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

Nyctalope. The Nyctalope was created by the French author Jean de La Hire (Paul Ardent, Athos, Porthos & Aramis, Black Corsair, Boy Scout, Franc-Hardi, Joe Rollon, Three Boy Scouts, Two Kids) and appeared in sixteen novels from 1908 to 1954, beginning with "L'Homme Qui Peut Vivre dans l'Eau" (Le Matin, July 26-Sept 28 1908).

The Nyctalope is a Superhuman. He is Léo Sainte-Claire (Jean de Sainclair in some novels). He is an adventurer who fights a wide variety of exotic evils on Earth, in the oceans, in Tibet, on Mars, and in the future, armed with his artificial heart, his ability to see in the dark, and a stalwart band of assistants, including Sylvie Mac Dhul, the Nyctalope’s fiancee and later wife and mother of his son, Pierre; Gno Mitang, the Japanese politician; Mathias Lumen, the mysterious Jewish financier; and the Committee of Information and Defense, an international organization which the Nyctalope formed.

The Nyctalope’s Rogues Gallery is among the greatest in pulp fiction. His arch-enemy is the sinister Yellow Peril Leonid Zattan, but the Nyctalope also fights the megalomaniacal Baron Glo von Warteck, who tries to use SCIENCE!, including “Omega Rays” and the “teledyname,” to CONQUER THE WORLD!; the Evil Surgeon Mad Scientist Oxus, who grafted shark’s gills onto a man and later tried to conquer Mars; Mezarek, who sends the Nyctalope’s wife and son to the year 2100; and Diana Ivanovna Krosnorow, the “Red Princess” and Queen of the Hashishins.

* I'm including the Nyctalope novels in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because of their imaginative content. Nyctalope is a superhero by my way of thinking rather than an ordinary pulp hero, for the reasons I laid out in my book on the history of superheroes. There weren't any other superheroes (qua superheroes) in the French pulps and fantastic novels when Nyctalope started out and even well into the mid-period of his lifespan. But what made the Nyctalope novels some of the Best of the Encyclopedia (it certainly wasn't Nyctalope's Nazi phase) was de La Hire's talent--he knew how to write High Pulp adventure--Nyctalope's supporting cast, and those wonderful villains in his Rogues Gallery, of whom I mentioned only a few in the list above. It's a shame that the Nyctalope novels were never translated and given widespread publication in the US, since American audiences of the pulps would likely love them. 

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