Serial Vigilantes of Paperback Fiction. An Encyclopedia from Able Team to Z-Comm

by Bradley Mengel

  The British Outlaw

  Thriller magazine and its rivals were the British version of the pulps and spawned a number of characters who operated outside of the legal system to seek justice for those unable to help themselves. Many of these characters served in World War I, which left these characters with a thirst for adventure.

  • The Just Men (1905): The debut novel of Edgar Wallace featured the Four Just Men — Leon Gonsalez, George Manfred and Raymond Poiccart, with the fourth member killed during an earlier adventure. The Just Men fight against injustice, threatening to kill a member of Parliament if an unjust bill is not withdrawn. The Just Men's recorded activities start back in 1899. The Just Men feel that the law is inadequate and set about killing those who have evaded the system. In 1959, a new group of Four Just Men appeared in a British television series that ran for one season. This new group of Just Men had served together in an Allied unit during World War II and as a promise to their commanding officer, Col. Bacon, Ben Manfred, a British MP; Tim Collier, an American reporter based in Paris; Jeff Ryder, a New York lawyer; and Ricco Poccari, a Roman hotelier; all promised to fight injustice around the world. Each man operated with a female assistant.

  • Fu Manchu (1913): Sax Rohmer wrote fourteen novels featuring the villain Fu Manchu and his nemesis, Sir Dennis Nayland Smith. Smith originally encountered Dr. Fu Manchu in Burma and dedicated his life to stopping the devil doctor. Smith is a special agent for Scotland Yard. Fu Manchu was revived for the comic series Shang Chi: Master of Kung Fu with the title character as the son of Fu Manchu joining forces with Sir Dennis Nayland Smith and fighting his father.

  • Richard Hannay (1915): Starting with The 39 Steps, John Buchans hero stumbles upon a German plot to invade England prior to the outbreak of World War I. Hannay's service during that war formed the basis of the next two novels, Green mantle and Mr. Standfast. The Three Hostages and The Island of Sheep have Hannay fight against criminal conspiracies.

  • Buldog Drummond (1920): Sapper (H.C. McNeile) created Drummond, a former soldier in the Great War seeking adventure through an advertisement in the paper. This Drum-brought him into conflict with the master criminal best known as Carl Peterson, mond's adventures had him fighting against Peterson and his criminal empire as well as facing other criminals. After Sapper's death, the series was continued by Sapper's friend and partial model for Drummond, Gerald Fairlie.

  • The Ringer (1925): Another Edgar Wallace creation, Henry Arthur Milton is a master of disguise known as the Ringer. A veteran of World War I, Milton returned to England to discover that his sister had committed suicide after a con man left her penniless and pregnant. From that point, the Ringer kills this man and uses his skills to kill those who prey on the weak and vulnerable.

  • The Saint (1928): Simon Templar, the modern Robin Hood, was the creation of Leslie Charteris. Templar was a veteran of World War I who, out of the thrill of adventure, took to fighting the ungodly. Initially, the Saint was very physical, often shooting the criminals he faced; in later adventures he relies more on cunning and guile to out-con the criminals he faces.

  • Tiger Standish (1932): Created by Sydney Horler, the Hon. Timothy Overton Standish is an adventurer in the mold of Bulldog Drummond. Initially a freelance adventurer, with the outbreak of World War II, Standish became a freelance agent for section Yl of British Intelligence, flushing out Nazi spies and saboteurs.

  • The Toff (1938): The Honorable Richard "Rollie" Rollison, better known as the Toff, was the creation of John Creasy. An adventurer in the Saint mold, Rollison is a wealthy young man who decided to fight crime. Initially, working entirely outside the law, Rollison's successes led the police to tolerate and assist him in his adventures.

  • Patrick Dawlish (1939): Another creation of John Creasy, who was writing under the pseudonym of Gordon Ashe, Dawlish is an adventurer in the mold of Bulldog Drummond. If it wasn't for his broken nose, left over from his boxing days, Dawlish would be handsome, standing at 6'3" with wide shoulders and an ease of movement seen in the physically fit. Dawlish is an implacable foe, fighting thieves, blackmailers, murderers and Nazis. Dawlish eventually became a special commissioner for Scotland Yard and headed the organization known as Crime Haters.

  • The Falcon (1940): Initially a single short story by Michael Arlen, the character was quickly translated to film by RKO with British actor George Sanders taking the title role of Gay Stanhope Falcon in 1941. Sanders, also portraying the Saint for the same studio, played the role for another four movies. Sander's final performance was in The FalconsBrother, where Gay Falcon was killed and his brother Lawrence Falcon investigated, making this the first time a series character was killed on screen. Lawrence Falcon was played by Tom Conway, who was Sander's real brother, and appeared in a further ten films. Another three Falcon films were made starring John Calvert as Michael Waring. In 1954, the Adventures of the Falcon television series aired on ABC. The Falcon was now played by Charles McGraw and the Falcons identity was Mike Waring. This Falcon was credited as an adaptation of the Falcon novels of Dexler Drake. Drake's novels started in 1936 featured Malcolm J. Wingate as the Falcon. Leslie Charteris attempted to sue RKO in 1945, alleging unfair competition and that the Falcon was a plagiarism of the Saint. RKO was paying less for the rights to the Falcon, dropped the Saint and avoided a lawsuit.

  Private Eyes

  • Continental Op (1923): This heavyset operative of the Continental Detective Agency was the creation of Dashiell Hammett. Hammett, a former operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, used his experiences as the basis of the cases of the nameless hero.

  • Race Williams (1926): Created by Carroll John Daly, this character was one of the first hardboiled private eyes. Race Williams sees himself as a halfway house between the cops and the crooks, able to walk in both worlds.

  • Sam Spade (1930): Dashiell Hammett's other private eye debuted in The Maltese Falcon and featured in several short stories. Hammett's blonde detective operated as the middle man between police and the criminals trading on his tarnished reputation to bring criminals to justice. Filmed three times in the decade after it was published, the 1941 version, starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by John Huston, is considered to be the definitive version.

  • Philip Marlowe (1939): Raymond Chandler was a writer influenced by Hammett and the Black Mask pulp writers. Initially writing short stories featuring various private eyes such as Johnny Dalmas, Chandler broke into novels with the character of Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. With the success of the novels, Chandler's short stories were reprinted and edited as Philip Marlowe stories. It was Chandler who defined the hard boiled detective in his essay "The Simple Art of Murder," describing a noble man able to walk down mean streets.

  • Mike Hammer (1947): Initially conceived as comic book character Mike Danger, by Mickey Spillane. Mike Hammer first appeared in the novel I, the Jury. Tough and uncompromising, Hammer is single-minded in solving the cases he is hired to investigate. In the ultimate blurring of creator and creation, Spillane played Hammer in the 1963 movie adaptation of The Girl Hunters. Don Pendleton cites Mike Hammer as an influence on his creation of The Executioner.

  • Travis McGee (1964): Florida-based "salvage" expert Travis McGee retrieves stolen items for the fee of half the value of the items. Travis then takes parts of his retirement living off the money until the next job. McGee encounters a number of emotionally and psychologically scarred women during his salvage operations and his relationships with them heal their wounds. This character was created by John D. MacDonald.

  Hero Pulps

  The hero pulps can be considered to be closest relative to the serial vigilante. With skills forged in war, these heroes returned to America to fight against crime, operating outside of the law in the interests of justice.

  • Nick Carter (1886): Nick Carter was raised by his father Sim Carter to be a great detective. Sim's training gave his son great strength, a keen mind and the ability to be a master of disguise. Cart
er operates a private detective firm but has an open consultancy with the police. A popular character, he appeared in over 1000 exploits and was adapted and exploited all over the world. One of the first characters to be adapted to film, Carter appeared in four French serials between 1908 and 1912. In 1942, Carter made the transition to radio. In 1964, the Nick Carter name was revived and reinvented for the Killmaster series.

  • The Shadow (1930): Initially the narrator for the radio program Detective Story, which dramatized stories from Street and Smith's magazine of the same name, the Shadow gained his own magazine when people began asking for that Shadow magazine. Street and Smith hired Walter Gibson to write the Shadow under the house name of Maxwell Grant. The Shadow pulp ran for 325 novels with Gibson writing the majority of those. The Shadow was quickly adapted to a radio program; the most famous of the voice actors for the character was Orson Welles. The Shadow also appeared in movies and comics. The Shadow was referenced in War Against the Mafia, the first Executioner book.

  • The Spider (1933): Initially written by R.T.M. Scott, the Spider was a nickname for Richard Wentworth, a World War I veteran who took an amateur interest in crime with his valet Ram Singh. After two books, Scott left the series and Norvell Page, using the house name Grant Stockbridge, took over writing and the series really took off. Page established the Spider as a costumed identity that Wentworth used to mete out the death penalty on the underworld. The treats faced by the Spider were apocalyptic: flights of vampire bats, hoards of cavemen, and super weapons that destroy metal. The Spider was adapted for two serials. Four books in the series were revised and updated as Spider in 1975.

  • Doc Savage (1933): As the followup to the Shadow, Street and Smith created Doc Savage. Under the house name Kenneth Robeson, the majority of the 181 novels were written by Lester Dent. Doc Savage and his five aides traveled the world righting wrongs. Doc had been raised from birth to be the ultimate superman for that purpose. Doc has been adapted into comics several times and Bantam Books reprinted the original pulp novels and several new books by Philip Jose Farmer and Will Murray. Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy acknowledge Doc Savage as an influence on the Destroyer series.

  • The Avenger (1936): Another Street and Smith series also written under the Kenneth Robeson house name: this time Paul Ernst was the writer behind the name. The Avenger was adventurer Richard Henry Benson, whose wife and daughter disappeared during a commercial air flight. The shock of the disappearance left Benson's hair white and his face frozen and malleable like clay. This made Benson a master of disguise. Benson used his new skills to fight crime and formed Justice, Inc., with his band of assistants. After the Avenger magazine folded, the character appeared in several short stories in the back pages of Clues. The series was reprinted by Warner Books in the 1970s and several new Avenger novels were written by Ron Goulart.

  • Domino Lady (1936): One of the very few mystery women of the pulps is the Domino Lady. Created by Lars Anderson, socialite Ellen Patrick became the Domino Lady to avenge the murder of her father, Owen Patrick. Clad in black mask and skin-tight white dress, this heroine was capable of clouding the minds of men.

  • Green Hornet (1936): Strictly speaking not a pulp hero, but this radio serial hero was created by Fran Striker, creator of the Lone Ranger, as an updated version of that hero and shares many of the traits of the pulp heroes. Britt Reid, crusading newspaper publisher, adopts the costumed identity of the Green Hornet to fight crime with his chauffeur Kato. Britt is the great-nephew of John Reid, the Lone Ranger. Revived in 1966 by William Dozier as a companion series to Batman, the Green Hornet helped make a star of Bruce Lee.

  Comics

  In the early days of comics, characters were a mix of pulp-influenced mystery men and super-powered beings. Many of the themes seen in serial vigilantes, such as the death of family members from criminals, can be seen in the comics.

  • Crimson Avenger (1938): Lee Travis was a newspaper editor who was distressed by the crime rate, donned a crimson mask, cape and fedora, and fought crime as the Crimson Avenger with his chauffer Wing. Later, the pair replaced their pulp-inspired costumes with more Superman-inspired tights and continued to fight crime.

  • Batman (1939): As a child, Bruce Wayne witnessed the slaughter of his parents at the hands of an armed robber. His parents left Bruce very wealthy and he used his money to train himself to the peak of human ability. Realizing that criminals are cowardly and inspired by a giant bat, Bruce adopted the disguise of Batman. Joined a year later by his boy sidekick Robin, Batman became one of the greatest and best known superheroes of all time.

  • Phantom Lady (1941): Socialite Sandra Knight gained a taste for adventuring after saving her senator father's life with only a rolled-up newspaper. After gaining a black light projector, which blinds opponents, Knight adopted a skimpy yellow and green, later blue and red, costume to fight crime. The character moved through several publishers, eventually settling at DC Comics where several younger characters have taken the name the Phantom Lady.

  • Black Canary (1947): Dinah Drake was the daughter of a police officer and dating a police officer, Larry Lance. Unable to join the police force, she created a secret identity to assist with the fight against crime; she worked as a florist during the day. At night she donned a blonde wig, fishnet stockings and the rest of her costume to infiltrate criminal gangs as the Black Canary. The character appeared as a supporting character in several titles. Later, Dinah's daughter Dinah Lance became the new Black Canary, gained the power of a sonic scream and began dating the Green Arrow.

  Western

  Westerns have been a major influence on the serial vigilantes, with many of the serial vigilante authors also writing westerns. The western mythos of men like Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp riding into a lawless town and single-handedly bringing law and order, or the romanticized legends of outlaws like Billie the Kid or Jesse James of men forced outside the law by the corrupt authorities, plays heavily into the idea of the serial vigilante. This can be seen by the frequent references and comparisons to the Lone Ranger that many serial vigilantes seem to invite. The western influence can be seen most clearly in the movie version of Death Wish: Paul Kersey travels to Arizona, where his client extols the virtues of the western lifestyle and how there is less crime. Kersey is given a six gun by a grateful client and returns to clean up the streets of New York City. At several points, Kersey asks the villain to "fill his hand" and is ordered to leave town at high noon, both references to the gunfighters of the old West. Marvel comics one-shot comic, A Man Called Frank, reimagines The Punisher in the old West, riding the range to avenge the death of his family.

  • Zorro (1919): Created by Johnston McCulley, Zorro is the costumed identity of Don Diego Vega used to fight against the corrupt government of the pueblo of Los Angeles. The character first appeared in The Curse of Capistrano in the August 1919 issue of All-Story Weekly. The character may have finished there but Douglas Fairbanks decided to adapt Zorro for his next film in 1920. Zorro appeared in a number of other novels, short story, films and television series. Several generations of Zorros have appeared throughout history always fighting injustice.

  • Lone Ranger (1933): During an outlaw ambush, a troop of Texas Rangers is killed with only one survivor. This Lone Ranger is brought back to health by the Indian Tonto, who discovered the site of the massacre. Donning a mask made from the vest of his brother, who rode as commander of the Rangers, the Lone Ranger and Tonto ride the old West helping people and fighting crime. The Lone Ranger doesn't kill, preferring to shoot the guns out of outlaws' hands. Starting as a radio show, the Lone Ranger has been adapted to novels, movies, comics and television. The character of the Green Hornet is an update of the Lone Ranger and is revealed to be the great-nephew of the Lone Ranger.

  Spy

  The spy genre has a long history but gained popularity with the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union that emerged after World War II. This diplomatic war of words gave the scope for cl
andestine operations.

  • James Bond (1953): Arguably the most famous spy of all time. Created by Ian Fleming for Casino Royale, Bond is Agent 007, working for the 00 section, which gives him a license to kill. Bond travels the world fighting the plans of the Soviet agency SMERSH and the criminal/terrorist organization SPECTRE. Bond made the transition to film, where he has been played by Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. After the death of Ian Fleming, the series was continued by Kingsley Amis, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Charlie Higson and Sebastian Faulks.

  • The Avengers (1961): This television series featured secret agent John Steed and his partners as they hunt and avert threats against Great Britain. Initially assisted by Doctor David Keel, Steed was then partnered with Cathy Gale, followed by Emma Peel and Tara King. The series was revived as the New Avengers with Steed mentoring two new agents, Mike Gambit and Purdey.

  • Modesty Blaise (1963): The head of a criminal organization known as the Network, when Modesty and her right-hand man Willie Garvin retired to England, they were hired by the British Secret Service on a freelance basis. This started as a newspaper strip written by Peter O'Donnell. O'Donnell then adapted the series for novels and short stories. Modesty's adventures have been the basis for three films.

  • The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964): The television series features agents of the United Network Command for Law Enforcement and featured an American agent, Napoleon Solo and a Russian agent Illya Kuriarkin working against the terrorist group THRUSH. The show had a spinoff, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., which had agents April Dancer and Mark Slate also fighting THRUSH. Both series had original tie-in novels.