Will Murray, the prolific pulp writer and historian who co-created Squirrel Girl with Steve Ditko, died on Aug. 25 at the age of 73.
Murray had a long and varied career as a writer, researcher and historian, but he was perhaps best known for his deep knowledge of pulp magazines and the characters they created. He wrote numerous novels featuring characters like Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Spider, Tarzan and The Destroyer, while also writing extensively about pulp fiction and its creators.
Murray grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and became a fan of comics and pulp novels at a young age. His career would grow out of his fandom. As Murray explained in a 2019 interview with Alex Dueben here at Smash Pages, he began as a Doc Savage expert writing for fanzines before those interests led to professional opportunities.
“This was an evolution,” he said. “I made my mark as a Doc Savage expert in fanzines. My research led to making connections at Conde Nast and then Bantam Books, when they were reprinting Doc Savage. I think my first professional sale was my afterword to The Red Spider –– the lost Doc Savage novel I helped discover. My professional career began snowballing when I started writing for Starlog magazine on one hand and ghosting The Destroyer paperback series on the other, back in the early 1980s.”
Murray subsequently became closely associated with the legacy of Doc Savage creator Lester Dent, eventually becoming the literary agent for Dent’s estate. He wrote nearly two dozen Doc Savage novels, often under the house name Kenneth Robeson, including new adventures based on Dent’s unpublished story outlines.
Murray’s work extended well beyond Doc Savage. He wrote Skull Island, bringing Doc Savage together with King Kong, followed by King Kong vs. Tarzan, as well as Tarzan, Conqueror of Mars. He also wrote novels featuring The Spider and other classic pulp characters.
He was equally passionate about preserving the history of the pulps. His books included Writings in Bronze, collecting his writing about Doc Savage and Lester Dent, and Wordslingers, an oral history of the pulp Western. “It’s an oral history of a field told by the writers, editors and other participants, and makes the pulp era come to life through carefully organized quotes,” he said.
Squirrel Girl
Murray co-created Doreen Green, better known as Squirrel Girl, with Ditko in the story “The Coming of… Squirrel Girl” in Marvel Super-Heroes #8 in 1991. The character would eventually become one of Marvel’s most popular and distinctive heroes, although Murray’s original story was his only published Squirrel Girl comic.
In our interview, Murray shared more about the character’s origins.
“Squirrel Girl is a combination of Mary Martin as Peter Pan, my crazy imagination and an old girlfriend whose name was Doreen,” he said. “She was into animal rescues, which included squirrels. I had squirrels in my attic and observed them closely. One of them I used to feed peanut butter. I called him Monkey Joe. So everything I created for SG comes from real life!”
In addition to Squirrel Girl, Murray also wrote several comics featuring The Destroyer, a character he was very familiar with from having ghostwritten the prose series.
In 2019, Murray was still looking ahead. He was working on another Spider novel, hoping to write more Doc Savage, considering another Pat Savage novel and another Doc Savage/Shadow crossover. He also mentioned that Tom Brevoort had recently asked him to write a one-page Squirrel Girl story for Marvel Comics #2001.
“I dropped everything and scripted it that day,” Murray said. “As a freelancer, I try to be open to new possibilities and opportunities. Maybe something unexpected will pop up.”
It was a fitting philosophy for a writer whose career had begun with fandom and ultimately carried him across decades of pulp fiction, comics and popular culture.