Fantomas is the Emperor of Crime, the Lord of Terror, the Genius of Evil, the villainous anti-hero of a series of sublime pulps from turn-of-the-century France. Fantomas: The Corpse Who Kills (1911), the third and most inventive book in this astonishing series, was acclaimed by the Surrealists for its dream-like imagery, wanton cruelty, and taboo-challenging black humour. This new edition includes an illustrated introduction on Fantmas and the Surrealists. The book brims with motifs of nuns, coffins, daggers, masks, bleeding bells, corpses, poison flowers, lunatics and labyrinths. A master of disguise, Fantmas inhabits the shadows, and no one knows his true identity or real appearance, as he commits criminal atrocities and random acts of violence, theft, arson and destruction, virtuoso displays of terrorism and chaos -- escaping justice every time. A Solar Research Archive text which influenced the members and affiliates of the Surrealist Group A noblewoman is hacked to death, a Russian princess is boldly robbed, a lord's lifeless body is found in a trunk. It is the work of Fantomas, a master of disguise whose diabolical crimes paralyze Parisians with terror. The first volume in a series of wildly popular French thrillers, Fantomas stands as the original pulp fiction.
