Chuck,
Re your question below:
> This probably not hardboiled, but Baen is reprinting
The Spider
> stories by Gerald W. Page from the 1930s. I just
finished the first
> paperback 'Robat Titans of Gotham', and really
enjoyed it. Nostalgia
> Ventrues is also reprinting The Shadow. Are there
any other writers
> of this type of story that people might
recommend?
I can't personally recommend them, since I have no personal
experience, but two you might want to try to track
down:
The second "masked avenger" sleuth, following in the wake of
the success of Street & Smith's The Shadow by just a few
months, and predating both The Spider and Doc Savage (Savage,
of course, wasn't masked, but he is generally classed with
the other "hero pulps"), was The Phantom Detective, who
starred in his own magazine. Another of those "wealthy young
men about town," who scratched an itch by fighting crime, his
costume was a domino mask and a top hat. His adventures were
by-lined "G. Waymon Jones," but, in contrast to characters
like The Shadow, The Spider, and Doc Savage, who were
primarily identified with a single creator, many different
writers contributed Phantom Detective stories under the
"Jones" house name, including pulp stalwarts like D.L.
Champion, Norman Daniels, and Norvell Page himself. One P/D
writer who might be of particular interest was Alvin
Schwartz, who also did a lot of work in the comics field,
including a number of adventures about the mast famous masked
detectve of them all, the Batman, particularly for the
syndicated Batman newspaper strip of the '40's.
Erle Stanley Gardner's contribution to the "masked avenger"
school of pulp detective fiction was a character called "The
Patent Leather Kid," who wore a mask made of (wait for it)
patent leather. I think his stories appeared in DETECTIVE
FICTION WEEKLY, but I could be wrong about that.
JIM DOHERTY
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