For a character that literally did not say a word for nearly 40 years, The Spider has made the rounds.

The Spider is a fairly obscure character from the Golden Age, appearing in Crack Comics for nearly three years (starting with issue #1 in 1940). His feature was known as "Alias The Spider", and Golden Age great Paul Gustavson created him. The art style was very reminiscent of Lou Fine on The Ray or Black Condor, which is understandable since the same Quality Comics stable produced them all.

The Spider was, in reality, playboy Tom Hallaway. Hallaway had tired of seeing criminals have their own way harassing and murdering honest citizens, so he adopted the guise of The Spider to settle the score. The Spider fought crime in a yellow shirt and blue shorts, looking a lot like a wrestler. He was armed with a fairly ordinary bow and arrows, a special car known as The Black Widow, and the assistance of his valet Chuck (who helped out Hallaway in both of his identities without anyone making any sort of connection). He also had a special arrow he called the "Spider's Seal", which had a flat disc on the end he inimitably shot at thugs' hands to disarm them. That was the closest thing to a gimmick arrow The Spider had, so he definitely was not Green Arrow. Though recently ... well, read on.

To my knowledge, only one adventure of the Spider has ever been reprinted by DC Comics, and that one was the story from Crack Comics #25, which saw print in Detective Comics #441. If that one were representative of the strip's entire run, I would say that his adventures were quirky but fairly unremarkable.

Following that reprint, the Spider once again fell into disuse. In fact, unless you got that issue of Detective Comics, its doubtful that you would even know of his existence. He is one of those characters you really doubt you will ever see again, but then he shows up and surprises you. Well, it really wasn't all that much of a surprise, as he was a Golden Age character, and Roy Thomas did try to get to everyone. The Spider showed up a few times in the pages of All-Star Squadron (and, I believe, in The Young All-Stars) though only in the most merest of cameos.

As a Quality Comics character, he was one of the heroes who went with Uncle Sam to protect Earth-X during World War II, becoming part of the Freedom Fighters. This was a fulfillment of a storyline that began in Justice League of America #107 - 108, which introduced most of the Quality Comics' characters to the DC Universe (previously only Plastic Man and Blackhawk had been widely used). Actually, in a strange twist of fate, Crisis was the catalyst for the move to Earth-X, as depicted in All-Star Squadron #50. The events and energies involved in the battle between the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor allowed Uncle Sam to open another portal to Earth-2 and enlist more All-Stars in his efforts, as he previously had taken only The Ray and the Black Condor with him. This also basically means that The Spider died on Earth-X, as he was not one of the surviving heroes who were helped by the Justice League and Justice Society in Justice League of America #107 - 108.

In the initial, post-Crisis on Infinite Earths universe, The Spider was still supposedly aligned with Uncle Sam's team (which was basically a fringe group of the All-Star Squadron), which was now based around Washington, D.C. To my knowledge, he was never seen in action, nor he has never spoken a single word in any of post-Crisis appearances. The Spider was just there, striking a pose with the others who didn't say much, like The Jester.

With the demise of The Young All-Stars and Roy Thomas's virtual banishment from DC, nothing much else was done with many of the Golden Age characters until James Robinson came along and revitalized DC's timeline with Starman. Several years later, he and Geoff Johns brought the Justice Society back as a major player in the DC universe in the pages of JSA, and in the short-lived Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., which featured the adventures of a new Star Spangled Kid and the original Stripesy. Starman, known for mentioning and using obscure characters, and Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. provided the details of the career of the Spider in the post-Crisis universe.

In the current continuity, The Spider is not a nice guy. Tom Ludlow Hallaway did not become the Spider out of altruistic motive. He was there because he was a nasty person in general, a smuggler, a kidnapper and a murderer, and used the guise of a super-hero as a cover to help him eliminate the competition. Though originally based in St. Louis, Missouri, he is a member of the Ludlow clan from New England. The family inadvertently ran up against The Shade, a near immortal and sometimes-villain from the Golden Age. The family had a history of ill-gotten gains, having originally amassed their vast wealth by killing off their partners in a business enterprise.

The Spider, in this retroactive continuity, may still have worked with the Freedom Fighters, but I don't personally don't believe so. The mystical nature of Uncle Sam would've probably seen through his subterfuge, or at least given Sam strong suspicions about his character, making his participation in any of their cases troubling at best. The Spider was instead a member of the Seven Soldiers of Victory (also known as The Law's Legionnaires). The Crisis had erased the Golden Age Green Arrow and Speedy from existence, and The Spider helped fill the void in the team. The Shining Knight, The Vigilante, his partner Stuff, The original Star-Spangled Kid, Stripesy, and The Crimson Avenger were on board with the Spider (although the Crimson's partner Wing was also considered a Soldier by most of the other members; the Crimson wanted him to get out the business because he had a future).

Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. #9 depicted "The Final Hour for The Seven Soldiers of Victory", which retold their final case together. The Spider called the Soldiers together and gave them instructions for construction a "Nebula Rod", as he said he had learned that their old enemy, The Hand, was in the process of "creating a living entity of cosmic energy ... a being whose touch has the power of twenty atomic bombs". The Hand was going to release the creature in St. Louis, and The Spider passed out, though not before sabotaging the Nebula Rod unseen. The Soldiers went off to stop the Hand, with Wing stayed behind at The Crimson's insistence.

Not long after they left, Billy Gunn (the Vigilante's mentor) barged into the SSOV headquarters. He had been checking on some of the Vigilante's growing suspicions and had discovered that The Spider was in fact working WITH the Hand. Billy was slain by one of the Spider's arrows, but the underhanded "hero" was quickly rendered unconscious by Wing, who found the missing part of the Nebula Rod and headed off to help the Seven Soldiers. Wing arrived just as the Crimson Avenger tried to use the Rod on the giant Nebula Man, which resulted in the group and the monster being teleported to the Himalayas. Wing repaired the Rod and attacked the Nebula Man with it, defeating the creature at the cost of his own life. The Seven Soldiers of Victory were thrown into the distant past in the resulting storm of cosmic energy, where they would remain decades of our time, until the timely intervention of the Justice League and the Justice Society (as originally depicted in Justice League of America #100-102).

With the only people who knew him to be a criminal gone, the Spider continued his criminal facade. He became the hero-in-residence of Keystone City after the Flash retired in 1950. Unfortunately, his Ludlow heritage caught up with him, as did The Shade. The Spider had been planning to face the Shade for quite a while and had a plan to defeat the immortal. He had saved fragments and shreds of The Shade's shadow substance and was planning to plant them on the scene of a double murder, that of Jay Garrick (The Flash) and his wife Joan. The Spider hoped to lessen The Shade's power by keeping him captive near a roaring fireplace, but the added light only increased the shadows, and The Shade created arrow-casting monsters that quickly turned The Spider into a pincushion of black arrows. The Shade got out of there in time to prevent The Garricks' murders, and even convinced his old enemy, The Flash, to leave him out of the spotlight on the case.

The Spider's son, Lucas Ludlow-Dalt, took up the bow and arrow (and his original yellow and blue costume) in the pages of Starman, helping Culp, The Mist, Dr. Phosphorus, Solomon Grundy and several other villains lay siege to the city with the forces of darkness (during the "Grand Guignol" storyline). This Spider had trained all his life for revenge on The Shade, and came very close to getting it. Matt O'Dare prevented The Spider from killing the Shade, and he was chased off to parts unknown. He was also the assassin who attempted to kill Jack Knight in the final issue of Starman (and nearly killed Mason O'Dare, if not for the timely intervention of the spirit of the deceased magician Zatara). He was already responsible for at least sixteen deaths, and The Shade told Jack Knight that he was going to bring him in (since he was a Ludlow after all).

Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. #9 also depicted the beginning of vengeful activity for another Spider, though this may be the same Spider that was depicted in Starman.

The Spider took up his bow again in the pages of the most recent Hawkman series, facing off against the Winged Wonder, Hawkgirl and Green Arrow. The Emerald Archer got the Spider's aiming eye with an arrow, hoping to end the criminal's career by maiming him. Unfortunately, the Ludlows are a sturdy bunch and it is doubtful that the injury will stop his nefarious plans, which I'm sure include a rematch with Hawkman and Green Arrow in the future.

The new history and career of the Spider was one of the more interesting "retcons" that I've seen done. The rather Byzantine change of being a villain pretending to be a hero was a nice touch by Geoff Johns, as was James Robinson's linking of Tom Hallaway to The Shade via the Ludlow clan. The very use of the character is a nice homage, of sorts, to the characters of the Golden Age, given the general obscurity of The Spider in even Quality Comics' stable of characters, and the change of allegiances by The Spider makes for a good way to bring him into the modern era of comics.

For a list of the appearances of The Spider in comics, please use the pull-down menu at the top of this page.