Why-oh-Why didn't Street & Smith do team ups?

There were a lot of hero pulps in the 1930s and 1940s--fiction magazines that recounted the adventures of a specific hero. The best of these is almost certainly The Shadow, but he had a lot of strong competition.

The Shadow was published by Street and Smith, one of the best publishing houses of the era in terms of quality. In fact, the hero pulps put out by S & S included Doc Savage, the Avenger and the Whisperer. All were really cool. All had cool agents or sidekicks. And all are currently being reprinted. Snatch 'em up if you can. There's some wonderful adventure storytelling behind those awesome covers.

I've always thought it was tragic that it apparently never occurred to the otherwise talented editors at Street and Smith to put out a special issue or two in which their heroes could team up with one another. Heck, most of them were based in New York. The Shadow and most of his agents hung out there. Doc Savage had a headquarters on the 86th floor of an unnamed skyscraper (generally considered to be the Empire State Building). The Avenger and his organization (Justice, Inc) were based there.

The Whisperer was based in an unnamed city, but all the other guys traveled quite a bit. So a team-up involving him would have been easily arranged.

But it never happened. The Shadow might be battling thugs on a tenement rooftop while Doc Savage was tracing kidnappers through the streets of New York and the Avenger was investigating a bombed out building, but none of them ever crossed paths.

It would have been too much fun for words. Even a minor team up between their various agents would have been cool. Heck, Smitty from Justice Inc and Long Tom from Doc Savage's team were both skilled electrical engineers. They could have met and worked together. Monk (Doc Savage) and Mac (Justice Inc) were both chemists. And agents of the Shadow such as Rutledge Mann and Clyde Burke had reason to come into contact with all sorts of people through their respective jobs as investment broker and newspaper reporter.

Doc Savage's pretty cousin Pat ran a high-priced beauty shop that probably was frequented by both Margo Lane (the Shadow's agent) and Nellie Grey (who worked for the Avenger), so the distaff trio could have easily teamed up for an adventure.

Now that I think of it, a back-up feature in one of the hero pulps featuring team-ups of the various agents would have been the most brilliant idea ever. I really need to invent a time machine, go back to the 1930s, and sell this concept.

In 1989, DC Comics finally managed to put the Shadow and Doc Savage together into the same adventure (and had some fun with the Shadow getting annoyed at the constant bickering between Doc's men Ham and Monk), but it never happened during the pulp era. I would have loved to see what Shadow writer Walter Gibson or Savage's scribe Lester Dent might have done with the idea.

But it was never to be. Oh, well. No world---not even the world of pulp fiction--is perfect.

1937--A Good Year for Adventure

By pure coincidence, I just read a couple of books that were both originally published in 1937. Both were good mysteries featuring established characters and it got me to thinking. What were all the famous detectives and adventurers doing that year?


We’ll start with the Whisperer—the secret identity of James “Wildcat” Gordon, police commissioner of an unnamed big city. Gordon isn’t satisfied with the slow course of official justice and the corruption that slows it down even more. So, on top of his efforts as a cop, he often assumed the identity of the Whisperer. Using specially designed dental plates to disguise his voice, he wielded a pair of silenced automatics to dispense a somewhat faster method of justice than the court system allows.


In The Red Hatchets, he finds himself caught between two opposing forces when a Chinese tong wages brutal warfare against a local gangster. A lot of mobster skulls get split with red-handled axes while the Whisperer tries to rescue a kidnapped girl and sort out exactly what’s going on.


Beautiful girl reporter Torchy Blane (the inspiration for Lois Lane) had several 1937 adventures chronicled in the movies. One of them, Fly-Away Baby, had her traveling around the world to keep tabs on a suspected murderer. She and her boyfriend, NYPD Lt. Steve McBride, eventually confront a killer aboard the zeppelin Hindenburg.


Interestingly, Charlie Chan had been aboard the Hindenburg (though traveling in the opposite direction) while pursuing a spy in Charlie Chan at the Olympics. Of course, though that film was released ’37, it was recounting events that took place the previous year. For Charlie’s 1937 adventure, we need to look to Charlie Chan on Broadway, where he sorts out a killer’s identity from among a bevy of Damon Runyon-esque gamblers.



Terry Lee and Pat Ryan (from the comic strip Terry and the Pirates), while still bumming around the Far East, begin the year escaping from the bandit leader Pyzon, though Pat gets shot in the process. While recovering, he encounters his long-lost love Normandie Drake and her sleezy husband Tony Sandhurst. Terry and Pat rescue Sandhurst from kidnappers, but the chubby villain then attempts to frame Pat for several felonies.


Dick Tracy spent a large part of 1937 breaking up an insurance fraud ring. In the end, he is forced to track the main bad guy through a pitch-dark theater.

Hercule Poirot was in England that year, responding to a letter for help from a rich woman who feared one of her relatives was trying to off her. The letter is delayed and the poor woman is dead before Poirot arrives. But he can at least put the finger on the killer, as recounted in the book The Dumb Witness.


Back in New York City, gargantuan detective Nero Wolfe looks into a murder in The Red Box. It’s a case complicated when one of the suspects has the bad taste to die in Wolfe’s office, presenting him with a possible conflict of interest in his further investigations. But, with the help of his hard-boiled assistant Archie Goodwin, the overweight genius manages to figure it all out.


There was, in fact, quite a bit of action in the Big Apple that year. The Shadow was quite busy, but his most notable case that year was recorded in The Shadow Unmasked. While looking into some jewel thefts, the Shadow is forced to abandon his usual secret identity of Lamont Cranston. For the first time, we learn who he really is—Kent Allard, an aviator who was supposedly killed in a crash years before.


The Spider had a busy year as well. In Dictator of the Damned, he prevented a madman from using assassinations and an army of thugs to take over the city. It all comes to a head with a desperate gun battle inside a riverfront building, while the lovely Nita Van Sloan is caught up a yet another death trap. I think that poor girl may have even beat out Lois Lane for the number of death traps various villains tossed her into.


Ellery Queen had a quieter but still fascinating adventure when he tried to deduce who had plunged a pair of scissors into the neck of a famous novelist in The Door Between.


Doc Savage was hopping around the globe quite a bit that year (as he was throughout the ‘30s and ‘40s.) His adventures included battling an evil dwarf armed with a super-weapon in Repel and preventing some mercenaries from taking over a Central American nation in The Golden Peril. That latter case was especially important—the country is the source of Doc’s great wealth, regularly supplied to him in gold by some grateful Mayans he once helped out.


Over in Los Angeles, famed criminal attorney Perry Mason solved a murder aboard a gambling ship in The Case of the Dangerous Dowager. A little later that same year, Della Street gets tossed in jail for a short time helping her boss figure out The Case of the Lame Canary. She also gets the first of what will be several marriage proposals from Perry in that book. But she believes Perry needs a secretary who will back his plays no matter what more than a wife, so she always turns him down.


Even when I read the books, my mental image of Della is that of Barbara Hale from the TV series. I don’t blame Perry for being persistent in his proposals. Gee whiz, that gal was purty!


And that’s only a small portion of the vigilantes, detectives, and explorers that had adventures that year. It was an adventurous year indeed. But whatever problems might arise, whether it was a single murder or the threat of world domination, there were more than enough heroes scattered about the globe to keep the innocent safe.