The Rollicking Rogue

THE ROLLICKING ROGUE

       The Wall Street Crash of 1929, as author Will Murray outlines in his article, “Why 1933?” precipitated several years of hard times, and the masses began looking to escape for a few hours from a life of struggle. By the early 1930s, the only ones driving big automobiles and expanding their waistlines appeared to be gangsters; what better reading could the hard-working masses find than some laughing rogue smart enough to take the swag away from crooks?

         Suddenly, they found them under a variety of names and costumes in the cheap pulp magazines: Robin Hoods and masked vigilantes who were setting things right with the world. The pulp hero wave had begun.

         Although there is no denying the substantial influx of hero pulps in 1933, the scene was being set as far back as the 1910s with Frank Packard’s The Gray Seal and Johnston McCulley’s Zorro, and a plethora of other masked and costumed heroes. The Masked Lady appeared a decade before Domino Lady; The Man In Purple, The Crimson Clown, and an onslaught of others soon followed. McCulley’s costumed heroes were usually gentleman thieves, following in the footsteps of The Gray Seal, who acted outside the law for an honorable purpose; he laughingly called them rogues, and the readers loved it.

         Author R. T. M. Scott was writing about Secret Service Agent, Aurelius Smith in the 1920s, and when he was asked to create The Spider in 1933 for POPULAR PUBLICATIONS, he simply moved Aurelius Smith and his aides over to the new series with new names: Bernice Asterley became Nita Van Sloan, Langa Doonh became Ram Singh, and Aurelius Smith became Richard Wentworth. The 1929 story, The Black Magician, would be a blueprint for the coming single character pulp heroes. Writers of the Secret Agent X and Green Ghost stories would even adopt some of the elements of The Black Magician into some of their work. I'm surprised one of the current reprint houses hasn't reprinted this one yet.

         Scott and McCulley themselves were really reaching back to the DIME NOVELS for inspiration. As far back as the late 1800s, the DIME NOVELS gave us Deadwood Dick and Nick Carter, among many others. So the ground rules had been set long before 1933, the new wave just started taking a real hold now when we needed heroes again. The Great Depression was the culprit and the pulp magazines were the ideal solution.

         Johnston McCulley’s Rollicking Rogue is a fascinating, costumed presage of the so-called pulp hero explosion of the 1930s. With several similarities to The Shadow, The Phantom Detective, The Spider, and other pulp heroes, the Rollicking Rogue’s first appearance seems to be The Rollicking Rogue in the November 1930 issue of ALL STAR DETECTIVE STORIES; the issue sports a great cover featuring the character, too.

         The Rollicking Rogue has a neat costume, unlike most of McCulley’s simple hood affairs. He wears a yellow robe and cape, with a red sash, and a red helmet with yellow horns, depicting a devil image. The Rollicking Rogue also has a weird laugh with which to taunt his victims, a la The Shadow, but predating Walter Gibson’s famous character by several months.

         Like many of McCulley’s characters, The Rollicking Rogue set the mold for another, later character. POPULAR PUBLICATIONS’ Captain Satan, which would debut in 1938, seems to have been inspired to some small extent by The Rollicking Rogue. This isn’t surprising, since we can find many other examples of McCulley-inspired characters popping up throughout the 1930s and ‘40s. Just compare McCulley’s 1934 Bat to a later Batman and Black Bat, for example.

         Captain Satan is not an exact replica of The Rollicking Rogue, but is too similar for the truth to be otherwise. Typical of McCulley’s many other characters, there is the Clark Kent/Superman dual identity at work. The hero, The Rollicking Rogue, is tough, fearless, and quite capable; but when not in costume, he is a mild mannered secretary and coward named James Peters – not really his true name we’re told.

         The plot is also a simple one well used in the pulps. Ten years earlier, a group of financiers and businessmen broke the back of smaller businesses, leaving families destitute. The Rollicking Rogue is the son of one of those families ruined. His sister and mother had not survived, and he’s out to get revenge on those crooked men, one man in each episode.

         In 1932, D. L. Champion would use a similar plot device in his serial for THRILLING DETECTIVE, Alias Mr. Death, in which nine crooked businessmen murder the hero’s father. Over the course of nine novelettes, Mr. Death eliminated those men, one at a time. In February 1933, Mr. Death morphed into The Phantom Detective, as the pulp hero explosion began in full force.

         I’m not sure if McCulley actually finished his series, as I’ve only found two stories in The Rollicking Rogue series: The Rollicking Rogue, and The Rollicking Rogue’s Second Deal. Both were published in ALL STAR DETECTIVE STORIES. I liked them, and the character. Matt Moring reprinted them in the back pages of his Johnston McCulley volume, The Swift Revenge of The Green Ghost.

         Don’t miss these fascinating pulp tales.

         Note: There appears to be a new wave of interest in the old style pulp hero even today in the 21^st century when entertainment takes many forms that were unimaginable during the pulp era. However, it’s doubtful that we will ever see the likes of a Johnston McCulley again – someone who can truly anticipate an explosion in mass market literature and single-handedly write the blueprint that will be followed for the next hundred years.

         I don’t think 1933 will ever repeat again.