THE AVENGER #23 - The Wilder Curse - KENNETH ROBESON - 1st. Ed. WARNER PB

The Avenger is a fictional character whose original adventures appeared between September 1939 and September 1942 in the pulp magazine, The Avenger, published by Street and Smith. Five additional short stories were published in Clues Detective magazine (1942–1943), and a sixth novelette in The Shadow magazine in 1943. Decades later, newly written adventures were commissioned and published by Warner Brothers' Paperback Library from 1973 to 1974. The Avenger was a pulp hero who combined elements of Doc Savage and The Shadow. The authorship of the pulp series was credited to Kenneth Robeson, the same byline that appeared on the Doc Savage stories. Most of the original Avenger stories were written by Paul Ernst. The "Kenneth Robeson" name was a house pseudonym used by a number of different Street & Smith writers. When creating The Avenger, 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.

A scuffling sound - then gruesome death. The Wilder Curse strikes another victim down! Can The Avenger unmask the killer whose plan for revenge upon the guilty is becoming wholesale murder of the innocent?

In the roaring heart of the crucible, steel is made. In the raging flame of personal tragedy, men are sometimes forged into something more than human. It was so with Dick Benson. He had been a man. After the dread loss inflicted on him by an inhuman crime ring, he became a machine of vengeance dedicated to the extermination of all other crime rings. He turned into the the person we know now: A figure of ice and steel, more pitiless than both; A mechanism of whipcord and flame; A symbol to crooks and killers; A terrible, almost impersonal force, masking chill genius and super normal power behind a face as white and dead as a mask from the grave. Only his pale eyes, like ice in a polar dawn, hint at the deadliness of the scourge the underworld heedlessly invoked against itself when crime's greed turned millionaire adventurer Richard Benson into The Avenger.

I am selling my entire collection of THE AVENGER (Bantam Books) adventures (as well as DOC SAVAGE also by Kenneth Robeson). Check complete listings (martyrp) for other Sci Fi/Fantasy, Silver/Bronze-Age Comics, and other books of fiction and non-fiction. Shipping can be combined on books, generally $3.99 for the first book and $1.00 for each additional. Please contact me prior to paying for an updated invoice.