Frederick C. Davis — who authored the first twenty Jimmy Christopher adventures under the Curtis Steele house name — recalled in 1969 the basic concept of Popular Publications’ Operator 5 — “Operator 5 must save the United States from total destruction in every story, every month.”
The Secret Sentinel column in the first issue of Secret Service Operator #5 — dated April 1934 — mirrors Davis’s thoughts . . .
Our defense against this secret legion working against us is placed in the hands of a few picked men of the Intelligence Department. Men such as Jimmy Christopher, known as Operator #5 . . . . Follow him as he wages a one-man war against the foreign agents who are plotting America’s ultimate destruction.
In novel after novel, the stalwart Christopher defeats one enemy after another — The Yellow Empire, the Man-Breaker, the New Populists, the Red Invaders, Montezuma the Third, the Dragon Emperor, Emperor Rudolph and the Purple Empire, Frederick Blaintree and the Brown Shirt Party . . .
Emile Clemens Tepperman took over the series with “Raiders of the Red Death,” published in the December 1935 issue of the Popular Publications hero pulp. He would write 19 lead novels for Secret Service Operator #5, all of them published under the Curtis Steele house name. He is best remembered for the thirteen-part Purple Invasion series that he penned for the series. It has been called “The War and Peace of the Pulps”
Following Tepperman as Curtis Steele was Wayne Rogers — also known as A. H. Bittner. Rogers/Bittner wrote the last nine published stories in the series, plus a tenth adventure entitled “Hell’s Lost Battalion.” Following the November/December 1939 issue, Popular Publications canceled the series and Rogers’ last adventure went unpublished.
We hope you’ll join PulpFest 2024 as we welcome Tom Krabacher and Kurt Shoemaker — both members of The Pulp Era Amateur Press Society — on Friday, August 2, at 9:25 pm for “America’s Secret Service Ace,” a look at the Popular Publications hero pulp and its creators.
Tom Krabacher is a semi-retired professor at California State University, Sacramento, and a member of the Pulp Era Amateur Press Association. He has previously presented at PulpFest, serving on and moderating panels on Weird Tales, the Cthulhu Mythos, and John Campbell’s classic fantasy magazine, Unknown. He has also explored the Don Everhard stories of Gordon Young — published in Adventure and Short Stories — and published articles on the pulps and their history in Blood ‘n’ Thunder, The Pulpster, and elsewhere.
A retired educator, Kurt Shoemaker lives in Texas where he has explored the life and work of Barry Scobee, a pulp writer whose name graces a mountain in the state. Kurt has written about the author for Purple Prose and Windy City Pulp Stories. A longtime member of the Pulp Era Amateur Press Association, Kurt’s favorite pulp is Adventure. In recent years, he has been working his way through the Operator #5 series, thanks to the Steeger Books reprint series. Although he’s been to quite a few PulpFest gatherings over the years, this will be Kurt’s debut on our presentation stage.
PulpFest 2024 begins on August 1 and runs through August 4 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania. We’ll be celebrating “Spice, Spies, Shaw, and More” at this year’s convention.
The general public is welcome to attend our evening programming events free of charge. To learn more about our programming, please click the Schedule button at the top of this page.
For those who also want to enjoy our dealers’ room, you can join PulpFest by clicking the registration button at the top of this page. And don’t forget to book a room. The DoubleTree is sold out, but there are other hotels nearby.
If you want to sell at this year’s PulpFest, our wall tables are sold out. Island tables are still available, but they won’t last long. Register soon!
Our featured image is excerpted from John Newton Howitt’s cover painted for the final published issue of Operator #5, dated November/December 1939. Howitt’s cover illustrates the Jim Christopher adventure, “The Army from Underground,” written by Wayne Rogers, also known as A. H. Bittner. The story was published under the Popular Publications house name, Curtis Steele.
Our lead image was adapted by William Lampkin from Jerome Rozen’s cover for Operator #5, dated April 1934, and published by Popular Publications. Painted for the first issue of the Popular Publications hero pulp. According to series initial author, Frederick C. Davis, “When I was called in to start the series, they already had a cover illustration — the White House being blown up. I did the first Operator 5 around this picture. The characters in detail, the ideas, the plots, and the gimmicks were all my inventions.”
The November 1934 number of Operator #5 — featuring a cover by John Newton Howitt — is the eighth issue in the series. Its lead novel, “The Green Death Mists,” is one of twenty Jimmy Christopher adventures that Frederick Davis wrote for the spy pulp.
Emile C. Tepperman took over the series with “Raiders of the Red Death,” published in the December 1935 issue of Operator #5, with cover art by John Newton Howitt. He was followed by Wayne Rogers in the July/August 1938 number of the magazine. As he did for all but the first issue of Operator #5, John Newton Howitt contributed the cover art, illustrating the story, “The Suicide Battalion,” written by Rogers.
Emile C. Tepperman, IV has been writing occasionally for our website since 2017. He is purportedly the great-grandson of Operator #5 author Emile Clemens Tepperman.
To learn more about Operator #5, visit our YouTube Channel for Craig McDonald’s segment on the character.
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