Favorite Ancient Super Hero

What're his crew like, especially in abilities? Do they jell well as a team?

It's not a reference. Rocambole is the original superhero. Rocambole books and plays were the XIXth century capeshit, that sparked thousands of copycats (Lupin, Fantomas, etc...).
To the point "Rocambolesque" is now an expression in the French language to describe a ridiculously contrived plot.

Attached: Rocambole.jpg (1161x1600, 417.32K)

Can he actually change his face or is that something exclusive to the movie?

I read a collection of Spider stories that had this one and The Bat Man, which is about hordes of vampire bats acting like sky piranhas.

It really doesn't get crazier, more terrifying and over-the-top when it comes to pulp heroes than The Spider. Out of all of them, this one is the most blockbuster material of the bunch.

Attached: the_spider_guns_blazing_by_roguehill.jpg (864x414, 218.38K)

I keep thinking Timothy Dalton looks like The Shadow.

Attached: 32475423446345.jpg (720x306, 37.32K)

Alec Baldwin!?

>he's basically a scenery chewing Vincent Price style villain, except he terrorizes criminals and occasionally trolls the cops
Which is exactly what The Shadow is. His stories are more urban fairytales than hard boiled noir, and he's the Big Bad Wolf turned hero.
Villainous charisma is absolutely the determining factor when it comes to playing this character.

Welles is not my favorite Shadow but he's definitely my favorite Cranston. He gives a lot of sly charm and cunning to a role that might seem like the "boring" part of playing the character, but is as crucial as can be.
Other actors played Cranston more like The Shadow's "default" state or his civilian identity (which, in the radio show, was what it was). Welles played it as another mask of a multi-faceted chessmaster, one more civil and debonair but no less dangerous, which is exactly what it was in the pulps.

Attached: cranston speaks of the czar - he frightens more than the shadow.jpg (1180x1638, 384.92K)

One of the best pinball machines ever, based on one of the worst movies.
youtube.com/watch?v=fMxSmlqRqtE

Attached: The Shadow pinball flyer back.jpg (846x1093, 164.64K)

Y'know, the Central Powers weren't morally worse than their enemies. And if Germany had won WWI, there might not have been a WWII and/or a Holocaust.

My first exposure to The Shadow was through the movie. I've always felt like that movie is one of only a small handful of comic/superhero movies that was good in the time of shit between Batman Returns and Blade 1.

The Nyctalope -- first and best.

Attached: 2049012-nyctalopestepsin01.jpg (369x420, 35.61K)

I get black and blue just reading the Spider novels. Every page puts the Spider through more abuse until you're really ready for the big showdown.

In the pulp novels, he used disguises. There are a couple of hints he was disfigured in WW I and doesn't have much of a face left.

>the Central Powers weren't morally worse than their enemies
Yeah, but then again this is why WW2 stories are more popular than WW1 stories. It was maybe the last time in human history that people had clear-cut bad guys to fight. People under an ideology that had nothing worse than it to compare.
Maybe this is why people across the political spectrum seem to really want Nazis to make a comeback whether they know it or not.

I don't think The Shadow takes an anti-Germany stance though. It's out of character for him to be xenophobic and he's not nearly as America-centric as other pulp heroes.
Considering there's at least one story that explicitly addresses how criminals are most often born out of a mismanaged society and an imperfect prison system, others where The Shadow destroys evidence to keep it from falling into the hands of government agencies and the police, and one where he straight up tricks a bunch of crooks into shooting a dictator dead, he doesn't strike me exactly as a pro-government kind of guy.

Attached: allard4.jpg (1988x3056, 1.4M)

Doc's aides were five men he met in WW I, and each one was an expert in a field: law, electricity, geology/archaeology, chemistry and the law.

In some of the books, they're competent crimefighters on their own., Sometimes they're only there to be captured. There were a lot of books and different phases,

Doc's young cousin, Patricia Savage, appeared a lot but wasn't a permanent member of the team. Pat was a delight. She wasn't intimidated by Doc and talked back to him. She flew her own airplane and sailed the Pacific by herself, she carried a big old revolver and wan't afraid to use it. But at the same time she had a sense of humor and was likeable. The five aides treated her like a pesky little sister that wants to tag along.

I loved maybe two-thirds of the series. There was a stretch of awful postwar crime thrillers and clunkers here and there. But the early 1930s Doc novels are fast-paced, inventive and over-the-top action.

Not OP but that looks like a movie tie-in. Here's a pulp cover:

Attached: shadow.jpg (774x1090, 145.34K)

There never was a holocaust

Hitler did nothing wrong stop buying into propaganda

Who?

Just read this after that Tarzan thread yesterday. What's the best comic to pick up after this?

Attached: RCO001_1583539970.jpg (1022x1600, 451.94K)

Got into him through the 80's Eclipse series.

Attached: AirboyCover.jpg (975x1339, 217.44K)

Phantom is goat. Still popular in my native country and has modernized pretty well for being an old pulp character.

Just a pity they insist on the same Phantom as the 'current' one when they have built in the idea of Legacy heroes from the very beginning. Would be so cool to actually see the new Phantom take over and have characters age and such.

Attached: phantom.jpg (1024x768, 220.92K)

Steeger Books has The Spider back in print twice a month and is selling bundles of ten pulps for $110.95. They're roughly the same size and page count as a light novel.

Does anyone have the merchant edit?

Thanks for the tip. I grew up on pulp reprints. Usually a little over a hundred pages long, they could be breezed through.