“Satan’s Sightless Legion” was originally published in the August 1936 issue of The Spider Magazine. Richard Wentworth is first to feel the dread hand of that Master of Darkness &mdash: The Blind Man, and his satanic weapon. Wentworth’s 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.
A pretty good Spider story, but it suffers from the same weakness so many of The Spider stories also do… a rushed and unresolved ending. Things that were important plot points throughout the story are hastily explained away with a few words, and readers are expected to find that satisfactory. Here’s one reader who didn’t. But up until that rushed ending, I really enjoyed the story.
It all revolves around the super-villain of the month, a guy who calls himself the Blind Man. He wears the typical blind-man getup, including dark glasses, tin cup, and a sign around his neck. He’s not really blind; that’s just his guise. But he does dispense blindness. He has this fluid called the Darkener that he squirts in people’s eyes via an atomizer. They quickly go blind… then their sight comes back slightly for a few hours, then they go blind again… and this time permanently. This nasty solution even wipes the pupils from the eyes, leaving a white, glistening globe in the eye socket.
Things start out small but ratchet up until by the end of the story, it’s a frantic battle to keep the entire populace from going blind.
As our story opens, Linda Carroll was blinded by something in her eyewash that morning. Her young brother Jimmy goes to the police for help, but they offer no hope. So he goes to Richard Wentworth, and he gets all the help he could ever ask for.
Spider Clubs are springing up!
A quick aside. Young Jimmy is president of the Washington Street Spider Club. It seems that Spider Clubs are springing up all over the country, and members proudly wear their Spider rings. Note how right off the bat in chapter one, the publishers, Popular Publications, start blatantly promoting their Spider Clubs and Spider rings. This is a club for boys and girls, not for adults. Hard to believe that back in the 1930s parents actually let their children read The Spider with its extreme violence and torture. And swear words: “Hell” is used as a swear word 13 times; “damn” is used another 13 times.
I know they’re not much of swear words by today’s standards, but by 1936 standards that was enough to get a kid a whipping and have his mouth washed out with soap. Yet so many kids read the magazine that the publishers catered specifically to the crowd, creating a special club just for them, and marketing a Spider ring to them as well. The Spider ring was first offered in issue #6 dated March 1934 containing the story “The Citadel of Hell.” And here, over two years later, it was still being pushed not only in magazine advertisements and editorials, but was being written into the actual story itself. OK, but I digress…
Also involved in the story is Hal Moran, Linda Carroll’s boyfriend, and his sister Sue. The two of them are mixed up in the Blind Man’s gang, albeit reluctantly. But once in, you can’t just walk away.
A bunch of stuff happens, all so fast if makes your head spin. Wentworth runs places, fights, kills people, falls into traps, escapes, kills more people and along the way a lot of people get squirted with the Darkener and go blind. People are kidnapped and rescued. Police are portrayed as bumbling fools. Everyone is out to get The Spider, both the police and the Underworld thugs. And the action never stops. I won’t even try to describe it all. I’ll just hit the high points.
The high points.
Police Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick is strangely reluctant to cooperate with his good friend Richard Wentworth. It seems he must be working with the Blind Man. Betrayal is a common theme in Spider stories, and it is certainly foremost in this one. In one scene, Wentworth willingly turns himself over to the police, knowing he will actually be turned over to the Blind Man. And that’s his ruse for entering the Blind Man’s headquarters.
In all the many Spider stories, if we’ve learned one thing, it’s that Wentworth and Kirkpatrick have a strong bond of friendship. They would die for each other. Yet here Kirkpatrick betrays his friend. How is that possible? It’s a common thread that runs throughout the entire story, and unfortunately is only resolved at the very end, and in a most cursory way. I think Norvell Page could have done a better job of resolving this pretty important plot point, and it lessens the enjoyment of the story to have such a casual, offhand conclusion.
And speaking of betrayal, Wentworth’s old friend and retainer Jenkyns betrays his master. It seems that Hal Moran and his sister Sue are actually his dead sister’s kids. He asks Wentworth to help them, but later when they are firmly in the clutches of the Blind Man, he goes over to the Dark side… literally.
Near the beginning of the story, the Blind Man takes to task one of his minions for using the Darkener fluid too liberally during a robbery… and proceeds to blind him as punishment. It seems that the gang doesn’t have a large supply and it’s slow to make. Yet by the end of the story, they have enough of it fill the air of the mines of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to drop it on the town of Millburg from airplanes, to saturate dust clouds that will sweep over the entire nation. Annoying is the fact that we never get an explanation of why these targets are chosen. They just are.
Anyway, moving on…
As the story progresses, the bad guys develop a quick acting variety of the Darkener which turns eyes white in a few seconds of writhing agony. And at the climax, the Blind Man adds a new substance to it which not only blinds, but kills as well. Apparently it no longer takes a long time to make.
Then Ram Singh is struck with the Darkener gas, and is blinded. Yikes, this is beginning to hit home, now. But that doesn’t stop this amazing Sikh warrior. Even blind, he is able to throw a knife accurately by sound alone.
Upon the second day of our adventure, the newspapers report that the Blind Man has struck seven times during the night. Thirteen people have been blinded. There is no reason for the attacks. Nothing has been stolen; nothing has been tampered with; there was no effort at intimidation… the crimes have no motive. And as the story continues, we find that, indeed, the motive is unclear. Sometimes it is to rob a theater for money, but often it’s just to blind people without reason. Even at the very end, when the Blind Man is causing mass blindness and threatening the entire nation, there is no reason really given. Nothing is said of blackmail or extortion. No revenge motive. This guy is just out to blind people.
Soon the Blind Man graduates from blinding individuals to crowds. He strikes all of the Broadway theaters at once, gassing the audiences with the Darkener fluid. As you might guess, The Spider can’t be in all places at once, which makes fighting this threat pretty darned difficult.
As happens in so many of The Spider stories, crooks target Richard Wentworth early in the story. Even though he’s supposed to be a wealthy dilettante, they somehow know he’s a danger. If they’ve identified him as being The Spider, its never explained how. Maybe it’s an open secret?
Also, early in the story, Richard Wentworth passes by a golden opportunity. Five thugs have used tanks of this Darkener fluid to blind a receptionist, and Wentworth shoots them all deader than a doornail. And the tanks on their backs still contain a large quantity of the fluid. What a wonderful opportunity to get his hands on the stuff and do a chemical analysis to see if an antidote can be created. But he doesn’t even think of it. And I found myself shouting out loud, “Take the fluid, you idiot!”
Well, finally, Wentworth gets the idea himself, several days later. After thwarting the theater attacks, he does exactly what he should have done two days sooner. He takes some of a dead gangsters’s Darkener fluid and has Nita examine it chemically. Apparently Nita is a chemist, because he trusts her with this vital task. I know she’s quite talented, but I had no idea she had a degree in chemistry. And she goes on to create an antidote, to boot! Wow!
Nita, the chemist
Remember that small room hidden behind the organ in Wentworth’s music room? The one where he keeps his Spider disguises? Well, it seems he has installed a small, efficient laboratory there, as well. And that’s where Nita goes about her chemical experiments.
She finally figures that this Darkener is a synthetic substitute of cobra venom that also contains arsenic. She can’t figure out an antidote, though. So after describing all this to her sweetie Wentworth, he casually gives her a suggestion that is the solution to the problem. Seems that Wentworth, too, is a chemical genius! Who knew?!
But this antidote is highly volatile and must be slowly distilled. So, they get to work on it, knowing they can’t use it until they’ve acquired enough. That means it’s too late for Ram Singh. The antidote only works up until the permanent blindness. If administered during the first round of blindness, or the subsequent remission, it will restore vision. But once the blindness stikes the second time, it’s permanent. And so, sadly, Ram Singh is permanently blinded.
Then Wentworth is blinded, as well. Now things couldn’t get much worse than that. But he battles on… blind. That’s pretty gutsy of the guy. But he wouldn’t be The Spider otherwise. Naturally, he sends Nita back home for some of the antidote, but can she get it to him in time? He can’t wait and has to battle the Blind Man in a furious airplane engagement… while blind!
Well, eventually, everyone is captured… they make their escape and lure the Blind Man into a trap where his face dissolves in the acid antidote. What’s that? An acid antidote? Since when was it acid? That’s one of those weird little inconsistencies we’ve grown to love about The Spider. The whole story is wrapped up in five or six paragraphs, and things just appear out of left field. In this case, the antidote is now described as a strong acid which kills the Blind Man. The end.
Ram Singh is blind… or is he?
And as for Ram Singh? Well, that’s a bit confusing. Is he blind or not? It’s never said that he can see. But he does throw his deadly knife and strike the Blind Man. Could he see to do it, or was it done by sound? It’s not said. And in next month’s story, nothing is said of Ram Singh’s blindness, so I guess he got some miracle cure. But that brings up more questions. If there is a miracle cure, were all those thousands of victims cured as well? Although I’d like to think so, that’s not the way these Spider stories were written. Victims nearly always stayed victims. So there’s another one of those signs of a hastily written end which annoy me so.
Some interesting tidbits I picked up from this story. So as to create an armed fortress about where he lives, Wentworth has purchased the entire building below his 15th story penthouse. Ah, yes, when you’ve got money, buy a building!
It’s also interesting to note that reference is made to when, long ago, Wentworth had saved Ram Singh’s family from massacre from a hostile clan. Although this story was written for the August 1936 issue, the story of that battle wouldn’t be told until a back-pages story published in the June 1942 issue, titled “Blood Bond.”
We are told, in this Spider adventure, that Wentworth was about to do a thing he had never done before. He was now about to execute a man in cold blood… Apparently all those previous killings were done in self defense. Hmmm… I guess I wasn’t really keeping track, but I could have sworn that there were at least a few who got killed in cold blood. Maybe I’m forgetting that there was a gun nearby, which made it self-defense.
Forgive the misleading cover
The cover of this Spider magazine featured a scene that was not in the story. It shows Nita tightly bound, with a golden mask being lowered to her face… a mask with sharp golden spikes where the eye holes should be. She’s about to become one of Satan’s Sightless Legion, her eyeballs skewered by those spikes. Now that’s how to sell magazines! Who wouldn’t buy the magazine to see what happened! The true scene of her becoming blind would have shown her being struck in the face by a puff of mist. I doubt if that would have sold nearly as many issues.
Originally, this story was to be titled “Master of Blindness” but the editors changed it to “Satan’s Sightless Legion.” I have to say I approve. Just as I approve the cover change, which, technically, was a cheat. Both were done to increase the appeal of the magazine as it sat on the racks waiting to be sold. And that was the bottom line for pulps. Produce ’em cheaply, sell ’em fast.
Up until the hasty and quickly resolved ending, I really did enjoy this story. With a little bit of polishing, this story could have been so much better. But back in the pulp days, they were rushing to get these stories out as quickly as possible. They weren’t looking to create great literature; they were out to sell as many magazines as they could using those lurid covers and titles as a draw.
Your comments