also, the world is so fucked up, we can all relate to wanting to fight for injustice.

CJ HENDERSON: I think the politically correct corporations have killed a lot of interest in today’s audience that The Spider could bring back. I also think he’s a great tonic for people who are sick and tired of crooked politicians and corporate leaders and church men and all the other bunko artists that victimize all of us and never, ever seem to take the slightest fall for any of their crimes.

MARTIN POWELL: The pulps influenced the evolution of comics in a very profound way. Just as Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze, clearly inspired Superman, the Man of Steel, so the Spider inspired characters like Batman. There’s an amazing amount of Batman mythology that was originally created for the Spider. Bill Finger and Bob Kane admitted that they liberally borrowed from the pulps and even casually reading a classic Spider tale today proves that case. Everything from the millionaire adventurer, masked mystery man, ever-loyal butler, monstrous villains, and the alliance with the official Police Commissioner, was all firmly established in the Spider’s pages years before Batman debuted in Detective Comics. Any comic book fans of Batman, the Punisher, any of the darker, grittier heroes, will find familiar turf with the Spider.

STEVE ENGLEHART: He’s nuts. [grins]

ROBERT WEINBERG: The Spider constantly fights villains who are evil and sadistic killers and he treats them with the same violence they dish out to their victims. He’s a hero for today’s culture.

THE PULSE: How do you write his “new” adventures with a sensibility of the era he’s from, but also with a flair that will attract and interest the modern comic reader?

CHUCK DIXON: Rather than the use the pulps as a model, I turned to Dawn Powell; a writer working in the era of the pulps but not of the pulps. She wrote mostly about New York society and particularly about the theater crowd. I wanted to write a Spider story set in the world that she most often wrote about. I thought it would provide a contrast to the usual pulp setting of evil lairs and sewers.

HOWARD HOPKINS: That’s always a tightrope. Things happened in The Spider’s era we are not much proud of in these times. You have to wonder, will modern readers accept that, understand it or will it cause them to cough up last night’s Big Mac? The one thing I aim for–and I do it when I tackle sensitive issues in my Lance Howard western novels–is to make sure I keep in mind that people are people and as such they will always retain certain core values, dignities and concerns. Never forget the human factor, even in blood and thunder pulp fiction.

WILL MURRAY: I wrote “March of the Murder Mummy” as if I were channeling Norvell Page. I don’t think you need to change him in any way. The Spider still rocks!

JOE GENTILE: The Spider’s adventures were exciting romps of escapism. It never goes out of style! I think we had the luxury of time, whereas most pulp writers did not.

We had the time to craft our stories with some more depth, but still kept the pace as breakneck as possible. Best of both worlds.

SHANNON ERIC DENTON: I think Moonstone did a great job in letting all of us stay true to the writing style of the time. Pulps were short entertaining reads geared towards males…which is basically what TV has transformed into. It’s the same audience then as now. You want some entertainment, you want it good, and you don’t have a lot of time before you need to get on to something else.

ANNIE NOCENTI: I tried to do a bit of tongue-in-cheek slang of the time, and yet used things that are popular today, like playing poker, to keep it fresh. It was great fun to use bits of news of that time, like picking the year the Monopoly game was invented, yet having Richard think little of a board game when the real thing was to be had. It was amusing to have him think the game wouldn’t last!

CJ HENDERSON: Being older than a lot of the other guys, it’s easier for me to remember that we haven’t always had cell phones, automatic transmissions, personal computers, TV, frozen dinners, et cetera. That helps keep me in the pulp groove. The flair … I’ve always written with a kind of wild, pulp genre frenzy, so to be honest, I write his new adventures the way I write everything. Since my novels and short stories are already read by a lot of comics folks, I guess I just have to hope they’ll come along for this ride as well.

MARTIN POWELL: Well, I started off by reading and re-reading a dozen or so classic Spider pulp novels, and took notes along the way. I also read other non-pulp 1930s period books so I could get the lingo down. I think today’s readers will enjoy the Spider stories in the same way that the extremely devoted multitudes continue to do with Sherlock Holmes. There are just damn good stories. Period. Something topical that new Spider readers will detect is the palpable sense of terror that pervades these adventures. The threats are quite familiar to anyone who glances at today’s newspaper headlines. The Spider dealt with 911-like horrors on a monthly basis.

STEVE ENGLEHART: The story I wrote could take place then or now. Fighting your way through wall-to-wall hordes of suicidal murderers packed into Times Square is eternal, n’est-ce pas?

ROBERT WEINBERG: I tried to write a Spider story using the same style of the 1930s but with a few humorous touches that a modern audience would find entertaining.

JOHN JAKES: Again, you should get rid of the references to “comic” readers. I wrote the new story in the style of the old pulp novels, much as I remember them — the villain is a Nazi in disguise, in a New York that is very much a part of the late 1930s.

THE PULSE: What do you enjoy the most about being a part of something like this?

CHUCK DIXON: The challenge. I’m a comics guy and not a prose guy and I had to raise the bar to compete in an anthology with writers more comfortable with “words only.”

HOWARD HOPKINS: As a long time pulp fan it’s a dream come true and much thanks goes to Joe Gentile for bringing these characters back into the public eye and giving us writers a crack at telling their tales through our own filters. There’s something magical about being a part of what played a role in shaping our lives as kids–the heroes, the fiction.

WILL MURRAY: Getting to step into the stylistic shoes of Page, and the mindset of Richard Wentworth. It was a trip!

JOE GENTILE: Writing a Spider story can be VERY cathartic. There’s an empowering feeling you get as you are writing the Spider vanquishing the bad guys without remorse. Man…!

SHANNON ERIC DENTON: I enjoy that I’m now a part of something that inspired me as a kid to pursue a career in this. It feels full circle in a way. I also got to work on the story with my buddy John Helfers. It’s always fun when you can collaborate with friends. Plus our ACTIONOPOLIS line of books is geared towards kids and it was fun to do something “not for kids”.

ANNIE NOCENTI: I love limits, and then playing inside the limits. So to be given such a juicy character and time period, it was easy to begin fantasizing about a possible story.

CJ HENDERSON: I love being able to handle other people’s characters. That’s one of the things I love best about writing comics. I really enjoyed getting to write Batman–of course! Who wouldn’t? But, to be honest, I really enjoyed working on the Archie gang, and getting to handle Cherry Poptart, et cetera. I like exploring other characters, and trying to take them back to their essential roots. I always hope when I give a character back, no matter what I put them through, that they’re in as good a shape, if not better, than when I first got them.

MARTIN POWELL: For me the biggest thrill was being a part of the Spider’s authorized chronology, actually being one of the very few writers getting to add to those 118 classic adventure novels. It was a rare opportunity and I confess that writing my Spider story was probably the most fun I’ve ever had in almost twenty years at the keyboard. It was a dream come true.

STEVE ENGLEHART: Getting a chance to live inside that fevered brain. As we speak it’s unclear if Marvel will greenlight more BLACK RIDER, but I was writing them both at the same time and people who know the Spider saw the similarity.

ROBERT WEINBERG: Being given a chance to write adventures of one of your favorite characters is a dream come true for most authors. I know I jumped at the chance. It gave me a chance to be part of the Spider legend.

JOHN JAKES: The chance to re-create my own take on what was, for me, one of the ultimate reading experiences of my teenage years.

THE PULSE: What was the biggest obstacle or stumbling block you had to overcome to get your story written?

CHUCK DIXON: Intimidation. When you’re writing comics you’re up against maybe a half dozen great writers. When you write prose, even pulp prose, you’re up against Jack London.

HOWARD HOPKINS: Making as certain as I could I didn’t disappoint the folks who love this character. Trying to keep the “soul” of The Spider intact for them, make sure I didn’t tread on their cherished memories of the adventures and peoples of Spider World. It’s much easier to write my own characters and develop a fanbase than to step into one already established and not screw it up!

WILL MURRAY: Finding time to write it. Once I cleared my schedule, it just flowed. I’ve read so many Spiders that I felt I understood Richard Wentworth’s reactions to the insanely violent situations I put him in. Beyond that, fitting what could have been a longer, meatier story into novelette form.

SHANNON ERIC DENTON: The fact that I’d never done full prose. I mean I’ve written TV shows, comics, screenplays but this was the first time it was just the words by themselves. Once I got started it was a blast and all of that went away but getting started was the biggest hurdle.

ANNIE NOCENTI: Well, I enjoyed it so much it got too long … and I think I had a better grip on Richard than on The Spider … so it’s balanced more with the man over his vengeance persona.

CJ HENDERSON: Just finding the time to write them. A wild set of circumstances allowed me to actually do three stories for the volume, and it was great fun. One of the best things about Moonstone is that they are always going out of their way to try new things, and to bring back the best of the old characters that are out there that either have never been brought back at all, or worse, have been brought back poorly. Time and again finding an email from them means nothing but fun, and this was one of the best.

MARTIN POWELL: I fully expected a certain amount of stress and stage-fright before I began, but honestly that never happened. The story flowed. It had probably been lurking in my subconscious for years.

ROBERT WEINBERG: Finding time. I’m working on three TV projects at the moment and squeezing in short stories in my schedule was difficult. But for the Spider, I made the time!

JOHN JAKES: As usual — time — my jam-packed schedule. There were no “creative” blocks to the writing.

THE PULSE: Give us a teaser about what your Spider adventure is about, please.

CHUCK DIXON: Nina, the Spider’s significant other, is attending an opening night party at the penthouse apartment of a popular composer. She becomes embroiled in a violent extortion scheme that quickly gets ugly. It’s a high suspense story with both Nina and the Spider’s lives at stake.

HOWARD HOPKINS: My tale involves a Zombie Queen with a mad-on for Richard Wentworth and a plan to take over the world …

WILL MURRAY: After Page’s apparent 1936 nervous breakdown while writing the Living Pharaoh stories, he never used another Egyptian menace. Nor did The Spider ever battle that staple of Weird Menace pulps, the resurrected mummy. In “March of the Murder Mummy” a newly-disinterred Egyptian Pharaoh comes to life, and whomever he points his bony finger at, shrivels into a mummy too! I can hardly wait to see how artist Tom Floyd depicted him.

JOE GENTILE: My story concerns the real-life mystery of an attack in a small town in Illinois WW2 era … people were paralyzed, and living in terror, not knowing who was responsible ….

SHANNON ERIC DENTON: Without giving too much away, I decided to focus our story on a low level criminal – someone who would normally be below the Spider’s radar and show what it takes to get on the radar. It’s got some dark humor sprinkled in.

ANNIE NOCENTI: My Spider adventure is Richard and Nita ending up caught in the crossfire between mafia and pirate rum runners as they look for a poker game where a friend of Richard’s was rumored to have been murdered.

CJ HENDERSON: Like I said, I got to do three stories. In one, The Spider kills the son of a top crime boss. With nothing to live for, the mobster throws his entire fortune behind a contract on The Spider which sends a veritable army of thugs into the streets to kill him. In another, The Spider runs into the Lovecraft Mythos in the form of the Serpent Men who have finally gotten their hands on the Cobra helmet which means they will have the power of mind control over all of humanity. It’s the end for us all unless The Spider can beat their high priest and his herd of dinosaurs. The third story was a Ram Singh story–no one had done much of anything with The Spider’s trusty manservant, and so I was asked to do a super short feature Ram and Apollo (the giant-sized dog The Spider got to protect his girlfriend). That was a real thrill, and I had a ball doing it. Wait until you see the illustrations for my stories. I’m sure everybody feels the same, but I’m telling you, I got the best ones!

MARTIN POWELL: Okay, I’ll try to sound like Norvell Page here as I briefly describe it. New York City is imperiled by a terrifying force of Doomsday-like proportions. Unsuspecting multitudes are metamorphosed into a molten mass of murder, a congealed chain of human beings, bound in flesh and blood by an insidious weapon of unfathomable super-science. When the nightmare finally encounters millionaire criminologist Richard Wentworth, the Spider, Master of Men, he strikes back with a vengeance! My story is called “City of the Melting Dead”. Like the other stories featured in the anthology, mine is very atmospherically illustrated by Tom Floyd, creator of Captain Spectre. Tom was the ideal choice of illustrator for these moody b&w interior spots. Our cool Spider cover is rendered by award-winning painter Doug Klauba, well-known to fans of Moonstone’s The Phantom comics. As a writer, I couldn’t be in better artistic hands. This will be an awesome-looking book.

STEVE ENGLEHART: Hordes of suicidal murderers… Well, it’s called SEÑOR SUICIDE, and it involves a ham actor who makes everyone believe he’s the world’s greatest thespian by way of a machine that controls their minds. When Richard Wentworth (the Spider’s alter ego) unmasks this deception, the guy reprograms the machine to convince everyone in New York to kill themselves. So every single person crowding the streets of midtown Manhattan not only wants frantically to die, but to take out other suffering souls in the process – and that includes the Spider and his girlfriend, Nita. It’s a nonstop carnival of death…which is another day at the office for the Spider, which is why he’s so cool.

ROBERT WEINBERG: A madman is selling poisoned aspirin to the citizens of New York City! Can the Spider figure out who is behind this evil plot before “the Devil’s Druggist” kills thousands!

JOHN JAKES: A Nazi plot led by an arch fiend to use soup kitchens to induce criminal impulses in New York’s down-and-out Depression population.

THE PULSE: Why should PULSE readers not miss this special?

CHUCK DIXON: It’s blood-soaked pulp adventure written by folks who love it!

HOWARD HOPKINS: Because there are some very good authors and artists in it who are giving these stories their best. I think readers will really enjoy this anthology and, heck, I need the residuals!

WILL MURRAY: Are you kidding? The Spider is back! What more do you need to know?

JOE GENTILE: The stories read hard and fast. It is pure unadulterated fun! You want your justice delivered cold? Man or woman, young or old, comic reader or historical novel reader…THIS is for you!

SHANNON ERIC DENTON: Moonstone is keeping alive a bunch of truly awesome characters. Characters which paved the way for most of the comic heroes people follow today. There are also a lot of supertalented people in this book. I think old school SPIDER fans will be happy and this is a great jumping on project for new ones.