Nick Carter (literary character)
| Nick Carter | |
|---|---|
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| Portrayed by | Pierre Bressol Walter Pidgeon Lon Clark Eddie Constantine Robert Conrad Michal Dočolomanský |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Detective |
Nick Carter is a fictional character who began as a dime novel private detective in 1886 and has appeared in a variety of formats over more than a century.
Nick Carter first appeared in the story paper New York Weekly (Vol. 41 No. 46, September 18, 1886) in a 13-week serial, "The Old Detective's Pupil; or, The Mysterious Crime of Madison Square", a concept given by Ormond G. Smith, the son of one of the founders of Street & Smith and performed by John R. Coryell. The character proved popular enough to headline his own magazine, Nick Carter Weekly. The serialized stories in Nick Carter Weekly were also reprinted as stand-alone titles under the New Magnet Library imprint. By 1915, Nick Carter Weekly had ceased publication and Street & Smith had replaced it with Detective Story Magazine, which focused on a more varied cast of characters. There was a brief attempt at reviving Carter in 1924–27 in Detective Story Magazine, but it wasn't successful.
In the 1930s, due to the success of The Shadow and Doc Savage, Street & Smith revived Nick Carter in a pulp magazine (called Nick Carter Detective Magazine) that ran from 1933 to 1936. Since Doc Savage had basically been given Nick's background, Nick Carter was now cast as more of a hard-boiled detective. Novels featuring Carter continued to appear through the 1950s, by which time there was also a popular radio show, Nick Carter, Master Detective, which aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System network from 1943 to 1955
Following the success of the James Bond series in the 1960s, the character was updated for a long-running series of novels featuring the adventures of secret agent Nick Carter, aka the Killmaster. The first book, Run Spy Run, appeared in 1964 and more than 260 Nick Carter-Killmaster adventures were published up until 1990. (Two additional books have been erroneously listed as Killmaster novels by some sources: Meteor Eject!, a memoir by an RAF pilot named Nick Carter published in 2000, and a 2005 release entitled Brotherhood which is an autobiography written by singer Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys.) The 100th Killmaster novel (appropriately entitled Nick Carter 100) contained an essay on the 1890s version and included a short story featuring the character. It marked one of the few times the Killmaster series acknowledged its historical roots.
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