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SPIDER >> CAST >> RAM SINGH
The Howling Death by Raphael DeSoto
The Spider TM & © Argosy Communications, Inc.
Ram Singh

Ram Singh is Dick Wentworth's giant, bearded Sikh aide. He is a very solemn and terse warrior who is only happy when he's hurling thugs across the room, or throwing knives at miscreants on behalf of The Spider. Even then, he is apt to curse himself for not dispatching the hoodlums faster or for feeling the effects of the many life-threatening wounds he often suffers in battle.

His is introduced by R.T.M. Scott as a clean-shaven Hindu manservant (in the mold of Aurelius Smith's Langa Doonh) but Norvell Page quickly recasts him in a less peaceful religion, and his appearance gets more exotic and his stature larger as the series goes on. In Page's hands the loyal warrior is only Wentworth's servant in the sense that he has pledged to serve him in his all-out war on evil.

Ram joined Wentworth's cause long before the series opens. The story goes that Wentworth -- after World War I and a brief stint at law school -- was travelling through India to study Eastern ways. During his travels he saved Ram Singh and his father, a Sikh chieftan, from a massacre. The proud warrior felt his honor had been compromised, so he decided he would protect Wentworth as he made his way through the Himalayas as repayment, and then kill him when their uneasy truce was ended. But by the close of their journey, Ram not only respected the American as a fellow warrior, he was won to his greater cause of rooting out Evil and eventually returned with him to the United States.