[2] Steeger also sought to emulate the films of Douglas Fairbanks, while historians George E. Turner and Michael H. Price felt the character was also descended from Siegfried, Fantômas and The Bat.

Scott's detective character Aurelius Smith and Hindu assistant Langa Doone became, respectively, Richard Wentworth and Ram Singh.

[3] The cover artists for The Spider magazine were Walter M. Baumhofer for the debut issue, followed by John Newton Howitt and Rafael De Soto.

[2] Paper shortages during World War II and a declining readership following Page's departure to work on propaganda also played their part.

[5] A 119th Spider novel manuscript (Slaughter Incorporated) had been completed but was not published until decades later (as Blue Steel), a heavily rewritten mass-market paperback with renamed characters.

Pulp magazine historian Ed Hulse noted that "Spider novel death tolls routinely ran into the thousands".

)[6] The Spider is millionaire playboy Richard Wentworth, who served as a major in World War I, and was living in New York City unaffected by the financial deprivations of the Great Depression.

Later in the series, vampire-like makeup appears, which is replaced with a face mask featuring grizzled hair and finally a hunchback.

As written by Page, Wentworth was also psychologically vulnerable and suffers frequent bouts of fear, self-doubt, despair and paranoia.

In the sixth novel (1934), the Spider imprints his red sign on a gold ring so that any who need his help can use it by taking it to Kirkpatrick (where Wentworth will find out about it).

In the small steel case of burglar tools he carried under his arm, he also had his make-up kit and (in the early novels) his Spider's eye mask.

In Timothy Truman's 1990s comic book adaptation, Brownlee created the "Web-Lee", a non-lethal stun pistol that fired projectiles which erupted into a spider web-like mass, inundated with microscopic barbs of frozen curare.

When he imitates Kirkpatrick's voice, he can give orders to lesser policemen during a stakeout, even during one intended to capture The Spider, so he can himself escape.

Columbia Pictures produced two Spider movie serials, both 15-chapter cliffhangers starring Warren Hull as Richard Wentworth.

They ranked it as one of the best Columbia serials, and one of the few to truly do justice to its source material, noting the fast pace and high body count.

Price and Turner bemoaned the sequel for abandoning the two-director system, calling it a "wartime replay of Web's story", also criticising the reduced role for Nita Van Sloane, now played by novice Mary Ainslee.

This addition gave the silver screen Spider an appearance more like that of a superhero,[2] like other pulp and comics heroes being adapted for the era's movie serials.

In the reprint of Death and the Spider for example (originally published as pulp #100 in 1942), Nita Van Sloan drives a Jaguar E-type X-KE, a sports car not created until 1961, some 19 years later.

At roughly the same time in England, Mews Books/New American Library reprinted the same four Spider novels (#16, 21, 26 and 100) sporting entirely new cover art, but different in style and execution from those used by Pocket Books.

As with Pocket Books' modernized "Spider" editions, this paperback sported a modernized pulp cover painting featuring a non-costumed, but heavily armed, blond-haired hero (said to be an unused cover painting by artist George Gross, produced but never used for a Freeway Press reprint of another pulp magazine character, Operator No.

In 2008, they released a second companion trade paperback featuring two more Spider reprints (#26 and 75) as well as a third bonus story about another pulp hero called "The Octopus".

[15] The Baen editions sported brand new Spider cover paintings by noted graphic designer and comics artist Jim Steranko.

In late 2009, Doubleday's Science Fiction Book Club reprinted (in hardcover) Baen's second Spider three-in-one volume from the previous year.

Facsimile Spider novels continue to appear in print from other publishers, especially Altus Press;[17] they have also been issued in the Kindle e-book format.

Altus Press has begun reprinting the entire Spider series of novels in their original order of publication beginning with #1, on a monthly basis.

Elements of this version of the Spider's milieu include airships as common transportation, the survival of the League of Nations into the near past - Wentworth meets Ram Singh during an intervention into India and Pakistan - and World War II, if it ever happened, taking place differently.

[20] Truman chose to redesign the character, removing the hat and toning down the exaggerated monstrous look of Wentworth's crime-fighting guise.

He had originally planned to have the character wrap his face in bandages before becoming aware of Sam Raimi's then-upcoming film Darkman.

[21] Reviewing the title for Amazing Heroes, Fred Patten gave the first issue three stars out of five, bemoaning that the beloved character had been revised to "another grim vigilante".

5[27] In August 2011, Dynamite Entertainment announced an updated Spider comic book series, written by novelist David Liss;[28] the first issue was released in May 2012.