Norvell Cooper

Norvell Cooper was a New York City detective who was allegedly acquainted with The Lobster and responsible for writing and popularizing the fictionalized tales of The Lobster as "Lobster Johnson."

History

After leaving the police force in 1939, Norvell Cooper began pursuing a career writing pulp stories. He contributed a great many unremarkable adventure stories to magazines before writing eight stories based on The Lobster, starting with the novel-length "The Long Arm of Death." Although Cooper claimed that he have known the "real" Lobster and that his stories were based on real events, he later admitted that he did not know the identity of The Lobster, and that he created the fictional Lobster's alter-ego, the wheelchair-bound millionaire Walter Johnson, based on Park Avenue Bank president D.S. Johnson. Despite popularizing The Lobster, Cooper had a less successful career due to his poor writing ability.

Cooper published his last Lobster story, "Death Means Justice," in 1942 and quit writing after 1943. He then became working as a security guard at Gimbels Department Store until his death from a sudden heart attack in 1957. At the time of his death, Cooper's wallet contained a very crumpled Lobster calling card, which was sold at public auction for seventeen dollars to Hellboy, who was a Lobster fan.^[1]

Cooper had no next kin and he was buried in Hart Island's potter's field. But soon after his burial, Cooper's restless ghost manifested and haunted the cemetery, lamenting for being largely forgotten by the public. Cooper's haunting attracted the attentions of Professor Trevor Bruttenholm and Hellboy, who tried to ease Cooper's suffering but they were not able to identify him (due to poor record keeping by the cemetery's caretakers) and Cooper could not communicate with them. The investigators then decided to give up the case. But Hellboy, unaware, managed to put Cooper to rest by loudly musing his interests in reading Cooper's Lobster Johnson stories, making Cooper to be pleased that someone remembers him.[2]

Cooper's Lobster story "The Long Arm of Death" and one of his successful novels Empire of Death were adapted into film serials but were equally unpopular. Cooper later claimed to have never seen either film.

References

1Hellboy and the BPRD: 1957--Forgotten Lives ↑

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