From the comics vault comes a classic tale of terror and intrigue introducing a villain equipped with an amazingly versatile exoskeleton and a brain to match — the British comics character, The Spider!

His greatest ambition is to become the ‘King of Crime’. To achieve this goal, he organises a gang of criminals including such specialists as ‘Professor’ Pelham, a brilliant crooked scientist, and Roy Ordini, ace safecracker, and embarks on his felonious spree!

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Reprinted in hardback for the first time in forty years this collection brings together the earliest adventures of devious arch-criminal and twisted mastermind the King of Crooks. Originally created by writer/artists Ted Cowan and Reg Bunn for British comic Lion, he was the ultimate anti-hero. In a time saturated by square-jawed and multi-colour superheroes, the British Spider character was in it for himself. These are extremely rare, long out of print stories not seen since the 1960s, and the collection also contains an introduction by IPC's Andrew Sumner, a story checklist, an article chronicling the history of the character, and a new cover by acclaimed artist Garry Leach.

An amazing trip through the Silver Age of British comics, a piece of history every person interested in comics should own!

Beginning his career in the Royal Air Force and the British Army, led Ted Cowan to work on comic The Champion. Apart from his work collected here which ran in Lion, he was also responsible for Robot Archie. Reg Bunn led a very impoverished life until he was discovered by Amalgamated Press, and he also worked on Comet, Sun and Thriller Comics. Continuing writing duties after Ted Cowan left, Jerry Siegel is a comic legend responsible for one of the most famous superheroes of all time, Superman, which he co-created with Joe Shuster in 1933.

“A black and megalomaniac gem in the penny dreadful crown of perfidious Albion.”
– Alan Moore, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

“Arguably the greatest villain in British comics.” – Dave Gibbons

“One of the greatest – and weirdest – British comic characters of all time. A spindly superthief with a disastrous dress sense but a criminal mind par excellence…Proof that when it comes to mind-bendingly perverse comics, no one does it better than us Brits” – Jonathan Ross

Classics · Miscellaneous Comics & Art
· Collects material previously printed in UK anthology Lion.