&sq=&lang=&file=File:The_Spider_November_1933.jpg) Cover of the second issue, dated November 1933, by John Newton Howitt | |
| Publisher | Popular Publications |
|---|---|
| First issue | October 1933 |
| Final issue | December 1943 |
| Country | United States |
The Spider was an American pulp magazine published by Popular Publications from 1933 to 1943. Every issue included a lead novel featuring the Spider, a heroic crime-fighter. The magazine was intended as a rival to Street & Smith's The Shadow and Standard Magazine's The Phantom Detective, which also featured crime-fighting heroes. The novels in the first two issues were written by R. T. M. Scott; thereafter every lead novel was credited to "Grant Stockbridge", a house name. Norvell Page, a prolific pulp author, wrote most of these; almost all the rest were written by Emile Tepperman and A. H. Bittner. The novel in the final issue was written by Prentice Winchell.
The Spider's secret identity was Richard Wentworth, a rich New Yorker. Unlike some contemporary pulp heroes, the Spider was willing to kill criminals, and when he did so he left a red spider inked on his victims. Page in particular wrote stories with violent storylines, often with science fiction plot devices. Bittner had written for Popular's horror magazines, Terror Tales and Horror Stories, and his stories included horror tropes such as criminals planning to sell human flesh as meat. Continuity from novel to novel was often disregarded: New York would be resurrected each issue from whatever disaster had afflicted it the previous month, and characters killed in one issue would reappear unscathed in later issues.
As well as the lead novel, each issue featured short stories, also in the crime fiction genre. Occasionally these included elements of horror fiction, but any apparently supernatural phenomena were always explained away by the end of the story. Authors of these stories included Tepperman, Arthur Leo Zagat, and Frank Gruber. Most of the cover art was painted by John Newton Howitt and (for the last few years of the magazine's run) by Rafael de Soto.
The magazine was discontinued in 1943 because of the shortage of paper caused by World War II. The last issue was dated December 1943. The manuscript of an unpublished Spider novel by Donald G. Cormack was discovered in 1978 and published in 1979 as Legend in Blue Steel.