The Death Machine

The Avenger #32

by Kenneth Robeson, George Gross (Illustrator)

The Avenger and his band of associates comprised Justice, Inc., and, armed with keen gadgets, clear genius, stout hearts, good humor, and the force of right set forth from their Bleek Street headquarters to thwart evil.

When the suicide rate in San Francisco soars, rumor blames a Fantastic new death machine as the cause. CAN A DEATH MACHINE DRIVE PROMINENT MEN TO SUICIDE? ONLY THE AVENGER HAS THE SCIENTIFIC KNOW-HOW TO VERIFY WHETHER SUCH AN INSTRUMENT EXISTS. IF IT DOES, CAN THE AVENGER DEFY IT?

Genres: Pulp, Pulp Adventure, Fiction, Adventure

142 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published January 1, 1975

About the author

Kenneth Robeson was the house name used by Street and Smith Publications as the author of their popular character Doc Savage and later The Avenger. Though most Doc Savage stories were written by the author Lester Dent, there were many others who contributed to the series, including:

William G. Bogart
Evelyn Coulson
Harold A. Davis
Lawrence Donovan
Alan Hathway
W. Ryerson Johnson

Lester Dent is usually considered to be the creator of Doc Savage. In the 1990s Philip José Farmer wrote a new Doc Savage adventure, but it was published under his own name and not by Robeson. Will Murray has since taken up the pseudonym and continued writing Doc Savage books as Robeson.

All 24 of the original stories featuring The Avenger were written by Paul Ernst, using the Robeson house name. In order to encourage sales Kenneth Robeson was credited on the cover of The Avenger magazine as "the creator of Doc Savage" even though Lester Dent had nothing to do with The Avenger series. In the 1970s, when the series was extended with 12 additional novels, Ron Goulart was hired to become Robeson.

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like Doc Savage the Avenger fights crime with the help of his aids. While the stories aren't as exciting and world ranging as Doc he is still a great pulp character and read. Very recommended

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title character was barely in this one, just long enough for a couple of gunshots and a knife-throwing bit, but my real objection is the cover. This story was taking place in the 1940s, and there is a 1960s TV on the cover. This was either a weird joke on the part of the artist, as the illustration was probably supposed to be the title's "death machine," or a case of the publisher's art director not bothering to actually look at the text, even a little bit, before telling the artist what to draw. The result is funny, but not helpful.
Storywise, I didn't like Smitty's eccentric uncle, not at all. Dangerous mad inventor, and too stupid to survive day-to-day life, as portrayed.
The running gag of the un-named twin babies is running thin by this point, having gone on for two or three books by this point, and keeping Josh and his wife out of the actual stories was annoying, too. The idea that a series of several books was happening literally within days was just too weird.

[Mark Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ron Goulart's pastiches are competent, well-constructed, and get the characterizations right. They are also much less exciting than the originals. In this one, Smitty's kooky inventor Uncle Algernon creates The Heathcote Ultrasonic Brain Control box which promptly finds its way into the sinister clutches of Nazi saboteurs. The action and suspense possibilities of a device powerful enough to force a person to obey a command to commit suicide are completely ignored. I'm not sure how Goulart could resist pitting a brainwashed Smitty against The Avenger in an all-out battle, but resist he did. Goulart makes the whole adventure routine, as Justice, Inc. rolls over the foreign agents without any real difficulty or suspense. Still, better than no Avenger at all.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Avenger, Richard Benson, was one of the greatest pulp crime-fighters. He and his band of associates comprised Justice, Inc., and, armed with keen gadgets, clear genius, stout hearts, good humor, and the force of right set forth from their Bleek Street headquarters to thwart evil, defend goodness, and protect American society. The adventures were published as "by Kenneth Robeson, the creator of Doc Savage," (which may have led to the perception that The Avenger was something of a second-rate Doc), though the originals were actually written by Paul Ernst and then continued by Ron Goulart many years later. Armed with Mike & Ike, a very special knife and gun, Benson was teamed with Mac and Smitty (analogous to Monk and Ham from the Doc Savage series) from the beginning, and then joined by blonde and diminutive Nellie Grey (who could definitely have held her own with Pat Savage or Nita van Slaon) in the second book, Josh and Rosabel Newton, perhaps the best-depicted African-American couple from the era in The Sky Walker, and light-hearted Cole Wilson in the thirteenth adventure. The stories were well-paced and exciting and very well-written for the context of the era. Benson's origin, as recounted in Justice, Inc., the first story, was similar to Bruce Wayne's in that the loss of his family spurred his decision to fight crime; his wealth and physical prowess allowed him to do so. The loss of his wife and daughter resulted in a weird facial
deformity that made his skin lose its pigmentation and left it malleable like wax so that he could reform it and made him "the man of a thousand faces"; the loss of this ability in the thirteenth novel was a downturn in the series. The series continued for a second dozen adventures in the 1940's, and then revived for a third dozen in the 1970's when Warner Books had Goulart continue the series for another dozen volumes after they put out the first two dozen in paperback. It was a fun and thrill-packed intelligent series, more down-to-Earth than the Doc Savage books and much less crazy than The Spider series.