Book Review: Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze

This particular edition of Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze is somewhat interesting. The book is a DC Comics trade paperback reprint of a Marvel Comics series. The strange world of trademarking and licensing brought this about, as DC now has the rights to the Doc Savage character again and was using him in their "First Wave" event, which was a re-imaging of Doc, the Avenger, the Spirit, Batman, Black Canary, Rima the Jungle Girl and the Blackhawks in the same universe. It wasn't too bad, and the nearly two-year long Doc Savage comic book that it spawned was enjoyable. Unfortunately, that stuff has all taken a back seat to the "New 52" hullaballoo.


Doc Savage was one of the first "super-heroes", appearing in pulp magazines like such early crime fighters as the Shadow, the Avenger, G-8 and his Battle Aces and even Tarzan. For those who've never read the pulps, or watched the 1976 movie, Doc was trained since birth to be a literal superhuman physically and mentally, to fight evil all over the world. His "Fabulous Five" were a group of his friends who were also the tops in their fields (law, chemistry, engineering, electricity and geology/archeaology). Doc has virtually unlimited wealth and a near-unlimited supply of technological gadgets and vehicles at his disposal.


This trade paperback reprints the eight-issue Doc Savage comic book that Marvel published in the mid-seventies, as a promotional tie-in to the George Pal movie of the same name. Unfortunately, the campish quality of that film sent ticket holders home in droves, and Doc was relegated back to the pulps and hasn't been seen on a screen anywhere since.

The eight-issues represent four two-issue adaptations of Doc Savage pulp magazine stories, beginning with the first, The Man of Bronze. The scripts were handled fairly ably by long-time comic writer Steve Englehart, and most of the art was provided by the team of Ross Andru and Tom Palmer. Andru was a good choice for the book, considering the many years he worked on adventure titles and war comics like Suicide Squad and The War that Time Forgot over at DC and handled Spider-Man in his own book and the pages of Marvel Team-Up. The final issue in the book was penciled by relative newcomer Rich Buckler. John Buscema, the omnipresent Gil Kane and Jim Steranko also supply some covers. The only bad thing about the art is that Jack Abel handled some of the inking when Tom Palmer's brush wasn't available. Hopefully his near-Vinnie Colletta lack of quality won't turn you off from the book too much.

The other three stories adapted were Death in Silver, The Monsters and Brand of the Werewolf, which was the story that introduced Doc's beautiful cousin Pat. As stated before, they were fairly good adaptations. I think one of the problems of the series, besides the lack of a decent film to draw fans from, was the way Doc himself was depicted. He always wore a skimpy blue vest, white jodhpurs and books. In the books, he was famous for wearing his vest full of gadgetry, but it just doesn't come over with the flimsy thing shown here. The first two issues were reprinted in Giant-Size Doc Savage #1 a year later and Doc's vest was redrawn to appear more like what was envisioned by most from the pulps. It's a shame that the artwork from that book wasn't substituted for the original issues here.

DC also published a Showcase Presents Doc Savage collection in which the eight issues of the black-and-white magazine were reprinted. Those are some great original stories with Doc and his team, and I hope to nab a copy soon for review.

In the meantime, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze is a good primer for the pulp adventures of Doc Savage. If you like it, try picking up one of the many pulp reprints that have been slowly been reissued over the past few years, and enter a world of adventure that predates comic books and most popular heroes.

Book reviews: Nine days, nine books.

Well, I've been in a reading fervor for the last week or so, and naturally you readers have to pay the price! Here’s the reviews that are the result of all that reading. Oddly enough, this time I picked my titles a little more carefully, so I didn’t read anything that sucked the big one.

The Annals of the Heechee by Fredrick Pohl. This is the fourth full-length novel in Pohl’s long-running and award-winning Heechee Saga. Everything’s tied up with ribbons to end the quartet of main novels that focused on the adventures of Robinette Broadhead. I enjoyed it, but there’s a lot of semi-theoretical physics in it. The main character is also dead, spending his time as an electronic consciousness. If you’ve read the others in the series, this is a must-read, but I wouldn’t advise someone to start with this book, as even genre fans will be a tad out of their depths. And I’d recommended reading at least the first two books anyway, as they are true modern classics of science fiction.

Ballpark Mysteries: The Fenway Foul-Up by David A. Kelly. I hadn’t realized this was a rather Young Adult title, but its baseball, so how bad could it be? It literally takes less than fifteen minutes to read. It’s a mystery about a stolen bat at Fenway Park, but the clues are way too obvious, even for a kid’s book. The book has a lexicon in back with definitions of a lot of the baseball terms used in the story, and quite a bit of Fenway Park trivia is revealed during the course of the tale. I wouldn’t suggest an adult buy this to read for themselves, but it might be a good tale for a parent and a child who were baseball fans.

Doc Savage: The Man Who was Scared and Doc Savage: The Shape of Terror. These are #138 and #139 in the series of pulp adventures featuring the Man of Bronze, written by Lester Dent (under the house pseudonym of Kenneth Robeson). Both are excellent examples of both Doc Savage stories and great pulp adventures. The first story opens with a man falling dead on Doc’s doorstep, with his plaintive final words being “my breakfast cereal.” The second tale opens with Doc being kidnapped by the RAF and being killed in an airplane crash. His aides Monk and Ham die in a fiery car accident soon after. Both are well-written, as these books are in the phase where Doc was often a somewhat more fallible than his reputation.

I Had the Right to Remain Silent, But I Didn’t Have the Ability by Ron White. A good three-quarters of this autobiography is just restatements of Ron White’s stand-up act. I’m sure even the most anti-redneck/Blue Collar Comedy Tour fan will get a chuckle here and there. There’s a great section on White’s travails in trying to get a couple of TV pilots on the network. It’s a good read if you have an hour to waste.

Godzilla Returns, Godzilla 2000 and Godzilla at World’s End by Marc Cerasini. These are the first three novels in a short-lived Godzilla series from the nineties, inspired by the remakes of the Godzilla movies that started with Godzilla 1984. Godzilla Returns is somewhat based on that movie, but the others have no true movie progenitors. As with most of the Showa and Millennium era G-films, Godzilla was last seen in 1954, where he was driven away (and not destroyed by the Oxygen Destroyer) until his reappearance in the first book. The first two books are pretty standard, though the characters in the Godzilla Returns are a lot more accessible. The storyline in Godzilla 2000 is a bit hard to follow in spots. The third novel is a monster tour de force, with most of the Toho rogue’s gallery out to face Godzilla. It loses a little as it goes, because the whole tale tries to be too much in too short a story. If you’re a kaiju eiga fan, they should be on your reading list. If you’re just a sci-fi fan, try Godzilla Returns before bothering with the others to see if you like the style.

You Might Be a Zombie, and Other Bad News: Shocking But Utterly True Facts by the Editors of Cracked.com. If you aren’t familiar with Cracked.com, forget this review and head over to that website immediately. This book is like an actually relevant edition of The Book of Lists meets The Daily Show. There are a lot of oddball, trivia facts in this little tome, and unlike the aforementioned Book of Lists, they’re actually presented in a very readable and hilarious form. Quite a few of the chapters have appeared on the website, but there are a good number of lists and articles that are exclusive to the book. Funny, sometimes caustic and highly recommended.

Well, that's all for this go-around. I've got a couple of album reviews and an old-radio show review on plan for next week, as well as another comic book from the "New 52" reboot. Take care, folks!

RRR #3: More e-book reviews

Well, I looked at my Kindle this week and decided to go through it and read some of the short fiction and non-fiction that's been accumulating ... and YOU get to pay the price for it! Here's a bunch o' mini-reviews of the e-books that I've perused this week.

THE GOOD:

Heechee Rendezvous by Frederik Pohl. The third book in Pohl’s Heechee Saga, which began with the Hugo Award-winning Gateway, is an excellent sci-fi novel. The only problems are that you really need to have read the first two books in the series (or be familiar with Pohl’s Heechee Universe) to really know what is going on, and the story’s ending came on a little too quickly for my tastes. Good characterization and a good denouement to the series.

Beyond the Farthest Star by Edgar Rice Burroughs. A fun, if rather dated, sci-fi tale much along the lines of Burroughs’ Barsoom series. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the two episodes in this book were meant to be the precursor to a new adventure series. Tangor just didn’t get the push needed to join the ranks of John Carter, David Innes and Carson Napier in ERB’s pantheon of heroes. I would recommend it to fans of old-style science fiction and pulp adventures, but it will probably fall flat for fans of more modern science fiction styles.

Arctic Fever by Bruce Barcott. Excellent non-fiction about global warming, centering on the effects climate change is having on the food web of the Arctic, from plankton to people. Recommended.

A Flash of Inspiration: A Collection of Very Short Stories by Indie Authors compiled by Helmy Kusuma. A fascinating format for story-telling is shown to best effect in this collection. All of the stories are one-hundred words or less, and the way that particular challenge is met turns out to be some great reading. There are a lot of funny and poignant short tales, and I cannot recommend this e-book more highly.

Get Published by Infinite Ideas. An excellent primer and guide for the world of conventional book publishing and self-publishing. The only drawback is that it doesn’t really cover digital publishing options, such as Amazon Digital Text Platform and Smashwords.

God in the Machine: A Short Story by Thea Atkinson. Very interesting and atmospheric short story. Within two paragraphs, you know exactly where you are and what you are seeing through the characters’ eyes. Recommended.

After Shock: The Blast That Shook Psycho Platoon by T. Christian Miller. Excellent look at the unseen effects that explosions have on our troops, causing brain injuries even through the protection of armored vehicles. Recommended.

The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin by William S. Burroughs.  Short but interesting overview of the unique technique that Gysin pioneered to give new meaning to previously written works. The technique has been used by people ranging from Burroughs himself to Frank Zappa.

Queer by William S. Burroughs. Typical Burroughs, this time relating quasi-biographical William Lee and the alternative lifestyle he pursued while living as a virtual expatriate in Mexico. Definitely recommended.

Out of a Dark Mind by Ian Woodhead and Laurie Ricard. Some pretty good short stories in the horror genre, definitely very British. Like most short story collections, some are great, some of blah. None are exceptionally bad in any sense of the word. “Lumps” is my favorite story in the collection.

The Whisker of Hercules by Kenneth Robeson.  A Doc Savage pulp adventure, the134th in the long-running series. Doc and his five aides face off against some crooks that seem to have actual Herculean abilities. It is standard Robeson and very enjoyable.

Aces High and Shadows of My Mind by Kristina Jackson.  These two are both fairly short ghost stories, both set in the environs of Great Britain. The first suffers from a lot of typos and one missing point of explanation (at least in my mind, but I’m not going to spoil the story my relating what I thought that point was here). The second is a fairly well-written ghost story with some unique paranormal twists. Both are available free on Smashwords.

THE BAD (WELL, REALLY JUST MEDIOCRE):

The Civil War: A Brief History by Charles River Editors. This touches on the high points of the conflict much like a Senior High School term paper would. I’m trying to understand why, out of all the pictures in the book, the only one with any identification was that of Abraham Lincoln. But then, I’m sure most people recognize General McClellan from his position on the five dollar bill...

The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook Presents: A Magical Christmas Menu Sample by Dinah Bucholz. Plain Christmas fare with little hint of Hogwarts in them, right down to pedestrian naming. The recipes at least appear to be working one.

The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players by Robert Shaler. I’m a fan of old juvenile fiction series, such as Tom Swift, Rick Brandt, The Radio Boys and the like, but this particular book was pretty dull. By their nature, they’re usually a tad dated and full of too much exposition, but this one was just plain boring. This was the first book in this particular series that I’ve read, and it didn’t exactly endear me to reading any more of them.

Struwwelpeter: Merry Tales and Funny Pictures by Heinrich Hoffmann. I decided to read this simply because a line of one of the rhymes had been used in a story during Grant Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol comic book. The rhymes are interesting but make little sense. They are also very much akin to the more bloody versions of Grimm’s Fairy Tales ... I guess European children have different sensibilities. The book is very short and as such may be worth a read for the aficionados of the strange.

THE UGLY (ACTUALLY THE REALLY BAD STUFF):

Rock and Roll: A Brief History by Charles River Editors. I’d expect high marks on this one if I was turning it in as a grade school term paper, but nothing more. At least it had some good pictures. I suppose you could easily use this book to make a proper outline to write a proper essay on the subject.

The Game by Kevin Tomsett. This book is basically fifteen minutes to an hour of your life that you will never get back. The closest analogy that I can make to what I think the author might have been shooting for is “Grey’s Anatomy meets The Most Dangerous Game.” The story is about an erstwhile serial killer picking victims, and unfortunately there are so many flaws in the process that it defies all belief and logic. The poor punctuation and grammar does not help matters, but I can usually forgive that on indie books. It does score on one point: You WILL remember it and you will tell people about it. Much like you would tell people of a raging fire in the next room or an oncoming hurricane.  I’ve heard that the author is re-writing it, so hopefully the next draft will be more enjoyable - the plotline has potential, but needs some energy to direct it.

If I Did It by O. J. Simpson. This is the single worst piece of fiction/non-fiction I’ve ever read in my life. You can hear the smarmy self-righteousness in every word. I haven't used my speed-reading skills since I got my Kindle, until I started this book. There’s no point in saying anything else other than AVOID THIS BOOK!

That's all for this week. Next week, I'm thinking of reviewing some old time radio shows and a couple of comic book series, but as always, we'll see what happens. Take care, folks!