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Death in its ugliest form ravaged America. An ambitious, clever madman, master of a far-flung criminal empire, spread cholera germs through every rank and class of a large and totally unsuspecting populace. Numbed by terror, the citizens fled from certain death... while the police, baffled and powerless, campaigned relentlessly against the Spider, the only man able to save the stricken and bring the Plague Master to justice!

The Spider proves that although crime does not pay, it always provides a huge amount of white-knuckle fun! – comicreview.co.ukThis second volume of The Spider collects the action-packed fourth and fifth stories originally published in Britain's legendary Lion comic.He's the undisputed king of crime!The Spider is an amazing mastermind with a stunning array of weaponry and a vast network of villainous henchmen! Now the underworld is fighting back and have sent a strange assassin known as The Exterminator to lure the spider into a trap!But one battle isn't enough for this arachnid adventurer - when a shape shifting crook from another planet arrives on Earth, the Spider must stop the alien from plundering the planet and toppling him from power!

Thundering far beneath Manhattan's thronging streets came the Death Express-a crack New York Central train bearing a gruesome cargo of lifeless men, women and children-their bodies stripped of valuables, naked and mutilated! A grim warning of the terror-reign that threatened America-at the hands of Twentieth Century land-pirates, whose weapon was neither gun nor sword, but the stunning, body-shivering force which lies in electricity! Can the Spider, using mortal weapons, fight the numbing power of the thunderbolt-and survive?

America faces certain doom as its citizens fall in screaming thousands before the noxious death vapors loosed upon them by the Green Hand. How can the Spider, harried and threatened by a hundred new and deadly perils, check the rising power of the next Dictator-and lay bare the scheming, criminal mind which seeks to enslave the nation?

Like the consuming flames of a prairie fire the dread news spread: "The Spider has gone mad! He will massacre us all!" But Richard Wentworth, never more sane, was even then gambling life itself in one desperate effort to save the city which cursed his name-from the awful ravages of man-spread plague!

Fear stalked the corridors and offices on Capitol Hill, for it was from the ranks of the mighty-the rulers and lawmakers of America-that the Silver Assassins sought their victims! Singly, in pairs and in numbered groups they died, laying down their lives for their country-while panic spread, and the Spider, alone aware of the terrific catastrophe which impended, fought through black, bodiless shadows to reach and destroy the menace which festered underground!

Never before had any criminal dared give open challenge to the Spider! Never before had Richard Wentworth faced a foe who welcomed personal combat with the grim avenger whom all others feared... And while they fought-the Spider and the Fly-a new and fearless criminal army was forming; men and women were dying by the scores; and the youth of a nation was flocking to the dark banner of that gentlemanly killer whose battle cry was "Kill the Spider-and the world is ours!"

Never before in history had anything quite so horrible as the Mad Horde been loosed upon a terrified humanity! In rural towns and through the thronging streets of great cities the death-bringers stalked, spreading the slow madness of which they themselves must soon die! The Spider, dismayed and horrified as never before in his long career, is forced at last into risking the life of the girl he loves-so that a million others may live!

Mysterious death, suicide, and madness took uncanny toll of New York's most prominent citizens. Only the Spider sensed the presence of the criminal genius whose tentacles were strangling the city-and the Spider was next on the crime monster's death list!

Meet the Spider-master of men! More just than the Law... more dangerous than the Underworld. Hated, wanted, feared by both! Alone and desperate, he wages deadly, one-man war against the super-criminal whose long-planned crime-coup will snuff a thousand lives! Can the Spider prevent this slaughter of innocents?

In the gaunt desolation of those dark Kentucky hills, the Dixie Limited, crack flyer, stood gutted of all living passengers... The Spider, the only survivor, stood alone at that bleak scene, vowing silently, solemnly, to destroy the ambition-mad arch-criminal who had plotted this wholesale ruin. For this, and manifold like disasters, were occurring everywhere in the land-at the direction, Richard Wentworth knew, of some diabolical brain which was unleashing hordes of primitive barbarians to lay waste civilization. But later, at the very moment when the Spider should have struck his most telling blow, he was pacing a narrow cell in the death-house at Sing Sing!

Looting, murdering bands of desperadoes roamed the streets of New York like wanton jackals who destroyed what they could not devour. An underworld Juggernaut had been unleashed upon Manhattan, turning it into a place of desolation and terror. The Thuggees of the East, those masters of murder, the cruel minions of Tang-akhmut, held the city in a state of siege. One man could save New York-Richard Wentworth, the avenging Spider, and Richard Wentworth, hunted by the police, hated by the underworld he fought, had been ordered shot on sight!

The most diabolical criminal ever to menace America, Tang-akhmut, the Egyptian, had descended like a blighting plague on Cincinnati. Tang-akhmut, leading a new and terrible army of dwarfed monsters-scourging helpless women with poisoned and barbed whips; who set about systematically to wreck the water supply of the city and then set uncontrollable conflagrations to cover his looting. Richard Wentworth, the Spider, penniless, a man outside the law, once more faces him in single-handed battle!

It is Wentworth himself-the Spider-who is first to feel the dread hand of that Master of Darkness-The Blind Man, and his satanic weapon. His best friend, Kirkpatrick, Commissioner of Police, is strangely attacked by the forces of evil; his beloved Nita van Sloan spirited away into a fearsome fate... And the Spider himself destined to a horrible life of pain and misery. Caught between the forces of evil, the Spider at last seems doomed to die in ignominy!

Richard Wentworth-whose grim, anti-crime crusades as the Spider have made him world-famous-was the first objective in the Poison Master's murder campaign. His best friend, Kirkpatrick, lay in a death-like stupor. His beloved, Nita van Sloan, was stricken with the horrible living death! And at the same time, countless thousands were felled by the same fatal venom... Caught in the crossfire between the Law and the Underworld, the Spider must battle the blind apathy of a nation ensnared in a subtle death-trap-must overcome the despair in his own brave heart...!

Never had Richard Wentworth-he who is the scourge of the Underworld in his guise of the Spider-faced such tremendous odds or been so alone in the strife! Nita, his beloved, had tried to kill him, was hopelessly insane. His faithful servant had been tortured beyond human endurance. And the Master of Madness, chief of a powerful, fiendish syndicate, was spreading his germs of mania unchecked. Who could rescue America from screaming, murderous frenzy when the Spider, harried by Law and lawless, himself half-doubted his own skill and bravery?

Without any forewarning, the madness struck. One moment the busy steel-mill town of Keystone was a peaceful industrial community... the next, it had become a shambles of murder, madness and ruthless midnight slaughter. Horror walked its streets, and terror lurked in every close-locked home... Could the Spider, hastening to answer the distressed call of the dismayed inhabitants, prevail against the death which struck from darkness? A stranger in a place of madness, unsupported by friends or allies, Richard Wentworth faces his greatest test-alone!

Richard Wentworth-who, as the swift-killing Spider, is the scourge of the Underworld-thought the Fly was dead. But once more that most formidable enemy had arisen, pillaging, slaying wantonly, armed with a ghastly new weapon, the Green Globes of Death! Ruthless and astute, heading a gigantic criminal syndicate, the Fly was butchering innocent persons only, it seemed, to see their red blood flow. It was with flagging hope and heavy heart that the Spider took up his newest battle with the preying jackals of crime!

In that single, unguarded moment while he played his precious Stradivarius, the combined forces of the Mayor of Hell-the crooked Law and the vengeful Underworld-besieged Richard Wentworth, otherwise known as the Spider, nemesis of criminals! Mourned as dead, the Spider must start life anew, without friends or funds or hidden refuge, so that the Mayor of Hell's bloody-handed henchmen-who judge no deed too base, who respect neither man nor God-may find their just reward-in death!

Pitiless, astute, ambitious, yellow-skinned Wang-ba emerged from the mystic Orient to proclaim himself Emperor of America! Sight of his green face caused blood-curdling terror; his anger could be appeased only by soul-twisting agony and writhing, long-lasting death... Such was the criminal genius whom Richard Wentworth had to kill. Never before has the Spider been squeezed so tightly between the vise-jaws of the Law and the Lawless. Nor has he ever struggled so fiercely against the pleading of his own brave heart!

The Spider-who was really Richard Wentworth, a true American aristocrat-had fought a hundred battles and faced a thousand foes... But never before had a more brilliant criminal genius challenged him. For the Boss, employing a horrible, new weapon, ruled the Underworld with an iron hand, slaughtering, maddening, and loosing maniacs to ravage the nation...!

Stripped of his wealth, cut off from his faithful helpers, Richard Wentworth, known and feared throughout the Underworld as the avenging Spider, struggles with his most powerful and wily foe-the Man who came out of the East! With Wentworth's best friend, Police Commissioner Kirkpatrick framed for murder; with the entire city capitulating before that new and cruelly cunning menace from the Orient, the Spider himself seems doomed to die on the torture racks of the Far East!

White slavery, the loathsome traffic in women's bodies-and souls-was stripping America of wives, sisters and sweethearts. Richard Wentworth, valiant champion of human rights, knew that an Oriental master criminal was captaining the slavery syndicate, guessed the unspeakable purpose behind those wholesale abductions. But with Nita hopelessly lost, with G-men harrying him relentlessly, can the Spider outwit his most formidable foeman and save America's doomed womanhood?

Never before had a shrewd criminal leader so successfully defied the Law-and the Spider's sure vengeance! A powerful Eastern murder syndicate, employing two deadly weapons, held America for ransom, spreading pain and terror and red destruction... Never had the Spider's struggle against the Underworld seemed so futile, for the name of Richard Wentworth was disgraced, his fortune was forfeit, and his beloved had betrayed him into the hands of the police-and certain death!

Never before had greedy, criminal genius loosed so loathsome and deadly a weapon! The Bat Man-leading a band of savages, releasing clouds of bloodthirsty vampire bats-planned to make himself a greater conqueror than Napoleon or Genghis Khan! One man stood in his way-Richard Wentworth, who when the Law fails, sallies forth as the dread Spider to spread red death in the Underworld. And the Spider-his beloved Nita forfeited, his loyal servants captive, his own life ever in horrible danger-must battle both the Bat Man and a broken heart!

With appalling suddenness, a new hooded monster of crime unleashed swift murder and soul-chilling madness upon Manhattan. His army of assassins struck with wanton savagery to lash terrified millions into a paralysis of fear. The Dictator held sway!-and Richard Wentworth, the avenging Spider, driven to the ambuscades of the underworld, faced the vortex of sudden peril alone.

Up from the Devil's Coast swarmed a hooded horde, rioting to lay America under The Cobra's bondage. A frenzied living Pharaoh raked Manhattan with madness and murder. Against a baffling human wall that dies but never betrays its menacing master, Richard Wentworth-feared Spider of the underworld-faces his fate alone.

Coffins and gold lay side by side in the strongroom of the liner that was sailing to its doom. And Richard Wentworth had picked that ship to carry Nita and himself to their long-delayed honeymoon in Europe! Denounced by Baron Otuna as a pirate, assailed by the green men in flaming chaos, he donned once more the Spider's dusty cloak and well-oiled guns-for an epic battle at sea with a terror that stalked in the great ship's wake and menaced a thousand lives!

Deep-hidden in evil, Satan's Suicide Club sat in council-and men died. What dreadful force drove these men, leaders of society with everything to live for, to end their lives at the behest of that sinister being who sardonically called himself Professor Mephisto? And why did men and women suffer the tortures of the damned rather than defy this mysterious being? Richard Wentworth once more assumes the cloak of the Spider to free these lost ones from a living hell and a disgraceful death-and steps into the jaws of a devil's trap that casts his life among the lives in pawn!

War gongs clanged in Chinatown-but it was no tong war that tore the great Societies with fear and suspicion and deadly hate. For deeper in evil mystery than their own dark secrets lay the hidden temple of crime that loosed the Scourge of the Yellow Fangs-the menace that erupted in the yellow men's haunts and overflowed into white men's lives and threatened white men's rule. Victims lived long enough to curse the unknown Man From Singapore-who knew the Spider and planned his quick removal from the finish fight... While in a tenuous truce with baffled police, Richard Wentworth, by night the Spider, accepted the top-heavy odds-and gave grim battle!