Weird Tales of The
Skullmask
Revenge is justice
Teel James Glenn
(Excerpt)
BooksForABuck.com
October 2009
WEIRD TALES OF THE SKULLMASK:
REVENGE IS JUSTICE
Teel James Glenn
Copyright October 2009 by Teel James Glenn, all rights reserved.
No portion of this novel may be duplicated, transmitted, or stored in any
form without the express written permission of the publisher.
Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this
copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement,
including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the
FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine
of $250,000.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and locations are fictitious
or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or people is
coincidental
Published by
BooksForABuck.com
ISBN: 978-1-60215-108-6
Down through the corridors of time comes a whisper:
The Skullmask.
A legend, a myth, a nightmare story told around the campfires of an undying avenger who
never stops until the guilty are punished and the helpless avenged: Skullmask.
Called by dozens of names across the cultures: Captain Skull, The Skull Rider, Lady Death's
Head, The Skull Avenger, The Midnite Skull, The Skull Ace, The Bloody Skull, The Skullman,
The Laughing Skull, The Skull Commando. Over two hundred years always the mask appears
when the need is great enough. Always a new cause, always a vengeance fulfilled.
A sinister mask that links the minds of all who have worn it in the quest for just vengeance.
The One hero who is many heroes.
Genesis of the Skullmask:
A Journey into the past
My favorite quote to describe the pulp style of writing is from Algys Budrys who boiled it
down to "a clear cut solution to a sentimental problem." But I think it can be whittled down even
further to that to one word: Passion!
Or perhaps breathtaking. Or exciting.
No pulp writer ever sold a story that bored. Just wouldn't happen--and that is the credo I've
tried to follow in scribing the adventures of, what I hope, is the weirdest of the weird heroes to
never grace the pulps of old.
The Skullmask.
He has a linage that makes the Medici family line look angelic.
When publisher Harry Stieger visited Paris he saw a performance of the Grand Guignol
Theatre, a grisly stage performance that showed dismemberment, murder and other atrocious acts
performed with the skill of stage magicians and the sensibilities of De Sade. He decided right
then and there that he could sell magazines using the same horror background and when he
returned to the states. His brainstorm became the 'shudder pulps'
The so-called weird menace pulps began with the first weird menace title which was Dime
Mystery. It started out as a straight crime fiction magazine but in 1933 began the slide to the new
sub-genre of the actual horror fiction that was popular in the other magazines
decorating the stands. This cul-de-sac of terror's style generally featured stories in
which the hero was pitted against evil or sadistic villains, with graphic scenes of
torture and brutal murder. It spawned a host of imitations (some from the same
company such as Horror Stories, Terror Tales, Spicy Mystery, Thrilling Mystery
and a few short-lived single-character pulps that 'dipped into the weird menace
pool such as Doctor Death, The Mysterious Wu Fang, Dr. Yen Sin, The Octopus
and The Scorpion and the ultimate crossover when The Mysterious Dr. Satan ran
in Weird Tales . The "mystery" in the title of many of these magazines was often a
misnomer as, these pulps went far a field from the mystery genre normally often
with supernatural threats and mad scientist villains.
Meanwhile (as they say), back on the magazine racks, a phenomenon occurred:
the Hero Pulp was started by Street and Smith publications. The publisher, W. A.
Ralston and Editor John Nanovic, concocted a magazine titled, The Shadow to
take advantage of the popularity of a radio narrator who had been reading on air
from their magazines.
They had no idea who or what the Shadow was, but they knew just the right
guy to write it; a magician/journalist cum pulp writer named Walter Gibson. Under
the house name of Maxwell Grant, Gibson created a fascinatingly dark &
mysterious crusader who, with his army of aides and agents, fought a constant war
against the forces of gangdom.
Imitations of this dark avenger popped up with the Green Lama the most
notable on the light side and The Spider on the dark.
And oh boy was the Spider on the dark side. The sheer body count in a Spider
story often exceeded the population of some European countries. And the menaces
he fought were Vampire Kings, body twisters, plague spreaders--just a really
horrible bunch of people and things!
His own look mimicked them. The Spider, aka Richard Wentworth, started out
with a conventional domino mask like the Phantom Detective but before his ten
year run in the pulps was over had evolved into a white fright wigged, fanged and
a hunchbacked figure topped by a long cloak and a slouch hat. He was so scary, in
fact that the publisher did not allow the cover artists to actually represent him on
the cover in his true guise!
Both the Shadow and the Spider made it to the silver screen in serial from
Columbia, though the more successful Shadow had only one while the Spider (in
yet a third physical representation) got two whole serials.
The weird menace pulps and the Spider had roughly the same ten year run both
gone by late 1943 as the horrors of war turned home front minds toward more
cheery images and subjects.
Exploring the pulp 'universe' in the creation of my 'in the light' hero Dr.
Shadows, the Granite Man got me thinking about that darker world of these 'weird
and shadowed' avengers and sparked me to create the Skullmask, a generational
dark hero with a high body count in all the stories. The generation aspect, like the
comic strip Phantom, allowed me to tell many different stories in many different
eras with my grisly good guy (and gal). Several of the different Skullmasks, in
fact, encounter Dr. Shadows at different points in his long career fighting crime.
So welcome to the dark, but hopeful world of the Skullmask;
Enter at you own risk!!
Teel James Glenn