The Avenger (1941-42, 1945-46) aired “Diploma of Death” on Friday, November 11, 1945 as episode 24 of 26. We have run 11 previous episodes of The Avenger, the first way back in 2009 and the last coming in July of 2025, almost a year ago. For those coming to this program for the first time, I reprise my introduction to the previous episodes, beginning with the fact that The Avenger radio program was a spinoff of magazine publisher Street & Smith’s The Avenger magazine which ran from 1939-1942 and whose adventures were written by Paul Ernst (Street & Smith being the original publisher of Astounding Science Fiction, and for many decades the largest magazine publisher in the world). The Avenger on radio was short-lived (at least in its 1945 incarnation), lasting only twenty-six episodes. Many of the shows were written by Walter Gibson (1897-1985, pictured at right, who wrote The Shadow magazine novels under the house name of Maxwell Grant) and starred James Monks as Jim (the Avenger) Brandon. Truth be told, the Avenger was a cross between Doc Savage and the Shadow, with the major emphasis placed on the Shadow.

(Cover top left: The Avenger, February 1940.)

The Shadow’s primary advantage (aside from his detective abilities and his close circle of confidants and helpers) was his ability “to cloud men’s minds” so that they could not see him, and his phantom voice which, in many cases, frightened criminals into their fatal mistakes, or deaths. Doc Savage, on the other hand, was self-schooled in many scientific and physical disciplines, and had no “powers” of any kind. Jim Brandon, as the Avenger, combined both. He was a biochemist who, through years of scientific experimentation, perfected two inventions to help him fight crime: a “telepathic indicator,” which allowed him to pick up random thought flashes, and a secret “diffusion capsule” which cloaked him in the “black light of invisibility.” Thus, the scientific aspect of his persona reflected Doc Savage, where his “black light of invisibility” was a more-than-obvious nod to the Shadow. While the Shadow on radio (as opposed to his original magazine persona) had Margot Lane as a companion, partner, and love interest, so did the Avenger have his “beautiful assistant Fern Collier.”

Doc Savage and The Shadow were immensely popular in their magazine formats, as was The Shadow subsequently on radio, which ran from 1937 through 1954. The Avenger-on-radio’s first episode (again of its second iteration) was in June of 1945–eight years into The Shadow radio program, and nine years before its demise in 1954–-smack dab in the middle of one of the most popular genre radio shows in history, with said magazine’s history going all the way back to 1931. Gibson’s (or Street & Smith’s) attempt to create an alternate character combining the best aspects of both Doc and the Shadow–-while a terrific idea on paper–-didn’t work quite as hoped. While many of The Avenger episodes followed the formula of The Shadow episodes with minor variations (noting that Fern Collier was a terrific companion to Jim Brandon, and also knew his secret identity as did Margot Lane in the radio version of The Shadow), somehow the show never quite caught on as planned. Roughly 3/4 the Shadow and 1/4 Doc Savage in makeup, radio historian John Dunning wrote (in his 1998 book, (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, Oxford University Press) that these 1945 shows were  “a poor man’s version of The Shadow.” And, to be honest, that is a fair assessment, though the majority of the episodes are still good, clean fun and not to be totally discounted for not living up to the standards of The Shadow.

That said, and with many of The Avenger‘s storylines and plots (traditional crime-related villainy centering on murder, fraud, theft, crime-rings, rogues, and even eccentric, exotic villains, etc.) virtually interchangeable with those of The Shadow (remember that they were written by the very same Walter Gibson, while he was still writing for The Shadow magazine—two pounded-out, first-draft novels per month!), perhaps it was the lack of the expected and familiar eeriness longtime readers and listeners had come to enjoy and expect from The Shadow radio programs, against the more straightforward, no-nonsense delivery and general tone of The Avenger episodes, that led listeners to somehow feel that Avenger stories failed to distinguish themselves enough from The Shadow for its further continuation. In other words, while well enough done and perfectly acceptable for the most part for its intended young audience, why listen to Shadow-lite when the original was available? However, The Avenger has proved popular enough through the intervening years that his adventures have appeared in comic books, a series of original novels (of interest to science-fiction fans is that SF author Ron Goulart [1933-2022, photo above right] writing under the name of Kenneth Robeson–-Robeson being the house name for the Doc Savage novels} wrote twelve Avenger novels in the 1970s, and among his other credits ghostwrote the TekWar novels by William Shatner), and in 2009 Anthony Tollin’s Sanctum Productions began reprinting near perfect facsimiles of the original The Avenger magazine (above left the original September 1939 cover to issue #1), featuring two complete novels with the original illustrations, original covers, and several new features (usually historical, and fascinating in nature) added to each reproduction. They are in the same trade paperback format as Tollin’s beautifully reproduced The Shadow and Doc Savage facsimiles (I own several), and can recommend them without reservation for pulp magazine lovers of these (and other) heroes of the pulp era.

As with many Golden Age radio shows, information is lost, inconclusive, inconsistent, or downright conflicting, depending on which historical venue one visits for research. In the case of The Avenger, some sites have the original show as running from either 1941-42 or 1941-43, and with up to over 100 shows (now all missing/lost, alas, which fact seems to be accurate). Of the second series, the 1945 iteration, there seems to be a consensus that there were but 26 half-hour shows. One site lists 26 shows for the 1945 season but has no titles, while another has 26 shows with air dates and titles for a 1946 season (presumably rebroadcasts of the 1945 season). Then there is yet another site with a complete listing (air dates and titles) of 26 episodes for the 1945 season, but which, aside from different air dates, are aired in the same order but on different dates for a 1946 season as given from one of the sites mentioned above. The air date I have decided to go with is from the Old Time Radio Researchers Library, which lists all 26 of the episodes with air dates and titles from the 1945 season.

The “Diploma of Death” takes place at an end of school year extra-curricular collegiate track meet as part of the college’s Founder’s Day celebration. When the pistol goes off signaling the start of the 60-yard short hurdle event one of the participants falls forward, shot dead in the back of the head. Jim (the Avenger) Brandon and his lovely assistant Fern Collier are present at these festivities because Fern graduated from the same college two years before. Brandon and Fern begin an immediate investigation but clues are scarce. There was only the single starter pistol gunshot, but the man with the starter pistol has disappeared and the official race starter, a friendly man from the college known to everyone, is found bound and gagged some distance away. So who would murder a man at a track meet and for what conceivable reason, and go to the trouble of switching places with the usual race starter and pull off such a stunt in broad daylight in front of a crowd of onlookers? The Avenger has his work cut out for him, and with Fern this time playing a key role in solving the mystery, the secret behind the initial motive for the murder becomes clear, but turns out to be a most unusual one and not near the top of anyone’s list as one to be considered as a motive for murder. But then, what makes a motive strong enough to contemplate and then commit murder varies widely when dealing with the vagaries of the human mind.

[A quick note: at the beginning, middle, and end of this episode the organ interludes are used as place holders to fill dead space which local networks would fill with advertising. Each interlude is roughly 1:30 minutes in length.]

Play Time: 30:00

{This episode of The Avenger aired on a Friday evening in the middle of November, 1945. WW II in the Pacific had ended a scarce 5 months before, but thoughts on the American victory still excited the imaginations of the neighborhood gang, prompting them to pick up the action-oriented Sky Fighters pulp along with two of their favorite pulp-character hero pulps on their visit to the nearby newsstand. Since the Avenger was an amalgam of Doc Savage and the Shadow it was no surprise their November issues were high on their current list for weekend reading. Doc Savage (1933-1949) was a highly popular pulp adventure magazine running on a consistent monthly schedule from its inception in 1933 through 1946. Its final three years saw declining issues each year, from 7 in 1947 to 5 in 1948 to a mere 3 final issues in 1949. But in its heyday Doc Savage was one of the premiere pulp hero magazines of its time (and to a certain extent still is today with collectors who prize Doc Savage memorabilia in all its various formats). The Shadow (1931-1949) was even more popular than Doc Savage, and the argument could be made that The Shadow magazine was the most popular pulp hero character and magazine of all time. Both his magazine and that of Doc Savage were such selling machines that they were imitated with little attempt to hide the fact when The Avenger was launched in an obvious attempt to cash in on their popularity. The Shadow was a monthly in 1945. Sky Fighters (1932-1950) was a perfect fit to fire the imaginations of young boys, chronicling aerial adventures and bravery from WW I all the way through the recently concluded WW II, featuring exciting action covers depicting war planes of different eras as they fought our enemies from the air. It was a quarterly in 1945.}

[Left: Doc Savage, 11/45 – Center: The Shadow, 11/45 – Right: Sky Fighters, Fall/45]

To view the entire list of weekly Old Time Radio episodes at Tangent Online, click here.