The Avenger is a fictional character whose original adventures appeared between September 1939 and September 1942 in the pulp magazine The Avenger, published by Street & Smith, which ran 24 issues. Five additional short stories were published in Clues Detective magazine (1942–1943), and a sixth novelette in The Shadow magazine in 1943. Decades later, newly written pastiches were commissioned and published by Warner Brothers' Paperback Library from 1973 to 1974.
The Avenger was a pulp hero who combined elements of Doc Savage and The Shadow. The authorship of the pulp series was credited by Street & Smith to Kenneth Robeson, the same byline that appeared on the Doc Savage stories. Most of the original Avenger stories were actually written by Paul Ernst. The "Kenneth Robeson" name was a house pseudonym used by a number of different Street & Smith writers.
History In the late 1930s following in the wake of a slew of magazine cancellations (The Skipper, Bill Barnes and The Whisperer "had failed to capture the audience loyalty" of Doc Savage and the Shadow), Street & Smith's circulation manager Henry William Ralston and editor John L. Nanovic set out to create a new hero combining elements of both. They obtained advice from Lester Dent and Walter B. Gibson in the creation of the Avenger, and hired writer Paul Ernst. Both Dent and Gibson met with Ernst to give him advice on his stories, Dent focused on characterization and Gibson on plotting. The character of the Avenger, described by pulp expert Don Hutchison as "clearly an effort to form a hybrid of the company's more successful creations", echoed his forebears in other ways also. Whereas Doc Savage was known as "The Man of Bronze", the Avenger was described as "The Man of Steel". The Avenger's "marksman's eyes" echoed the "burning eyes" of the Shadow, who continued to be referred to as "The Masked Avenger".
When creating The Avenger, Paul Ernst drew on elements from characters he had previously created; Seekay (a private detective with a disfigured face who wears a plastic mask); The Wraith (a crimefighter who used both a knife and a gun); Dick Bullitt (with his gray features); Old Stone Face (the G-Man with the emotionless visage); the Gray Marauder and Karlu the Mystic.
In 1939, readers of Street & Smith's Doc Savage pulp magazine "thrilled to a special announcement" that a new periodical — The Avenger — "was soon to be published", and would feature stories "written by none other than Kenneth Robeson, 'the familiar creator of Doc Savage'.Hutchison, Don The Great Pulp Heroes – 3: The Avenger in Peter Harris (ed.) The New Captain George's Whizzbang #12 (1971), pp. 2–8 Robeson was actually a Street & Smith house name used by Ernst and a number of other authors, including Lester Dent, the actual writer of Doc Savage. The first issue of The Avenger was cover-dated September 1939, and featured a cover story/"lead novel" entitled "Justice Inc." Interior art was produced by Paul Orban, well known to pulp fans for his "similar work on Doc Savage and The Shadow".
Pulp demise Describing the stories as "well-plotted" with good characterization and "an unusual amount of attention paid to detail", Hutchison notes that as a derivative character, the Avenger was destined not to be as popular as his original rivals, which Hutchison gives as Doc Savage, The Spider, G-8, The Shadow, Operator #5 and the Phantom, while still arguing that the character "can perhaps be considered the last of the great pulp heroes". His stories ran initially in his own magazine for 24 issues, first monthly and then (beginning with #13) bi-monthly in four volumes. The entire series ran exactly three years, ceasing publication in September 1942. The character was kept alive in Clues Detective with five additional short stories written by Emile Tepperman, plus an additional tale by Emile Tepperman which was published as a backup feature in a 1944 issue of The Shadow.
In Don Hutchison's estimation, the Avenger was following in big footsteps, and hamstrung by appearing too late in the day. Following the "instant justice" of The Shadow, the global stage of Doc Savage and other pulp heroes, the Avenger was, by 1939, "simply an unnecessary commodity". "Second best[,] he had tried harder ... but the timing was all wrong." Ultimately, Hutchison concludes, "The world did not require another good ten-cent hero."
Revivals Nevertheless, the character was revived in the 1970s by Warner Paperback Library, given a brief revival by DC Comics (in comic book form), and was the subject of new short stories in 2008 from Moonstone Books. (See below)
Character biography
Origins The Avengers real name is Richard Henry Benson, a globe-trotting adventurer who "had made his millions by professional adventuring": discovering rubber in South America, leading "native armies in Java", making "aerial maps in the Congo", mining "amethysts in Australia and emeralds in Brazil" and finding gold in Alaska and diamonds in the Transvaal. Following the pulp archetype of a wealthy hero, despite an internal chronology making them (and Benson in particular) "children of the Great Depression", the Avenger's backstory gave him the funding to ultimately "support [his] crime-fighting appurtenances".
Deciding to settle down and raise a family in the first Avenger novel ("Justice, Inc."), Benson's plans for a peaceful life as a "world-renowned industrial engineer" are shattered when his wife (Alicia) and young daughter (Alice) are kidnapped and presumably killed (though their bodies are never found) by some criminals during an airplane journey from Buffalo to Canada. The shock of this loss has a bizarre effect on Benson. His face becomes paralyzed while both his skin and his hair turn white, his facial flesh becoming malleable, like modelling clay. His face was thereafter (for the first dozen stories) regularly described (as in "The Smiling Dogs") as
As a result of this tragedy, Benson vows to avenge himself on the villains, and to fight for all those who have suffered at the hands of criminals.
Don Hutchison suggests that "Benson's extreme personal misfortune was probably the strongest motivation accorded any of the great pulp heroes," stemming as it did from the death of his family and his own "death in life". The stories, by veteran pulp/magazine writer Paul Ernst "were well-plotted mysteries with mild science-fictional extrapolations", albeit often appearing somewhat subdued when compared to rival publications such as The Spider and Operator #5. Benson was "the master of the last-minute escape", cool and intellectual, mentally "the equal of Doc Savage" but otherwise "an average-sized man". The plastic, malleable state of his otherwise immobile features allowed the character to physically reshape his face with his fingers into a likeness of any person, his features remaining in sculpted form "until they were carefully put back into place". This ability, coupled with hair dyes and colored contact lenses, earned him the sobriquet "The Man of a Thousand Faces".
New face After twelve issues, Ernst was directed editorially to eliminate Benson's facial affliction in the hopes that this would bolster the dwindling audience for the magazine. Thus the second "distinct era" of the Avenger began with the first issue of the now-bi-monthly third volume (#13), just over a year after the magazine's debut.
The thirteenth issue, "Murder On Wheels", saw the introduction of the last major recurring character, Cole Wilson. Initially an opponent of the Avenger (before joining Justice, Inc. in the same issue), Wilson trapped the Avenger in a machine which "provided a nerve shock of a different sort", turning Benson's flesh back to normal and his hair black. Although the Avenger still disguised himself after this, he could no longer mold his now normal flesh. Three stories – "Nevlo" (#17), "House of Death" (#15) and "Death in Slow Motion" (#18) – had been written by Ernst prior to this radical shift in character, and underwent rewrites before seeing publication. Although the original texts would place these three stories chronologically earlier than #13, the rewrites serve to fit them into the timelines as published (although some slight original traces remain under the heavy-handed later insertions).See: A Chronology for The Avenger by Rick Lai, originally published in Echoes #70 (Dec. 1993) Often dismissed as a late addition to the stories, Cole Wilson was to play a greater part in the last dozen pastiches written in the 1970s by Ron Goulart.
Gadgets The Avenger far preferred tricking criminals into "destroy[ing] themselves in traps of their own devising" to killing them himself, allowing writer Ernst to create considerably elaborate plots.
Like Doc Savage, Benson relies on a variety of special gadgets to help him overcome criminals. These include knockout gas bombs, miniature two-way radios, a woven, transparent bullet-proof garment and "glass pellets containing a gas... [which] instantly [spread] a black impenetrable pall like instant night", also accessible through a stud on Benson's collar.
His car rivalled those of the later James Bond series, "being a rather dull 1935 model" capable of speeds up to 130 mph (unheard of at the time), "bullet-proofed throughout and equipped with devices and special little inventions for offence and defence", including automatic bullet-proofed windows and "miniature torpedoes of potent knock-out gas".
The Avenger also carried a pair of weapons "strapped in slim sheaths on [his] right and left calf" – his specially streamlined and silenced .22 revolver ("Mike") and a needle-pointed throwing knife ("Ike"). Using these customized tools, Benson could shoot someone so that his bullet just touched their heads and knocked them out, or "hit a fly-speck from twenty feet".
Assistants Like Doc Savage before him, Benson rarely underwent his adventures alone, gathering a number of assistants to help him. His small band, known as "Justice, Inc.", was made up of people who had all been "irreparably damaged by crime", and who have specialized skills:
Fergus "Mac" MacMurdie ("Justice, Inc.") is a stereotypically dour Scotsman who is also a gifted pharmacist and chemist. His family was killed by racketeers, leaving Mac embittered, vengeful and "indifferent to the threat of... death". Algernon Heathcote "Smitty" Smith ("Justice, Inc.") is a gigantic man (6' 9") of incredible strength. Smitty looks slow and stupid, but he is actually a genius with electronics. He was framed – and spent a year in jail – for a crime he did not commit, and initially attacked Benson, believing the Avenger was out to arrest him. Nellie Gray ("The Yellow Hoard"), "the Emma Peel of her day", is a beautiful, delicate-looking young woman who is actually an expert at jujutsu and other martial arts. Her archaeologist father was killed by criminals for the buried Aztec gold he had found. After his murder was solved by Benson's Justice Inc., the treasure "became the equivalent of Doc Savage's hoard of inexhaustible Mayan gold". Josh and Rosabel Newton ("The Sky Walker") are an African American couple whose employers were killed by criminals. They often go undercover as domestic servants, making use of the stereotypes of the time to hide their investigative abilities, in "an ironic comment on the image. .. in the films and fiction of the day". Both are graduates of the Tuskegee Institute (now University), and the couple have children later in the series. (The Avenger is notable for its presentation of minorities. While many of the pulp magazines of the time are well known for racist stereotypes, both Josh and Rosabel are always presented as brave, intelligent people of good character.)