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Glossary and Character Taxonomy  Breakdown by Country of Origin   Bibliography   Table of Contents    The Best of the Encyclopedia

Lapin, Arsen. Arsen Lapin was created by the Czech author František Šperger (Captain Flint) and appeared in Arsen Lapin. Záhadný Gentleman #1-5 (1927).

Arsen Lapin is a Lupin modeled on Arsene Lupin. A Czech, he is active in the Austro-Hungarian empire. He is pursued by the Sherlock Holmesian “Sherlock Webs” and his assistant Brinklingem. In one story he duels with Zigomar (I).

Arsen Lapin appears in stories with titles like “The Adventure of the Three Black Shadows,” “The Black Box of Count Tisgoru,” and “The Mystery of the Marble Hall.”

* I'm including Arsen Lapin. Záhadný Gentleman in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because of the ideasplosions within it. You might think that a pulp that lasted only five issues couldn't possibly merit inclusion in a best of anything, much less the Best of the Encyclopedia for this encyclopedia. But you'd be wrong. František Šperger packed as much imaginative content into those five issues as the standard pulp writer did in three or four times as many issues. In just five issues you've got the requisite Lupin duel with a Sherlock Holmesian Great Detective; you've got a different sort of duel, a much more dangerous one, with Zigomar (I); you've got a standard Lupin story, a Lupin-horror story, and a Gothic Lupin story in addition. Quality stuff packed into only five issues, and we can only wonder how good a fifteen-to-twenty issue Arsen Lapin series would have been. 

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