Page, Norvell (pulp fiction writer)

 

(1904-1961) Also wrote as: Randolph Craig, N. Wooten Poge, Grant Stockbridge

In the 1930s, the golden decade of the American pulp magazines, Norvell Page wrote some of the most entertaining, outlandish, wildest, pulpiest pulp fiction ever committed to two-column type and rough-wood paper. Though his most enduring and acclaimed writings would disguise his authorship with a house name, Page has long been properly credited for his amazing contribution to popular fiction, and his place in the pulp Valhalla is secure.

Page’s first career was as a newspaperman. Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, he came to New York City as a young reporter and found work at several of the numerous Manhattan dailies, including the Times, the Herald Tribune, and the World-Telegram. His first pulp sale is thought to have been sometime in 1930. By the end of that year he had begun a long-lasting relationship with Detective-Dragnet Magazine, a freewheeling crime pulp. His byline appeared, here and there, with increasing frequency over the next 12 months, and by 1933 he was an established presence in the New York pulp community.

Page wrote a little of everything in his amazing and productive single decade as a pulpster. Early in his career, in 1933, he wrote a trio of memorable crime stories set in Little Italy for Black Mask magazine. He wrote more than a dozen tales of the grotesque and the terrifying in the “weird menace” magazines of the early to mid-’30s (Dime Mystery, Terror Tales, Horror Stories). He wrote numerous risque detective mysteries for the notorious Spicy Detective Stories, and he wrote the cult classics The City Condemned to Hell and Satan’s Incubators, in the first and only issues of The Octopus and The Scorpion, respectively. For John W. Campbell’s Unknown magazine he wrote three extraordinary novel-length works—two Robert E. howard-like fantasy adventures of a wandering evangelical Christian warrior (Flame Winds and Sons of the Bear God) and the haunting But Without Horns, the investigation of a destructive, superpowerful mutant human whose racialist views and devastating plans for humanity are eerily reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s. But for all these goodies on Norvell Page’s resume, his everlasting enshrinement among pulp fans is primarily for the nearly 100 topic-length adventures he wrote about a mysterious crime-fighter, that “Master of Men” known as the Spider.

The first of the so-called hero pulps had been established with great success by the developer Street & Smith. “We saw how very successful The Shadow was,” recalled Henry Steeger, the head of the rival pulp house Popular Publications, “and we wanted to do something like it. And I think we improved on it.” Richard Wentworth was the actual identity of the Spider, a ruthless crime fighter who stamps the corpses of his numerous criminal victims with a vermilion, spider-shaped seal. The first two issues were pseudonymously and stodgily written by R. T. M. Scott, an old Canadian army major. Page replaced him for issue three. With the new author in charge, The Spider took on a startling intensity: it became sexier and more violent by far, written in compulsive, explosive prose. The plots were now mad, outlandish, disturbing, apocalyptic. In Wings of the Black Death, for instance, Page’s debut, Richard Wentworth battles a cruel, blackmailing criminal who threatens New York with bubonic plague, the effects of which are described in sickening detail:

He belched. Blood poured from his jaws. It tore a muffled scream of agony from him. . . .

The purple lips opened, suffocation blackened his face. Blood gushed out. Sound issued from that ghastly mouth. But it was sound that was translatable into no word. It was the death rattle . . .

In The Spider, for once, the viciousness of the criminals was matched by the hero. There would be none of Doc Savage’s mercy bullets (see dent, Lester) or reprogramming seminars for the opponents of Richard Wentworth. Justice for them is sudden and final (“In the end, the Black Death was a coward and died a coward’s death, with terror in his eyes, with the Spider’s fingers crushing the life slowly out of him.”). As for sex, both Wentworth and his girlfriend Nina Van Sloan continually encountered the sort of lasciviousness that would have sent Doc Savage fleeing to his Fortress of Solitude and bolting the door. There are orgies, threats of rape, and sexual torture. Page also wrote some of the more sadistic and frightening of the notorious “shudder pulp stories,” (see fischer, Bruno) and no doubt some of the bloodthirsty mindset of the shudders blended almost too smoothly into the psychotic villainy and rampant cruelty of so many of his Spider adventures. It was a phenomenal achievement, great entertainment, and hugely successful for Popular Publications. Page churned out 35 of the novel-length stories, one a month, before he took a breather, then returned after some months to write most of the Spider novels until World War II took him away from the pulps for good.

Page himself was said to have been something of a mysterious, eccentric figure, wrapped up in his stories and his characters, particularly the Spider. His boss Henry Steeger recalled that Page would wear a wide-brimmed black hat and black cape and may have come to believe he was his famous superhero. Others remembered Page in the same outfit, roaming up and down the sunny beaches of Ana Maria, a resort and pulp writer colony on Florida’s Gulf Coast. During World War II Page worked for the U.S. government in Washington, writing government reports. He remained in government service after the war, becoming a publicity writer for the Atomic Energy Commission, a job he retained until his death from a heart attack at 57.

Works

  • “Accursed Thirst” (Sept. 1935);
  • “Black Harvest,” Black Mask (Apr. 1933);
  • “Blood on the Moon” (Jan. 1936);
  • “Bodies in Bronze” (Dec. 1935);
  • “But Without Horns” (June 1940);
  • “Claws of the Golden Dragon” (Jan. 1939);
  • “Confessional, The,” Black Mask (Mar. 1933);
  • “Dance of the Skeletons” (Oct. 1933);
  • “Death Beast, The” (Dec. 1933);
  • “Devil’s Death Dwarfs, The” (Oct. 1936);
  • “Flame Winds” (June 1939);
  • “Gentlemen from Hell” (Mar. 1942);
  • “Legions of the Accursed Light” (Jan. 1938);
  • “Mayor of Hell, The” (Jan. 1936);
  • “Murder Dyed Their Lips” (Sept. 1937);
  • “Music for the Lusting Dead” (July 1936);
  • “Satan’s Penthouse Carnival,” Strange Detective Mysteries (Jan.-Feb. 1939);
  • “Satan’s Sideshow,” Dime Detective (Sept. 1935);
  • “Sons of the Bear God” (Nov. 1939);
  • “They Drink Blood” (Aug. 1934);
  • “Those Catrini,” Black Mask, (Feb. 1933);
  • “When the Death Bat Flies” (Oct. 1937);
  • “When the Devil Laughed” (May 1935)

As Randolph Craig:

  • “City Condemned to Hell,” The Octopus (Feb.-Mar. 1939);
  • “Satan’s Incubators,” The Scorpion (Apr. 1939)

As N. Wooten Poge:

  • “Blackmail Hotel,” Spicy Detective Stories (Feb. 1937);
  • “Death Makes a Proposition,” Spicy Detective Stories (Mar. 1938);
  • “Devil Muscles In,” Detective-Dragnet (Nov. 1930);
  • “Kiss Proof Murder,” Spicy Detective Stories (Aug. 1939);
  • “Redheads Always Win,” Spicy Detective Stories (Aug. 1935);
  • “Senorita Bluebird,” Spicy Detective Stories (Sept. 1938);
  • “Sinister Alliance,” Detective-Dragnet (Nov.
  • 1933); “Straight Jacket Solution,” Spicy Detective Stories (Aug. 1937);
  • “Two Spot,” Detective-Dragnet (Mar. 1931)

As Grant Stockbridge in The Spider:

  • “Army of the Damned” (Oct. 1942);
  • “Benevolent Order of Death” (June 1941);
  • “Builders of the Dark Empire” (Oct. 1934);
  • “Cholera King, The” (Apr. 1936);
  • “Citadel of Hell” (Mar. 1934);
  • “City Destroyer, The” (Jan. 1935);
  • “City of Flaming Shadows” (Jan. 1934);
  • “City of Whispering Death” (Apr. 1938);
  • “City That Paid to Die, The” (Sept. 1938);
  • “Coming of the Terror, The” (Sept. 1936);
  • “Corpse Cargo” (July 1934);
  • “Council of Evil” (Oct. 1940);
  • “Crime Laboratory, The” (Dec. 1941);
  • “Criminal Horde, The” (Aug. 1943);
  • “Death and the Spider” (Jan. 1942);
  • “Death Reign of the Vampire King” (Nov. 1935);
  • “Death’s Crimson Juggernaut” (Nov. 1934);
  • “Devil’s Paymaster, The” (May 1941);
  • “Dragon Lord of the Underworld” (July
  • 1935); “Emperor from Hell, The” (July 1938);
  • “Emperor of the Yellow Death” (Dec. 1935);
  • “Empire of Doom” (Feb. 1934);
  • “Fangs of the Dragon” (Aug. 1942); “Flame Master,
  • The” (Mar. 1935);
  • “Gray Horde Creeps, The” (Mar. 1938);
  • “Green Globes of Death” (Mar. 1936);
  • “Harbor of Nameless Dead” (Jan. 1941);
  • “Spider and the Slave Doctor” (Feb. 1941);
  • “Hell Rolls on the Highways” (Sept. 1942);
  • “Hell’s Sales Manager” (Feb. 1940);
  • “Hordes of the Red Butcher” (June 1935);
  • “Howling Death, The” (Jan. 1943);
  • “Judgment of the Damned” (June 1940);
  • “King of the Fleshless Legion” (May 1939);
  • “King of the Red Killers” (Sept. 1935);
  • “Laboratory of the Damned” (July 1936);
  • “Legions of Madness” (June 1936);
  • “Machine Guns over the White House” (Sept. 1937);
  • “Mad Horde, The” (May 1934);
  • “Man Who Ruled in Hell, The” (July 1937);
  • “Master of Murder” (Nov. 1942);
  • “Master of the Death Madness” (Aug. 1935);
  • “Master of the Flaming Horde” (Nov. 1937);
  • “Murder’s Black Prince” (July 1941);
  • “Murder’s Legionnaires” (Feb. 1942);
  • “Overlord of the Damned” (Oct. 1935);
  • “Pain Emperor, The” (Feb. 1935);
  • “Pirates from Hell, The” (Aug. 1940);
  • “Prince of the Red Looters” (Aug. 1934);
  • “Rat Trap” (Aug. 1931);
  • “Recruit for the Spider Legion” (Mar. 1943);
  • “Red Death Rain, The” (Dec. 1934);
  • “Reign of the Death Fiddler” (May 1935);
  • “Reign of the Silver Terror” (Sept. 1934);
  • “Return of the Racket Kings” (July 1942);
  • “Revolt of the Underworld” (June 1942);
  • “Rule of the Monster Men” (June 1939);
  • “Satan’s Death Blast” (June 1934);
  • “Satan’s Murder Machines” (Dec. 1939);
  • “Satan’s Seven Swordsmen” (Oct. 1941);
  • “Satan’s Sightless Legion” (Aug. 1936);
  • “Scourge of the Black Legions” (Nov. 1938);
  • “Secret City of Crime” (Feb. 1942);
  • “Serpent of Destruction” (Apr. 1934);
  • “Silver Death Rain, The” (Mar. 1939);
  • “Slaves of the Burning Blade” (Apr. 1941);
  • “Slaves of the Crime Master” (Apr. 1935);
  • “Slaves of the Dragon” (May 1936);
  • “Slaves of the Laughing Death” (Mar. 1940);
  • “Slaves of the Murder Syndicate” (Feb. 1936);
  • “Slaves of the Ring” (Apr. 1942);
  • “Spider and Hell’s Factory, The” (Oct. 1943);
  • “Spider and His Hobo Army, The” (Nov. 1940);
  • “Spider and the Death Piper, The” (May 1942);
  • “Spider and the Deathless One, The” (Sept. 1941);
  • “Spider and the Eyeless Legion, The” (Oct. 1939);
  • “Spider and the Faceless One, The” (Nov. 1939);
  • “Spider and the Fire God, The” (Aug. 1939);
  • “Spider and the Flame King, The” (Dec. 1942);
  • “Spider and the Jewels of Hell, The” (Dec. 1940);
  • “Spider and the Man from Hell, The” (June 1943);
  • “Spider and the Scarlet Surgeon, The” (Aug. 1941);
  • “Spider and the Slaves of Hell, The” (July 1939);
  • “Spider and the Sons of Satan, The” (Mar. 1941);
  • “Spider and the War Emperor” (May 1940);
  • “Volunteer Corpse Brigade” (Nov. 1941);
  • “Wings of the Black Death” (Dec. 1933)

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