The authorship of the pulp series was credited by Street & Smith to Kenneth Robeson, the same byline that appeared on the Doc Savage stories.

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[2]), Street & Smith's circulation manager Henry William Ralston and editor John L. Nanovic set out to create a new hero combining elements of both.

[3] 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.

[2] 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.

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".

[2] 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".

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".

(See below) The Avenger's 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.

[2] 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".

[2] 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.

[2] 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.

[2] Benson was "the master of the last-minute escape", cool and intellectual, mentally "the equal of Doc Savage" but otherwise "an average-sized man".

[2] 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.

[6] 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.

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.

[2] 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").

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:[2] Novels written by Paul Ernst and published in The Avenger magazine.

Following the original 24 pulp novels by Paul Ernst, and the half-dozen short stories written by Emile C. Tepperman (also under the "Kenneth Robeson" pseudonym) in the 1940s, Warner Paperback Library (30 years later) reprinted the original twenty-four Avenger novels in a paperback book format similar to Bantam Books' successful Doc Savage reprint library.

Steve Holland (actor) was the model for Benson on the cover art, as he was for Doc Savage in Bantam's paperback reprints of that series.

The Avenger is mentioned by author Philip José Farmer as a part of his Wold Newton family, and in an essay published in Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton Universe (MonkeyBrain Books, 2005), Chuck Loridans contributes an article entitled "The Daughters of Greystoke" wherein he constructs a family tree linking Nellie Gray to Tarzan and Jane Porter.

In 2008, Moonstone Books produced the first The Avenger anthology, featuring stories written by a number of variant pulp fans and writers – including Ron Goulart and the Myths for the Modern Age editor Win Scott Eckert.

In 1989, DC released a two-issue miniseries, in 52-page prestige format, written by Andy Helfer and pencilled and inked by Kyle Baker, titled Justice, Inc..

Similarly short-lived was "an Avenger radio serial carried by Station WHN in New York City and syndicated in other parts of the country".

The Avenger radio show originated from Long Island, NY-based station WHN and was broadcast over a time-span of 62 weeks.

It is quite likely he also acted on the Avenger, as he was reputed to be a highly versatile actor -– in the mid-1930s he hosted the Majestic Master of Mystery program, and played all the parts himself.