In 1837, there were reports in south London of an alarming figure assailing unsuspecting Londoners walking out late at night. This was the beginning of the urban legend of Spring-Heeled Jack, the masked boogeyman who made sudden appearances (often by leaping great distances) and fills criminals with terror, often credited by experts in popular fiction like the great collector Joseph Rainone, as a forerunner of Batman. By 1900 Jack was quite the dandy…
Cotsen has just acquired a complete run of 1867 penny-dreadful, Spring-Heeled Jack, The Terror of London by the Author of TURN-PIKE DICK, the Star of the Road. The first attempt to create a narrative about this cryptid ran to 48 numbers in 576 pages set in two columns on brittle paper. Each 12-page number was illustrated with a captioned picture 175 x 130 mm. The covers may have been removed 
when the set was bound into one volume. If the printer and publisher left any traces, it would have been on the wrappers, if there were any. Unless they were too embarrassed by the high consumption of brandy, Sir Roland Ashton, the aristocratic villain’s “hard and cruel heart,” the virtuous young lady with blond tresses and pearly teeth warding off loathsome advances, crime fighters named Catchpole and Grabham, etc. in issue after issue being ground out for the greedy consumption of impressionable young men.
One hundred and twenty-odd years later Philip Pullman wrote a tongue-in-cheek homage illustrated by David Mostyn to high Victorian scary silliness illustrated for the chapter book crowd. Author and illustrator assume that their readers will be able to follow a penny dreadful spoof, having picked up the conventions which still shape all kinds of popular fiction.
But how does this modern Spring-Heel Jack resemble the 1867 original?
He appears in odd places at odd times.
His legs have extraordinary strength.
He is a protector of women, although it’s easy to see why he would frighten them.
He always gets his man, some times by unorthodox means like a storytelling contest. The grossest one wins.
But they don’t really look the same…. Some contemporary accounts say he wore what sounds like a white body suit, but penny-dreadful Jack appears to be wearing no clothes on most of his escapades. Occasionally he has a cape with a shaped hem. He wears a mask with horns, but no hat could contain all those coarse, long locks. His eyes glow and he breathes fire. The critical difference is the footware. Mostyn’s masked crusader is shod in knee-high boots à la Superman; penny-dreadful Jack is barefoot throughout.
It pays to go back to the source!
