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Rubby, Clemens. Clemens Rubby appeared in the German dime novel Durch Länder und Meere #1-170 (1912-1916).

Rubby is a standard, even stereotypical German dime novel world traveler and adventurer. Rubby, in the company of his servant Fritz Hagan, travels around the world, always finding adventure. He fights “the Blood Revenge of the Kurds,” “the Horrors of Cyprus,” “the Bride of the Bedouin,” “Jibuktu, the Black Wrestler,” “the Terror of the Himalayas,” “the King of the Volcanos,” and “The Pyramid Thief.” Rubby takes on Yellow Peril Hindus and Chinese, Lupins, a murderous orangutan, “Jane Cornwell, a heroine,” racist stereotypes, the Black Panther [sic], the Devil-Hunter, the Man of the Black Snakes, “fabulous Atlantis,” “the Sanctuary of the Dalai Lama,” “the Wizard of the Osage,” Amazons, a new Robinson Caruso, the “Sword of the Samurai,” the Black Scorpion, the Wizard of the North Pole, and, of course, a band of kidnaping gorillas. He goes to the Balkans, to India, to the American West, to Egypt, and to Easter Island, and to all points in-between.

Rubby appears in stories with titles like “The Prairie Wizard,” “A Fanatic in a Balloon,” and “The Golden Spear.” 

* I'm including Durch Länder und Meere in the Best of the Encyclopedia list because of the ideasplosions within it. On the one hand the Rubby stories are stereotypical world-traveling adventure heftroman, with Rubby being a stereotypical heftroman world-traveling hero. On the more important hand, Durch Länder und Meere takes such an exuberant approach to imaginative concept, spewing them forth in an endless, entertaining stream every issue, that the reader can't help but be charmed by them. Whatever flaws the series has, the every-issue-a-winner result of the ideasplosions results in very entertaining reading. 

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