Ed Love

Jesus - So, what's been your favorite Doc novel so far?

I think Man of the Bronze will always be one my favorite because it has many elements that fell away in later novels. Things like having the full team of five associates around, Doc's thinking and emotional processes being a mystery to the reader (the later novels have Doc expressing self-doubt and sweating in fear and I don't dig that so much). There's also Doc's trilling which he did when surprised or immensily intrigued. Didn't do this much in the later post-war books.

I prefer the pre-war books. More wildly escapist.

I'm at book 160 and Renny, Long Tom and Johnny don't figure in the adventures much anymore but Pat is still around.

The Three Devils is a great novel of the war period but I miss the Lost World themes such as those featured in Land of Always Night.

Dagger in the Sky was a good mystery with a sound resolution, Resurection Day was almost surreal, Fortress of Solitude built up Doc's background activities a little more and how he went about maintaining his enhanced skills. The Lost Giant and Violent Night are fast-paced spy-genre treatments where Doc rescues Churchill and captures Hitler who is disguised as a redheaded Englishman. In one of the novels Doc introduces himself as "Savage. Doc Savage". Few things here and there make me wonder whether Ian Fleming had had some exposure to Doc's adventures.

I suppose some inconsistencies are to be expected over a 15-year monthly publishing schedule, but some of them come off as efforts to curry the favor of the audience that doesn't accept a superman.

I have to say that my run so far has made me wish Dent had an editor to work with that made things a bit more consistent: sometimes Doc is 6 feet sometimes he's 6'8". Sometimes he escapes a trap where a half ton block of stone is dropped on him or he whips 6 strong men at once and then struggles with a single man. Sometimes he owns the building that houses his headquarters and sometimes he appears to be a co-owner. Sometimes he's handsome without being pretty, and sometimes he's not actually handome but merely rugged.

The later novels show more mature writing, more attention to imagery and word pictures, but there seemed to be an attempt to make Doc less the Superman than he was in the earlier novels -- even discredit that he was a Superman.

By book 160 Doc has more or less admitted to himself that he's primarily an excitement-addicted adventurer that sees his other ventures in medice, surgery and technology as hobbies. Or that he is addicted to gadgets and often falls into a trap by using a gadget instead of a simpler means.

On another think, much as I love James Bama's paperback covers, I feel they have done a visual injustice to Doc. The torn shirt and Jorhpur's pretty much give him a superhero costume image, whereas in the books he dressed as an elegant business man about town. Also, the Bama covers make him blond whereas his hair was a shade darker than his skin which was deeply bronze.

Andrew Hess

Are you getting these pulp books online? Wouldn't mind getting some of them myself.

I have a full paperback set -- and have picked up some of the recent two-novels packages with original typesetting and illustrations, a real gas -- but my current reading is in electronic format on my iPhone with PDF reader.

Email me at garcia_jesus@sympatico.ca for more info.