Blake's Enemies
George Marsden Plummer (created by Ernest Semphill), a crooked Detective Sergeant at Scotland Yard, went after Blake when Blake stood between Plummer and a fortune — but like many others, Plummer ended up in a police cell. Unlike many before him, he repeatedly escaped and became Blake's arch-enemy.
Another memorable character was Waldo the Wonderman (created by Edwy Searles Brooks), who started out as a villain and ended up in later stories as a friend of Blake's, helping him in a number of cases. This 1918 superman had tremendous strength, could contort his body like a rubber man and was insensitive to pain. Even after his reformation, he continued to steal money (but his victims were now blackmailers, swindlers and other no-good members of the underworld).
Other notable villains included the Byronic master thief Zenith the Albino (who had crimson eyes), Dr Huxton Rymer, Leon Kestrel and The Master Mummer.
The type of villain Blake faced changed with the times (as did Blake himself). After World War II, his opponents became more down-to-earth, their personalities and motives less fantastic. Veteran writers John Hunter and Walter Tyrer excelled at this type of writing, but others failed to maintain their standards.
Read more about this topic: Sexton Blake
Famous quotes containing the words blake and/or enemies:
“What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid leaves with disgust.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)