For every great hero there is, quite often, a great adversary. Think Professor Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes; Cardinal Richelieu and The Three Musketeers; Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Uriah Heep and David Copperfield; Doctor Quartz and Nick Carter; Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker . . . .
And then there are the villains who far overshadow their creator’s protagonists. Count Dracula, Hannibal Lecter, Captain Ahab, Doctor Fu Manchu, Long John Silver, Fantômas, Sauron . . . . Only their most devoted followers remember Jonathan Harker, Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Clarice Starling, and the like.
When the pulps came along at the end of the 19th century, they too had their fair share of larger-than-life villains. Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine — the first all-fiction specialty pulp magazine — was the home for many. These included Johnston McCulley’s The Black Star and The Spider, H. Irving Hancock’s Li Shoon, and, most prominently, A. E. Apple’s Mr. Chang, featured in more than thirty stories in the pulp magazine. In later years, adventure and western writer J. Allen Dunn contributed nearly thirty tales of The Griffin, a master extortionist who threatened countless millionaires in Munsey’s Detective Fiction Weekly.
In 1934 with The Great Depression dragging on and the rigors of the pulp marketplace depressing sales, Dell Publishing’s All Detective Magazine was floundering. Publisher George T. Delacorte decided to try something new.
In the July 1934 issue of All Detective, author Edward P. Norris introduced an international criminal who called himself Doctor Death. The writer killed off his bad guy at story’s end, but two issues later, the nefarious Doctor Death was back. He’d return twice after that, including in the January 1935 issue of All Detective Magazine, the final issue of the pulp. After that, All Detective became Doctor Death, the first pulp magazine to have a villain as the lead character.
With the lead novels all penned by Harold Ward — writing as “Zorro” — Delacorte’s experiment would run for just three issues, dated February, March, and April 1935.
Ward’s Doctor Death was out to reshape the world. Thinking that civilization had corrupted the Earth, Doctor Rance Mandarin — the former Dean of Psychology at Yale University — used science and the occult as he attempted to send the human race back to the Stone Age.
Although Dell’s villain pulp ran for a scant three issues before it was canceled, other companies soon followed suit with their own lead villains.
J. C. Henneberger’s Weird Tales came first with a series of eight novelettes penned by Paul Ernst, best remembered as the author of The Avenger. Given the popularity of Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin series of occult mysteries, editor Farnsworth Wright introduced Doctor Satan in the August 1935 issue of “The Unique Magazine.”
Unlike Harold Ward’s eco-terrorist Rance Mandarin, Ernst’s master of science and black magic turns to crime for laughs and profit, similar to Dunn’s Griffin. Never a darling of Weird Tales readers, Doctor Satan pulled a vanishing act after the August/September 1936 issue of the magazine, never to return.
Shortly after Ernst’s evil doctor was introduced by “The Unique Magazine,” Popular Publications debuted the first of its four villain pulps, The Mysterious Wu Fang. Written by Robert J. Hogan — the lead author of G-8 and His Battle Aces — Wu Fang was a Fu-Manchu knock-off. John Richard Flanagan — who illustrated Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu stories for Collier’s — was even hired to illustrate the first story.
Yet another Asian scientist bent on taking over the world, Popular’s “Yellow Peril” series is believed to have been threatened with legal action by Rohmer’s attorneys. The Mysterious Wu Fang was canceled after its March 1936 number, lasting for seven issues.
Thinking that a new writer and name change would yield different results, Popular tried again with Dr. Yen Sin. Written by Donald E. Keyhoe — author of the popular Captain Philip Strange tales for Flying Aces — the new pulp was subtitled “The Invisible Peril” and — like The Mysterious Wu Fang — illustrated by Flanagan.
Unfortunately, the pulp would have also been all-too-visible to Sax Rohmer’s legal representatives. Dr. Yen Sin ran for just three issues. Its September-October 1936 issue would be its last number. Rohmer however, continued to publish Fu Manchu stories until 1959, the year of his death.
Following the cancellation of Dr. Yen Sin, Popular Publications tried launching a villain pulp in early 1939, publishing The Octopus, followed by The Scorpion. Thought to have been written by Edith & Eljer Jacobsen and, possibly, Norvell Page, the pulps featured different villains, but the same hero. Both pulps lasted for a single issue.
Albeit a short-lived pulp market, PulpFest will salute the “Great Pulp Villains” at our 2025 convention, honoring the 90th anniversaries of Doctor Death, Doctor Satan, The Mysterious Wu Fang, and their fleeting followers. We hope you’ll join us August 7 – 10 at the beautiful DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania for PulpFest 2025.
To learn more about the “Great Pulp Villains,” visit the PulpFest YouTube Channel and catch PulpFest Unleashes the Villains.
Our featured image is by Rudolph Zirm, excerpted from his cover for the April 1935 issue of Doctor Death, the third and final issue of the Dell Publishing villain pulp.
Our lead cover is John A. Coughlin’s work for the December 27, 1930 number of Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine. It is followed, in order, by Frederic C. Madan’s cover for All Detective Magazine for July 1934; Margaret Brundage’s cover for the August 1935 issue of Weird Tales, illustrating the Paul Ernst novelette, “Doctor Satan;” Jerome Rozen’s covers for The Mysterious Wu Fang for September 1935, and Dr. Yen Sin for July/August 1936, both published by Popular Publications; and John Newton Howitt’s cover for the April/May 1939 issue of The Scorpion, also published by Popular Publications.
There is little known about the artist, Frederic C. Madan, noted above. He was born in 1885 in Brooklyn. Other than two covers for All Detective Magazine and one cover for Star Western — all published during 1934 — Madan painted travel posters for the railroad industry and movie promotion material for Hollywood. Some of his film posters include Cimarron (1931), The Informer (1935), The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), and Top Hat (1935). The artist died in 1972.
Kenneth Grant is a writer and popular culture enthusiast who began writing for our website in 2022. He particularly enjoys the hero pulps and has written about FarmerCon, Ron Hill’s new documentary We Are Doc Savage, our PulpFest 2024 dealers, and more.
