The Spider #73: The Spider and the Eyeless Legion
How could a man, enslaved and blinded, still strike terror to the hearts of his captors? How could that man, apparently helpless, remain the only hope of a city laid low by crime? Read here how the Master of Men cast off his shackles and led a populace to redemption and vengeance! The most gripping, dramatic Spider novel ever published!
Operator 5 #40: The Suicide Battalion
From friendly but helpless Canada had come the false feint at America’s mighty, steel-armored line. Investigating that strange attack, Operator 5 learned that to save his country from the most astounding invasion in history, he and his volunteer aides must cross the sea to fight a desperate undercover battle with the three bandit nations of the Old World—and, man for man, match American agents against their foes in the grim hope that he might overwhelm a ruthless enemy!
The Masked Marksman #1: Death Takes an Encore
Meet Ed Race who made his trade as a vaudeville gun-juggler supreme, known on stage as “The Masked Marksman” and for handling six loaded .45s to the delight of the crowds. But when this line of work became too tedious, Race took advantage of his multi-state P.I. licenses to solve crimes across the country. This collection includes his first eight stories:
- Amateur Night—for Killers: It looked like Ed Race’s last act when he tried to clean up the plague-spot that was Newbold City, and found himself alone on a blood-stained stage—with Death waiting its entrance cue!
- Cue for a Corpse: Ed Race, vaudeville juggler and high-speed private detective, wasn’t accustomed to finding corpses jammed into his wardrobe trunk. But even a dead body, unknown and unidentified, can lead a man into sinister, twisting paths where death lurks, waiting in the shadows…
- The Death Juggler: It took more than fast forty-fives to buck a crook of Pete Lucie’s stamp… But Ed Race could juggle wits as well as weapons.
- Death’s Spotlight: Ed Race, actor-detective, always managed to get in the spotlight when there was danger around—but the ease of the man from Amsterdam billed him to play a solo stand in a pine coffin…
- Billed for Death!: Ed Race, vaudeville headliner and ace detective, leaped at the chance to help out the manager of the Trout City Theater. But that leap in the dark landed Ed fast in a killer’s net, where the only out for a desperate criminal crew lay in making a corpse of one gun’ juggling detective!
- Death’s Booking Agent: Ed Race awoke in that little mountain town to find that the Great Booking Agent, Death, had billed him to play a star role in the final, fatal drama of life!
- Death Takes an Encore: Ed Race, gun-juggler supreme, heard the crackling of the electric chair as he listened to the police tell him how he had killed his friend. But Race knew that the life of any act may depend on those last few minutes—before the curtain drops!
- Murder in the Spotlight: That bright spotlight revealed to breathless audiences the magic skill of Ed Race, gun-juggler extraordinary. But it also made him a target for a gun that wasn’t juggled—that was trained on him with Death’s own fateful accuracy…
The Spider #72: The Corpse Broker
With terrible swiftness, the Master of the Green Death had struck. His victims lay in the streets, verdant-hued and ghastly—and the Underworld, which he had protected against all reprisal, ran riot in a Manhattan horror-holiday of loot and murder!
The Spider #71: The Spider and the Fire God
The Master of Flame and Burning Death held New York fast in unholy worship of his strange god. For thousands had fled their doomed churches, lest they perish by fire—and the Spider alone remained to face this monstrous cult-leader from hell!
Operator 5 #39: Revolt of the Devil Men
Across ravaged America, exhausted from the long Purple Wars, Operator 5 and his gallant caravan trekked on their errand of mercy, step by step rebuilding once more a mighty nation out of a hopeless ruin—battling to the death a lawless horde that had been released by a Dictator of Doom who planned to transform the prostrate country into a vassal-state that never again was to know liberty!
Ace G-Man #7: Targets for the Flaming Arrow
Klaw, Murdoch, and Kerrigan—AKA the Suicide Squad—are the best the F.B.I. has to offer. Through nearly two dozen adventures, they battled spies, saboteurs, and even super-villains! This collection includes their final four stories:
- MOVE OVER, DEATH!: Kerrigan, Murdoch and Klaw—the fabulous fighting Feds—had finally been given the assignment which no G-man could take—and live! Gladly, with grins on their battle-scarred faces, they walked into the Nazi trap, with blazing guns punctuating their war cry: “Move over, Death!”
- TARGETS FOR THE FLAMING ARROW: They had no clues, nothing but the charred arrow which had snuffed out the life of the American diplomat. But more important, Kerrigan, Murdoch and Klaw had almost no time at all in which to work, for within four days, the Flaming Arrow’s medieval minions were scheduled to destroy America’s vast war effort. Could even the famed Suicide Squad stop this Axis grand coup—before they too became living targets for the Flaming Arrow…?
- BLOOD, SWEAT AND BULLETS: The Ox had America neatly packaged to deliver to Hitler on Christmas morning. And, with only five shopping days left to Christmas, Kerrigan and Murdoch bartered their partner’s life as the price of her freedom. But Steve Klaw found that he had to chase death three thousand miles to seal his bargain—while Kerrigan and Murdoch were helpless save to rush him to his doom!
- THE SUICIDE SQUAD AND THE TWINS OF DEATH!: When Blond Otto The Hangman and his Nazi aides told Murdoch that he would soon join the dead Kerrigan and Klaw, he waited until he did—then added the roar of a dead man’s weapon to the blazing guns of his ghostly pals!
The Spider #70: The Spider and the Slaves of Hell
Out of the shadows of nocturnal Manhattan came the Master of Darkness whose Underworld rule was bloody and absolute. For when this butcher unleashed his Hounds of Hell, defenseless citizens were blown, one by one, into extinction!
Red Finger #1: Second-Hand Death
“Der Rote Finger!” the foreign spy gasped as he came face to face with America’s top agent. Ford Duane, a mild mannered bookstore owner is, in truth, the dreaded Red Finger, top agent of P.A.T., hunter and destroyer of foreign spies. Carrying only a strange gas gun, foreign agents end up dead after they meet this nemesis. His black gloves have one oddity, the trigger finger is painted blood red, giving him the name foreign spies have come to recognize and fear—The Red Finger!
For the first time, all 13 Red Finger stories by Arthur Leo Zagat from the back pages of Operator #5 are collected in one edition, along with the recently-discovered, unpublished finale, “Red Finger and the Murder Trio,” puts closure on this classic series.
The Spider #69: Rule of the Monster Men
Transformed by an Underworld sadist into a city of man-made, outlaw cripples, New York faces the gravest criminal threat of all time. Can the Spider, already robbed of his most loyal assistant, successfully meet this new menace?
Operator 5 #38: The Siege That Brought the Black Death
Against the Mongol hordes on land, and the Purple Fleet, loosing its annihilating bombardment from the sea—New York had fought through the bitter, exhausting siege. Victory, at last, was within the grasp of Operator 5 and his fighting American patriots. Then, from out of the Emperor’s devil cauldron, rose the scourge of the Black Plague!
Ace G-Man #6: The Suicide Squad’s Dawn Patrol
Klaw, Murdoch, and Kerrigan—AKA the Suicide Squad—are the best the F.B.I. has to offer. Through nearly two dozen adventures, they battled spies, saboteurs, and even super-villains! This collection includes their next four stories:
- “The Masked Marksman’s Command Performance”: What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable body? The answer, we’ll bet, would be something like the meeting between Ed Race, the Masked Marksman—and the Suicide Squad!
- “The Suicide Squad’s Dawn Patrol”: The Japs were planning a barbarous air raid on America—that much was known to Kerrigan, Murdoch and Klaw, the F.B.I.’s indomitable Suicide Squad. When, where and How this hellish blitzkrieg was to come, they were grimly determined to find out, even if that meant permitting the lovely, evil Madam Setti to lure them to the reincarnated Japanese Diva-King—who could command men to destroy themselves!
- “The Suicide Squad Meets the Rising Sun”: We are all engaged in the defense of our great nation. But, in one of the most amazing chapters of this war, it became the grim task of Kerrigan, Murdoch and Klaw, three lone champions of democracy, to find and destroy a Japanese Army of nine thousand brutal fanatics—who were hidden here in the United States!
- “So Sorry, Mr. Hirohito!”: Kerrigan, Murdoch and Klaw, the famed Suicide Squad, had always fought side to side, welcoming any odds. But on that nightmare night in Valparaiso, Johnny Kerrigan stood alone against the Jap horde, while Steve Klaw went to wrest the great ship-building works from the Axis—with a thirteen-year-old girl as his only ally!
The Spider #68: King of the Fleshless Legion
The Spider faces a grim mass murderer who holds sway over Manhattan—when poisoned drugs paralyze the medical profession and turn New York’s hospitals into a hell of betrayed human sufferers!
Operator 5 #37: The Coming of the Mongol Hordes
Through Pennsylvania’s ravished countryside thundered that ruthless Mongol cavalcade, its goal the sacking of New York! The severed heads of patriots dangled from their leaders’ blood-stained saddles, and in their wake rumbled dread, primitive machines of death. Barring their advance was only that little band of patriots at Valley Forge. But on that sacred battleground, while Operator 5 fought to save a girl from being hurled to death by a giant catapult, and civilization was being turned back to the Dark Ages by a horde of Asiatic vandals—America struck against a Yellow Dictatorship for the freedom of the world!
The Spider #67: Blight of the Blazing Eye
Over New York fell the murderous spell of Death’s burning stare—and men died in the throes of some terrible, secret, inner fire! Richard Wentworth, alone, as the Spider, dared challenge this astounding attack by a modern Genghis Khan gone mad with a passion for loot and power!
Ace G-Man #5: Wanted—In Three Pine Coffins
Klaw, Murdoch, and Kerrigan—AKA the Suicide Squad—are the best the F.B.I. has to offer. Through nearly two dozen adventures, they battled spies, saboteurs, and even super-villains! This collection includes their next three stories:
- “Wanted—In Three Pine Coffins”: The sinister tentacles of Naziism were finally making themselves felt in America, and those who dared fight back were mercilessly murdered! Only the Suicide Squad could stand up before the deadly wave of destruction, but those three cavaliering conquerors of crime were already enmeshed in their own grim battle—dodging the very laws which they fought to uphold!
- “The Suicide Squad’s Private War”: It started with a mock air-raid, which turned, fantastically, into a night of terror for many, when real bombs were dropped. And America’s most precious naval secrets fell into the hands of the Little Gray Old Man and his horde of Black Troopers—who defied even the famed Suicide Squad to come and get them!
- “—For Tomorrow We Die!”: Against the fabulous crime-czar whose thieving legions were undermining the morale of honest Americans, the Chief sent the Suicide Squad—Murdoch, Kerrigan and Klaw. And those three hellions of the F.B.I. found they had a murder carnival on their hands—as well as three fresh nooses already tightening about their necks!
The Spider #66: The Silver Death Reign
An epidemic of strange and sudden death had placed New York in the ruthless grip of an Underworld master such as the world had never seen. The Law was powerless against this night-time Nemesis. But Richard Wentworth, as the Spider, had one more blow to strike before surrendering a shuddering city to the powers of hell!
The Spider #65: The Song of Death
Upon New York fell the haunting notes of the death-dirge—and those who heard it died in raving madness! For a powerful murder-musician had conquered Manhattan with his symphony of slaughter, and before this unprecedented menace the law was whipped! Only Richard Wentworth, in the Spider’s cloak of night, knew how to battle this new master of the Underworld and switch off the sinister sonata that had brought terror to a great city!
Operator 5 #36: The Bloody Frontiers
With those merciless vandals turned loose by the Purple Emperor, helpless America had been plunged back into the dark days of primitive warfare, and sacked civilization lay smouldering in ruins. For the coming of the Gothic hordes with fire and sword was a living scourge across the face of the eastern states, and Operator 5, racing against time, sped on to New York’s wrecked towers to meet there in battle the fury of Urslup the Strong!
Ace G-Man #4: The Suicide Squad in Corpse-Town
Klaw, Murdoch, and Kerrigan—AKA the Suicide Squad—are the best the F.B.I. has to offer. Through nearly two dozen adventures, they battled spies, saboteurs, and even super-villains! This collection includes their next three stories:
- “The Suicide Squad in Corpse-Town“: America’s new air arm, the keystone in her vast defense program, tottered on the brink of destruction! …Only three men—Kerrigan, Murdoch and Klaw—could prevent disaster, and that grim trio of Death’s Volunteers was already living on borrowed, bartered time!
- “The Coffin Barricade“: Eight young special agents went out to get the Undertaker, unknown Czar of the Corpse Bazaar. Eight came hack—in caskets and embalmed! So the Chief sent out the Suicide Squad—Murdoch, Kerrigan and Klaw. He figured they’d lived close enough to Death to be able to find the Undertaker—and put him six feet under!
- “The Tunnel Death Built“: Who had the power, the resourcefulness, and the organization to steal thousands of priceless weapons from Uncle Sam, and ship them secretly abroad? The mystery was a job for the inimitable Suicide Squad—Kerrigan, Murdoch and Klaw. But they were already waging a private, unofficial battle against Nicodemus Largo—the most invulnerable crime-king of them all!
The Spider #64: Claws of the Golden Dragon
It was a scarlet scorpion that reached Richard Wentworth, warning him that the Far East had crept forth from its Chinatown lair to raid New York! Victims were dying with a blood orchid in their hearts, and the Dragon screamed! With the police helpless, and Manhattan paralyzed, only Wentworth, in the Spider’s somber guise, could hope to battle this Prince of Darkness who was looting a metropolis to found his evil Empire!
Operator 5 #35: The Army Without a Country
The desperate defenders of America went over the top against the vandal hordes of the Purple Emperor at the Continental Divide—only to find that the murder-maniac tyrant had protected his trenches with a living wall of America’s youth hung upon crosses! It was then that Operator 5 had to find the way to strike at the enemy—and also rescue, from a blood-mad jaguar’s cage, the girl who guarded a nation’s secret!
The Spider #63: The Withering Death
The Severed Hand brought its grisly warning to New York. Its citizens must pay the extortioner’s price or die, their living bodies slowly, agonizingly transformed into rigid mummies! The police were helpless, and only Richard Wentworth, in the Spider’s weird garb, could wage battle—against the master murder-chemist who killed to corral a fortune!
The Spider #62: Scourge of the Black Legions
Over New York had swept the Master’s dread Black Police—wiping out the last organized resistance to their ruthless Underworld rule of the Empire State! Only Richard Wentworth, his forces scattered, could hope to succeed where thousands had failed—and, attired in the Spider’s somber garb, strike one last desperate blow at the master-murderer who had sacked a state to make a fortune out of dead men’s bones!
Ace G-Man #3: Shells for the Suicide Squad
Klaw, Murdoch, and Kerrigan—AKA the Suicide Squad—are the best the F.B.I. has to offer. Through nearly two dozen adventures, they battled spies, saboteurs, and even super-villains! This collection includes their next three stories:
- “Shells for the Suicide Squad“: Steve Klaw, of the F.B.I.’s Suicide Squad, borrowed a traitor’s name, when he went into battle against three world powers—to save Forge River’s priceless military secret for America!
- “Suicide Squad’s Murder Lottery“: Kerrigan and Klaw of the F.B.I.’s ace trio, came to mourn at the grave of their murdered comrade… and stayed to follow a fighting ghost to war—against the Twentieth Century Nero who held a third of the nation in abject slavery!
- “The Suicide Squad and the Murder Bund“: Murdoch, Kerrigan and Klaw, the F.B.I.’s dauntless Suicide Squad, must daily fight with dogged, unbelievable courage—merely to earn the right to live! Could this fabulous team of crime-fighters lock guns in deadly combat with the Skull and Swastika Corps—and still remain a trio?
The Spider #61: The Spider at Bay
New York was powerless in the hands of the Black Police and its maddened master—and when men dared oppose this red regime of the Underworld, they were struck down by a frightful plague! Even the Federal government, which had stepped in to hold a New Deal for Manhattan, found itself hopelessly defeated by intimidated ballots at the polls! In this moment of black despair, a single, desperate hope remained. For Richard Wentworth, as the Spider, had come down from his mountain retreat. With him was a gallant legion of honest fighting men who had sworn to take the law into their own hands and fight fire with fire!
Operator 5 #34: Drums of Destruction
The goose-stepping armies of the Purple Emperor massed in the passes of the Continental Divide, ready to swoop down upon the last defenders of American soil and drive them relentlessly westward into the sea. Grimly the besieged force, without guns or supplies, waited the attack they could not hope to hold off. Then Operator 5 played his last card—a daring dash into the Occupied Territory, where his life was worth a province to the man who could deliver him into the eager hands of a torture-mad emperor!
Ace G-Man #2: Coffins for the Suicide Squad
Klaw, Murdoch, and Kerrigan—AKA the Suicide Squad—are the best the F.B.I. has to offer. Through nearly two dozen adventures, they battled spies, saboteurs, and even super-villains! This collection includes their next three stories:
- “The Suicide Squad Pays Off”:The Black Sheep of the F.B.I. turn a terror-ridden town upside down in a finish-fight with a gang that had decreed death for all G-men!
- “Coffins for the Suicide Squad”: Boldly, New York’s crime czar flung his challenge before the F.B.I., daring the full might of America’s prize crime-fighting machine to a finish war! And Washington answered with the Suicide Squad—three grinning, fighting Volunteers of Death—to tame a murder empire!
- “The Suicide Squad—Dead or Alive!”: Storm Troop gangsters took over the Hill City government. Blue-uniformed killers picked up the blood-purge hunt for Kerrigan, Murdoch, and Klaw—the three F.B.I. aces who had to capture a city just to rescue a red-headed girl!
The Spider #60: The City That Paid to Die
Deeper and deeper New York had sunk in the grip of the Underworld monarch—until the law was licked at last! But in that moment of desperation, Richard Wentworth, as the Spider, resolved to fight the underworld with its own savage weapons. With New York’s own police commissioner at his side, the Spider raised a fighting legion of honest men sworn to take the law into their own hands!
Operator 5 #33: Revolt of the Lost Legions
The grim banner of the Purple Empire was flaunted over America from coast to coast. Americans labored in chains for the blood-maddened Emperor Rudolph. Defiant patriots found their heads under the guillotine. All hope seemed lost. But one man—Operator 5—clung to the vision and the courage to fight for an America once more free. Facing dismaying perils, he snatched the Purple Emperor’s own weapons to fire the spark of battle in a mighty nation!