Richard Henry Benson

Richard Henry Benson, known as The Avenger, is a Street & Smith pulp hero whose face was left paralyzed and hair turned white after a personal tragedy, giving him the ability to mold his features like clay — a grim gift he uses to fight crime as a master of disguise.

Richard Henry Benson is a Golden Age original, stepping onto the page in 1940's Shadow Comics #2 courtesy of Lester Dent, Harold A. Davis, and Henry Kiefer — a creative pedigree that signals serious pulp-era ambition from the very start. Born under the Street & Smith banner, he belongs to that thrilling wartime generation of mystery men who populated the newsstands alongside legends, and the company he keeps — sharing pages with The Shadow, Lamont Cranston, Nick Carter, and Inspector Joe Cardona — tells you everything about the rarefied pulp world he inhabits. His appearances stretch across a remarkable span of roughly seventy years, touching titles as varied as Shadow Comics, The Shadow, and even DC's prestige showcase The Brave and the Bold, proof that his appeal outlasted his Golden Age origins by decades. With a key issue already to his name and that deep-cut longevity, Richard Henry Benson is exactly the kind of discovery that reminds collectors why digging through the Golden Age is always worth the effort.