Justice, Inc.

The Avenger #1

by Kenneth Robeson (House Name), Paul Ernst

Only once in several lifetimes does the world get such a man a Richard Henry Benson, known as The Avenger.

A man who had amassed a fortune in his early years, he was ready to enjoy life to the fullest with his wife and daughter when diaster struck, which vacuumed his soul right out of his body.

His family was taken from him by crime, and to make matters worse, no one believed him. He was forced into an insane asylum. He escaped.

His facial muscles were paralyzed by the tragedy, so he could press his face into any position to adopt any guise.

From that day on, The Avenger's only drive in life was to bring destruction to crooks who operated beyond the law, and usually he made sure it was by their own hand.

Genres: Pulp, Adventure, Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Action, Speculative Fiction

159 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1939

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

[Benji's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic start to the Avenger series.

After the disappearance of his wife and daughter on a plane, along with an accident that leaves his face paralyzed, Richard Benson sets out to uncover the mystery of numerous missing persons.

Accompanied by a big dude named Smitty and a Scottish chap named MacMurdie, he forms a bond with them and they become Infinity Inc, I suppose (even though the name hasn't been dropped yet).

Cool thing about Richard "Dick" Benson: his paralyzed face is revealed to be able to now shift, so he can disguise his face as anyone he pleases. He can alter his cheekbones, chin and forehead, though his hair color remains the same. Don't ask how that's possible, just sit back and enjoy "the Man of a Thousand Faces".

It's good, pulpy fun.

[Dartharagorn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick read and fun. Definitely very pulpy. It made me want to give Doc Savage one more try. The Main character was interesting and I wanted a little more back story to him. Perhaps in other volumes I'll learn more. If you're looking to scratch that pulp itch you could do a lot worse.

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This first novel in the Avenger series tells the origin story of Richard Benson, a man who, prior to the events of this book, had earned his fortune by being a professional adventurer; i.e. discovering rubber in South America, leading native armies in Java, making aerial maps in the Congo, mining amethysts in Australia and emeralds in Brazil, etc. But at the beginning of this novel, just when Benson is planning on settling down, his ideal life is brutally shaken when his wife and young daughter are killed, inexplicably disappearing from an airplane on which he himself is also a passenger.

The sheer shock and stress of that experience lands Benson in a hospital and changes him forever. His face becomes paralyzed while both his skin and hair have turned white, his facial flesh becoming malleable, like clay. His quest to chase down the crime ring behind his tragic loss forms the basis for this novel. During the story he also recruits the first two members of what will become “Justice Inc.”: Fergus "Mac" MacMurdie and Algernon Heathcote "Smitty" Smith.

While these books bear the author house name of “Kenneth Robeson”, this book along with most of the original Avenger stories was written by Paul Ernst. It was originally published in the September 1939 edition of the pulp magazine “The Avenger”, published by Street & Smith. Reportedly this series of pulp novels grew out of a wave of magazine cancellations in the late 1930s and recognition that a new hero was needed; a hero that combined the styles and features of previous best sellers Doc Savage and The Shadow.

For me, while I did enjoy the story, it felt a little disjointed. I’ve read a lot of Doc Savage and did notice many similarities including Benson’s aversion to outright killing the bad guys. It is also evident that he is building a team of aides and that he enjoys using gadgets in his work. Of course Benson is a physical hero with incredible strength and intelligence. The plastic, malleable state of his facial features is pretty bizarre, I must say. It allows him to reshape his facial features into a likeness of any person, his features remaining in sculpted form "until they are carefully put back into place". It’s a cool ability I suppose but weird. Something I would expect in the comics from a bad guy but I suppose the pulps of this era weren’t much different. I need to remember that those kinds of comics had just gotten started with Superman having just debuted in Action Comics #1, (cover-dated June 1938), so all those weird bad guy characters were still to come.

All in all, I’m glad I finally got around to this series and this character. He’s been on my list a long time and I somehow managed to acquire the complete set of paperback books from Popular Library so I’ll be reading more. Looking forward to seeing how he progresses and especially to meet the new members of his team as they are introduced.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The origin adventure of The Avenger is one I've wanted to read for a while. Despite the claim that it was written by the author of Doc Savage, the only connection is they use the same "house" name. The original run of The Avenger was actually written by a guy called Paul Ernst, although I have heard that both Lester Dent (the actual Doc Savage writer) and Walter Gibson (AKA Maxwell Grant, writer of The Shadow) had some input on the idea for the series.

The book starts out with a good mystery. Richard Benson's wife and daughter vanish during a plane trip and everyone on the plane denies they were ever there. Benson suffers a breakdown that causes his hair to go white and deadens all the muscles in his face, leaving him permanently expressionless, but with a handy ability to mold his features into any shape he wishes, which comes in handy for disguises, though I can't help wondering how long anyone is going to be fooled by the immobility, however accurate it is.

Once he recovers, Benson sets out to solve the mystery and picks up a couple of sidekicks along the way. Once the central mystery is solved, it goes down hill somewhat as the climax involves our heroes running off to fight a very generic gang with a rather over-complicated scheme to make some cash.

Pulp adventures tend to be a big Boys Only club and this is a prime example. The only female characters of any consequence get fridged in the opening chapter, and I don't think they are ever seen again.

[David B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Investigating the disappearance of his wife and daughter, millionaire adventurer Richard Benson becomes the Avenger, a vigilante with an expressionless chalk white face that he can mold into different configurations.

The Avenger is a kind of proto-Batman character: dark and morose, a skilled fighter, his thirst for justice fueled by family tragedy. Although it doesn’t break away from pulp adventure conventions, it’s still a lot of fun to read. Paul Ernst wrote it under the Street and Smith house name Kenneth Robeson.

[Kim]

Review to follow

[Jim Razinha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in the middle 1970s, I found a few of this series in my tiny local library in rural Connecticut. I’m pretty sure I’d read a later one before this one as the main character Benson’s modi operandi had been established, but I remember this cover art specifically and am sure I read it. Anyway, the teen me didn’t know schlock and preferred Benson over Mack Bolan (which was more probable than not also schlock… I don’t recall.)

And schlock it is. This reads like it only took as long to write it as it took to hammer the keys on a typewriter. Repetitious, and stuff like this: “The man we’re beginning to want out of the way is clever.” is typical of the writing.

Uneven - the reader is dumped into a weird situation with little backstory, unbelievable side characters, even less believable plot line… but there’s a wee reason for that*.

Stereotypical - Scots sidekick (oh my, but there is a lonnnnng comical thread on Reddit on why use prototypical or stereotypical because the prefixes add nothing to “typical”… the OP said people use the former trying to sound smart, yet said OP and many defenders clearly didn’t understand the definitions of any of the three words, so were posing at “smart” themselves.)

And racist - “No Indian could have thrown a tomahawk like that” and similar.

* What I didn’t know back then (and only learned yesterday looking at the copyright and the wiki on the series) was that the original stories came out in 1939-1943. Explains a lot. And of interest to no one but me, for years I could not remember anything about the series except a man with gray skin (in parts of the book that was wrong, it was whiteish, butt blame the cover art of the reprints… oh, and the inconsistent writing where at one point he was described as a “gray-steel man” ) who didn’t kill opponents, rather was shut an expert shot the he “creased” their skulls with his bullets to knock them out. I finally reluctantly (that’s a whole other story) fed that paltry info along with the time period into ChatGPT and it returned this, so AI isn’t all bad I guess.

Also of interest only to me, why is it that in bad writing - whether in print or for movies - the writers use the plot forwarding device of having characters explain what’s going on … long after they normally would? Meaning, protagonists do what they do near the end (or sometimes in the middle) and the antagonists talk out loud, or the victims talk out loud, at that moment to enlighten the reader/viewer…. but in any normal situation, those conversations would have taken place well before the writers insert them. I have no problem with explanations. Those are necessary, but the timing. At least in print, the author can fill in the backstory of how we got where we are without having characters saying out loud something that either would have already been hashed out, or worse, saying something out loud that no person would ever say except in their own head. Clive Cussler did that a lot. One character mentions so and so Senator XX, and another character says… again, out loud … “Senator XX, the head of YY committee?”, something both characters already know (but the reader doesn’t). A better writer would note that as an internal thought or an aside, not something that anyone with any awareness would immediately think “why is he saying that out loud??” Paul Ernst (writing as Kenneth Robeson) is guilty of that here.

But, check your brain and you can still be entertained.

[Leothefox · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this case “Kenneth Robeson”'s secret identity is Paul Ernst, and not Lester Dent as the Warner paperback edition implies, which is really all for the good. Street & Smith whipped up “The Avenger” as a cross between “The Shadow” and “Doc Savage” and you get that very much from reading it. As expected, “The Shadow” influence supplies good plotting and villain antics, and the “Doc Savage” influence results in cartoonish heroes with exaggerated strengths.

Our hero is Richard Benson who winds up with the ability to mold his face like silly putty to resemble anyone, this being because his facial muscles are “dead” and he can't naturally smile or emote in any other way. He's gone prematurely gray and has a creepy stare. All of this is the result of a terrible tragedy that lands him in a Canadian nuthouse.

“Justice, Inc.” has a nicely done opening where Benson, with wife and child in tow, forces his way onto a small passenger plane, needing to reach Montreal in a hurry. The plane takes off, he goes to the bathroom, when he comes out his wife and child aren't there and everyone tells him they didn't board the plane with him. He raves, he's subdued, he's told he's crazy, and later he investigates only to be told he never had a wife and child. It's the Hitchcock “The Lady Vanishes” setup (weakly recycled for films like “Flightplan”), and it's always a good one. The rest of the book doesn't quite live up to the opener, though.

Benson is distinct from many other pulp heroes in not being huge or brawny, he's 5' 8” and 160 lbs, but naturally he's clever, his still strong, and he's independently wealthy. His emotionlessness is meant to add to his intensity and he's referred to as a “gray fox” or a “steel machine”.

Naturally, since this means to ride the Doc Savage coat-tails, he has sidekicks: MacMurdie, a large Scotsman with comically large extremities, and Smitty, a huge guy who looks dumb but isn't. Both have suffered at the hands of criminals too, so they're perfect to join Benson's crime fighting team.

This first adventure is the mystery that involves the disappearance of our hero's wife and child, a plot that has goons throwing stockholders in a major company out of an airplane over Lake Ontario. There's an island hideout, some goons who would shoot each other for guessing at the boss's identity, abductions, face squishing disguises, postcards as clues, sinister business men, knocking guys out by grazing them with real bullets, one twist, and pretty standard deception of the reader.

While some pulp heroes take on evil with two automatics in hard or chuck bad-guys out of windows, Benson, “The Avenger”, doesn't kill people... although he's not averse to tricking villains into killing one another.

Street & Smith had both Walter B. Gibson and Lester Dent advise Ernst on the creation of this series, and like I said above, it might have worked better had Dent stayed home that day.

I've got more of these on the shelf, so I imagine I will return to the series, although “Secret Agent X”, “The Black Bat”, “The Phantom Detective”, “Captain Satan”, and of course “The Spider” are ahead of it in line for now.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this as part of the double volume reprint by Sanctum of the first two Avenger pulp novels, and it's a top-notch origin story, introducing Richard Benson, soon to be known as The Avenger.

I was reminded of the first Doc Savage, The Man of Bronze, by the time I reached the end, as that first story begins with Doc's loss of his father, and this one owes its genesis to the disappearance mid-flight of Benson's wife and daughter on a trip from Buffalo to Montreal across Lake Ontario. By the end of the pulp, Benson and his fledgling crew of Mac and Smitty come face to face with unreasoning, uncaring evil and I was able to understand the madness that can drive to take justice into their own hands.

When I think of the early Doc Savage stories, and how the Man of Bronze took lives in those tales, avenging the deaths of those he held close, I'm amazed the restraint Benson displays. He earns the name, Man of Steel, because only someone as strong as that forged metal could survive such a hellish trial.

Justice, Inc. is character-driven pulp, laying a solid foundation for the characters writer Paul Ernst introduces under the Kenneth Robeson byline -- a foundation that makes me look forward to seeing how well Ernst sets Benson, Mac and Smitty onto the trail of The Yellow Hoard, the second tale in their Sanctum Books debut.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

(FYI I tend to only review one book per series, unless I want to change my scoring by 0.50 or more of a star. -- I tend not to read reviews until after I read a book, so I go in with an open mind.)

I'm finally going through my physical library owned book list, to add more older basic reviews. If I liked a book enough to keep then they are at the least a 3 star.

I'm only adding one book per author and I'm not going to re-read every book to be more accurate, not when I have 1000s of new to me authors to try (I can't say no to free books....)


First time read the author's work?: Yes

Will you be reading more?: Yes

Would you recommend?: Yes


------------
How I rate Stars: 5* = I loved (must read all I can find by the author)
4* = I really enjoyed (got to read all the series and try other books by the author).
3* = I enjoyed (I will continue to read the series)
or
3* = Good book just not my thing (I realised I don't like the genre or picked up a kids book to review in error.)

All of the above scores means I would recommend them!
-
2* = it was okay (I might give the next book in the series a try, to see if that was better IMHO.)
1* = Disliked

Note: adding these basic 'reviews' after finding out that some people see the stars differently than I do - hoping this clarifies how I feel about the book. :-)

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is nearly a century old, and it shows. It was not my cup of tea. I really didn't enjoy the descriptions of the characters; they were really just mean and nasty. All around unpleasant descriptions. The only character descriptions that were good were of the protagonist and his family. Even then, Benson's description was repetitive. Grey hair, grey eyes. He's a grey fox, he's a grey panther. I should have counted how many times his eyes burned with fire. The mystery seemed a bit lazy, not a great introduction to the character. Also, his wife and child disappearing being the catalyst for why his hair is white, his eyes are grey, and his face is frozen putty feels messy. This man snapped my suspension of disbelief the minute he was able to poke, prod, and reshape his face.

I picked this up thinking it would be a fun adventure, I could just turn my brain off and enjoy, but I feel like I just had a floating question mark over my head. The book was short, which was a saving grace. I do intend on reading the next, but if it's not vastly better than this, I'm getting off the bus. Which is super sad since I love massive series.

[Éric Kasprak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read some of the popular pulp heroes series and after Doc Savage and The Spider I now read The Avenger. I really, really like the first part of the story, where Richard Benson, wife and daughter disappeared from a plane. The total mystery and utter tension of the situation was very well written and convey to the reader. Afterward the story resolves around the investigation to find what happen and we are more into a financial scam then some evil super villain. That was a bit of a let down, but otherwise the story is good and well paced. Hopefully the series will evolve into more of the over-the-top action/villains territories. But this first book had enough to make me read the next entry.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rip-roaring pulp thriller of the kind I love to read! This one wastes no time in getting straight into the heart of the action with a classic mystery set-up involving passengers disappearing in-flight. From there we're introduced to the main character, a pulp hero with the uncanny ability to twist his features into those of other people. His skills are somewhat outlandish, straining credibility at times, but no more so than Batman or any of the other super-heroes lining fiction and film. The story is brief, the action dominates, and the characters are larger than life. I couldn't put this one down and devoured it in two or three sittings, eager to read more from this 'Avenger'.

[Christian · Rating 1 out of 5]

After reading about half of the book, I decided live is to short to waste it on poor books. This book is pure drivel even by the standards of the genre and it’s time of publication.
While I enjoy pulp fiction, especially the doc savage novels, this story gad absolutely no redeeming aspects for me.
This might be the greatest series of all, but after having wasted a few hours on this, I will apparently never find out.

[Paul Dinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! This is a great potboiler. I first became aware of Justice Inc when I read the two issue miniseries that Andy Helfer and Kyle Baker did for DC comics. I had NO idea that that they didn't make up the story. After reading about pulps and about this character, well I finally read the book. It was great. I gotta say it kept my attention all the way until the end. This was a great page turner. I devoured it in a single sitting.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in the 70s. Pulp adventure in the Doc Savage vein.

[Brannigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was pretty disappointed in this one. For a pulp story it was pretty slow and frankly boring. Can’t win them all.

[Ralph Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not great but very entertaining.

[Barry Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic. I didn’t have the Buffalo and Thousand Island connections I have now when I first read it circa 1975 in Vancouver, BC.

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like the Doc Savage books show a sort of proto Superman, the Richard Benson books seem to portray a proto Batman of sorts. There are certainly similarities between the Savage and Benson books owing to the fact that it's of the same era, and the same group of writers (under the pen name Kenneth Robeson) composed both. However, the feel of the novel is a lot darker and less "hijinx-y" than the Doc Savage books, and interestingly, the "special" abilities of the main character are more reminiscent of a Doc Savage *villain* than a protagonist.

In fact, Benson has several qualities that are lifted directly from Doc Savage novels:

After a heartbreaking trauma, Benson loses sensation in his face, and his features become putty-like, staying in whatever position he pushes them. As a result of the facial paralysis, he can sort of mold his features into set expressions, or even masks of other faces. This weird quality is almost identical to a villain in Robeson's "Seven Agate Devils" whose lower face does the same thing. He also uses his putty face to similar chilling effect, and was described as being handsome otherwise, much like Benson.

Benson also has cold eyes of pale grey that compel and terrify people into doing his bidding. This sounds an awful lot like the only physical power of Johnny Sunshine (one of the only Savage villains to appear in more than one book). Sunshine is able to strike fear into people with his cold, cold eyes, though he's not much of a physical threat otherwise.

The putty face and cold eyes are interesting, certainly, but not exactly awesome super powers, as super powers go. However, they're more meant to be a physical manifestation of how dead Benson's soul has become after his traumatic loss, I suspect. It's not exactly high art, but there's a level of depth to the character here that the Doc Savage novels don't strive for. The Savage novels use negative physical descriptions for villains in a very simple "bad guys look bad because they're bad inside!" way. Here, our hero - striving for justice and good - bears physical characteristics usually reserved for those who are evil. Interesting.

Justice Inc, is a classic Batman-type origin story: the trauma of the hero forces him into a life of avenging and emotional torment. It's definitely worth a read for Batman fans who'd like to see what inspired the dark knight later, and is also a worthy read for pulp fans looking for a bombastically improbable adventure with a bit more gravity than the Savage books.

[Craig · Rating 4 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.

[Todd Glaeser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first "Pulp" character I ever read. I was 10 and this book, The Yellow Hoard, made such an impression that I searched out all of the Warner paperback reprints as they were coming out. (No small feat when you live in rural Minnesota.) A mysterious hero formed by tragedy, a band of like-minded but misfit team members, a headquarters hidden in nondescript exterior, action and adventures, what more could you ask for?

It was the Avenger that led me to Doc Savage and then to The Shadow, both more popular I suppose, but the Avenger is still my favorite.

I did notice in this re-read that in "The Yellow Hoard," Benson refer to the Group as Justice and Co., rather than Justice Inc.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first adventure of The Avenger has the first-moving action and suspense that one expects of a good pulp magazine novel.

Richard Benson goes to the lavatory on a plane and comes back to find that his wife and daughter have disappeared. All the other passengers claim he boarded alone. Benson is determined to find out what happened.

Somewhat oddly, this origin story doesn't explain the origin. Benson just awakes two weeks after being knocked out on the plane to find that his hair and skin have turned chalk-white and that his face can be molded into any shape. Nonetheless, it was a fun read.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first Avenger novel that I read, and it will probably be the last. While Lester Dent in the Doc Savage series may have produced some very predictable story lines, he at least varied the writing enough that any self plagiarism was not obviously noticeable. Not Paul Ernst unfortunately—he managed to come up with three descriptions of Dick Benson, the Avenger, and used them all too regularly throughout this novel. Add to it, a very predictable Doc Savage style plot, and one has a very boring novel.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished the second half of this introductory double volume from Sanctum that collects the first and second entries in The Avenger series published by Street & Smith in September and October 1939. While the first story introduced the title character, Richard Henry Benson, and detailed how he started his crime-fighting organization, Justice & Co. (aka Justice, Inc.), the second story, The Yellow Hoard, gives readers more action as Benson fights a gang seeking a hidden Aztec treasure.

[Michael Thompson]

I read a sample of this ebook somewhere, but now I cannot find it on Kindle, Nook, or iBooks. Anyone know where to find it? I read all of this series in the 70's in paperbacks, and I would love to reread them on ebook. I believe they were only 99 cents per volume. Sure wish I had bought them when I first saw them. I was reading only free books back then.

[Bill Legge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nostalgic pulp provides superhero protagonist running about saving their own little alleyway from the baddies. If you like comicbook heroes, you will love this series. This is one of the foundations where the writing of the dark alleyway crime fighter began. Enjoy the fun.

[John Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

It moves quick, but not a very colorful debut for the third most popular Street & Smith pulp character. Not holding that against the series, as I'll read more. The first Spider novel was a bit of a dud as well.

[Marilyn]

I liked this series too but not as well as I like the Doc Savage series. This hero is much darker than Doc and not nearly as brilliant. But then who was?

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Justice, Inc suffers from a lot of pulp cliches, which is regrettable but expected considering he was designed to be a cross between The Shadow and Doc Savage by the creators of those two.