The Spider: Corpse Cargo (1933)

Volume 3, Issue 2 of The Spider magazine (July 1934) is as clear an indication as any that Norvell Page (writing as Grant Stockbridge) is not going to pull any punches with his Spider yarns. His first Spider outing saw kids dying from the bubonic plague unleashed by the villain. In this one, we're only a few pages in when a young member of a club of wannabe Baker Street Irregulars, "The Spider Fan Club," is tortured to death by a gang of modern-day pirates using a knife charged with electricity.

This is part of a larger plot where the gang, led by the beautiful villainess who calls herself Captain Kidd, is using a pulpy invention to electrify rails so that that glow with almost magical "green fire" and electrocute all the passengers of trains so their corpses can be robbed without any witnesses. The trains are sent rolling on to their destinations with no one living on board.

It's a hell of a lurid set-up, and Page is up to the challenge of delivering on it. The pirates set some pretty good death traps for the Spider to have to escape from. There's also a bit of a mystery regarding a kidnapped inventors missing granddaughter that isn't a big point but has a nice little payoff. 

The only thing missing, maybe, is any hint of femme fatale regarding Captain Kidd. The righteous and driven Spider finds her utterly loathsome (and with her disregard for human life, who can blame him!), and though Page says she is attractive, he doesn't give her the sort of loving description a Robert Howard would have.

Get The Spider: The Corpse Cargo here. Tim Truman did a loose adaptation of this story in comics format in the 1990s.

Xum's Who in Print

Xum's Who is a fan expansion of the DC Who's Who by Xum Yukinori, artist, podcaster, and comics fan, who unfortunately passed away in 2019. His son Isamu completed some of Xum's unfinished entries and got them all together for a limited print run. They are gorgeous dives into forgotten corners of the Pre-Crisis DCU.

For instance, Volume I gives entries to the Earth-One Superman and Wonder Woman, characters left out previously because of the erasure of their universe.

Characters deemed too minor for the official run like the Mikaal Tomas Starman, the Teen Titan character Golden Eagle, Lady Cop, and the Batgirl villain Lady Viper get their due. There are also characters whose exclusion from the original run seems odd (Giganta) and some whose exclusion points to the agenda behind the original run's compilation (Sugar & Spike).

I'm still waiting for someone to do an entry for the Black Eagle and his squadron of Tuskegee airmen but despite that lack, Xum's Who is a great thing to have in print. 

Wandering The Wild Wild West

For a long time, the only book on The Wild Wild West was Susan Kesler's book which is out of print. McFarland Books and author Don Presnell do their part to fill that gap with Wandering The Wild Wild West: A Critical Analysis of the CBS Television Series.

Presnell's book lacks the first-hand production detail and photos which made Kesler's book so great, but he does offer a solid review of all the episodes and does highlight the historical context of some episodes. He also offers up some fun trivia in infographic format.

I think it's a good addition to the library of any Wild Wild West fan, and for a fan without a copy of Kesler's book, it's essential.