The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham [Paperback]

Norvell Page (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 2007

Two complete novels in one volume of the adventures of the mysterious masked crime fighter known as "The Spider," hunted by the underworld and the police alike. In one, the Spider battles an army of giant robots that has New York City under siege--a storyline so fraught with action and peril, that the very creators of Superman had borrowed it for one of the Man of Steel's comic strip adventures. It also was the inspiration for the major motion picture, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow." In the second novel, the spider battles a criminal mastermind who threatens the entire northeast with thousands of poison-fanged vampire bats unless his terms are met. Can even the Spider--hunted by the law as never before after faked evidence has branded him as the master of the killer bats--unmask the identity of the Vampire King before thousands die horribly?

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Baen (June 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416521275
• ISBN-13: 978-1416521273
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,070,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The history of pulp lives again, May 24, 2007

By 

Geoffrey Kidd (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham (Paperback)

This is actually THREE classic short novels, rather than two. The first two are tales of "The Spider", the kind of hero whose stereotypes are Doc Savage or The Shadow, a man whose public face is "idle rich", but by night...

The first story, SATAN'S MURDER MACHINES, finds the Spider dealing with the Robot Titans of the title. Giant walking machines which kill and ravage the city with impunity, thwarting all efforts to stop them. This story absolutely stunned me with the amount of thought and planning that went into it. I won't reveal the machine's secrets here, but I will say that Page was dealing with concepts that wouldn't re-appear in science fiction for almost thirty years, and he made the machines both believable *and* workable. Fun.

The second story, DEATH REIGN OF THE VAMPIRE KING, we find the Spider dealing with a villain who uses swarms of bats, augmented with poison fangs, to terrorize the city. The Spider ends up framed for the murders and must both catch the killer and clear his name. The aerial combat scenes were splendid, and I liked the fact that Nita, the Spider's girlfriend, is drawn by the author to be just as skilled and tough-minded as the Spider.

The final story, THE OCTOPUS: THE CITY CONDEMNED TO HELL, was a one-off that apparently never gelled as a series. It deals with "Dr. Skull", a skilled and dedicated young physician, who disguises himself as old, and fights crime and evil wherever he finds them. Here, he must deal with "The Octopus" an evil both ancient and young, who turns people into monsters to feed his empire. It's not quite up to "The Spider", but it was fun to read.

Add in cover *and* interior art by Steranko, and you've got a recipe for solid entertainment. The book also lists another volume "The Spider: City of Doom" in the works.

This was a heckuva lot of fun to read, so all I can say about the prospct of another volume is: Goodie!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Spider: The Master of Men returns, October 9, 2008

By 

Michael R. Brown (Tamarac, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham (Master of Men) (Mass Market Paperback)

As a long-time pulp hero fan, am always looking for more inexpensive reprints of these heroes. While I have all the Doc Savage and Avenger novels, most of the other heroes haven't been as heavily reprinted, one of them being "The Spider". With over 100 Spider novels, its annoying how many have been reprinted by multiple publishers and how many haven't been touched by any.

Actually, this book has 2 Spider novels and the one Octopus novel. Let me explain the Octopus. Its really a 'villian pulp', as the Octopus is a villian. The hero is the mysterious "Skull Killer"/Dr Skull character. This series didn't really succeed, and the second Octopus novel was re-written as "The Scorpion". I really wished Baen had reprinted that novel in their second Spider collection, as I don't have a copy of it. Also, it used to be thought that Novell Page wrote "The Octopus". Recent research has pointed to Ejler and Edith Jacobsen as the REAL authors of "The Octopus/The Scorpion". So Baen publishing all three under Page's name is incorrect.

My main complain is the same as another reviewer. Considering all the Spider novels that HAVEN'T been reprinted in paperbacks in recent years, why reprint 2 that HAVE??? Both Spider novels were reprinted by Carrol & Graf in their double-novel books in the 1990s, which I have.

I am planning on getting their second collection. I was surprised they put this out in massmarket paperback. Hopefully they'll do the same with the second one and we'll see more.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great stories that give insight into the creation of Comic Books, March 5, 2011

By 

picardfan007 (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham (Master of Men) (Mass Market Paperback)

I was quite surprised when saw how good these stories are. The first one with the "Iron Man" or "Iron Men" must have inspired Stan Lee to create Iron Man. The Spider, while taking elements of "The Shadow" was still an exciing read. This collection has three stories and all of them are action packed. The second one has a creature called "The Bat Man" that was created five years prior to the publication of Batman the comic magazine. Never having read a pulp story before I could see how this genre inspired modern super hero comics.

I just would like to know if Baen plans to publish more of these because I would buy all of them in a minute. It's like film noir with a science fiction slant in each tale. The writer, Norvel Page, was a master of the action genre and deserved a lot more credit and reprints of his facinating tales.