I continue today with the second issue of Marvel's Black & White magazine adaptation of Doc Savage from the middle 70's.
Doc Savage #2 sports a lush Ken Barr cover painting pitting a brawny Doc against a man-serpent with a baleful masked figure in the background. Underneath that cover is the editorial titled "The Great Doc Savage Interview or Why Couldn't Ron Ely Be Short and Ugly!!!" by Marv Wolfman and it essentially announces the Ron Ely inteview in the back of the issue and talks about the talent in the magazine. The original script this time out is again written by Doug Moench and illustrated by Tony DeZuniga, though it looks like many Tribe members might've had a hand in the artwork at some point. The story is titled "Hell-Reapers at the Heart of Paradise" and it begins with a businessman named Thorne Shaw suddenly being confronted with a giant Mad Viking who attacks him announcing they are to return to the "Lost Valley of Hell". Cut to Doc's men who are assembling at the headquarters and then enter a mysterious stranger called Sandy Taine deeply covered by a hat, glasses and a large coat and accompanied by a large dog. Taine tells of a doomed Spanish galleon that was lost and sunk seeking the Northwest Passage in 1505 and then speaks of a later expedition on which Taine's father sailed only five years earlier. Of the crew that left the ship two did not return and Taine's father left no trace making him the number one suspect now that the surviving members of that expedition are disappearing. Doc overhears this tale, and soon confronts Taine revealing "Sandy Taine" to be a woman. Getting the names of the two expedition members not yet disappeared, Doc and his team race to the mansion estate of one but find only evidence of Uranium-238. Later Doc encounters the Mad Viking and after a brief fight which ends with the kidapping of the last expedition member, Doc finds only a single clue, a gold coin. The coin proves to be fake but does hide a map to a singualar location off the coast of Greenland. Doc and his team along with Taine race to the Hildalgo Trading Company warehouse and breakout a unique plane capapble of flying in all terrains called the Hydro-Glider. Off they go and soon they are landed and cutting through the ice and find sunken ships and golden treasure strangely untouched. Next they find themselves in a natural funnel that pulls them down into a weird underworld lit by diffused Uranium. They encounter the missing expedition members who are seemingly under attack by strange lizard men. After a brief skirmish one of the members shoots a lizard man and Doc is furious. But then the Mad Viking appears, takes Long Tom hostage and reveals that he and expedition members are in cahoots to take the Uranium. Doc and his remaining team are sent down into the village of the "Reptilians" where they find Sandy Taine's father who tells them that he stood up to the rest when they wanted to steal that which made the Reptilians' life possible, the Uranium. Hence he was abandoned. He further reveals that he is changing into a Reptilian himself like the sailors who had long ago transformed and were the basis for the Reptilian society itself. Doc makes plans to rescue Long Tom while sending Renny topside to fly the Hydro-Glider into the underworld by means of a passage they discover. There's a climatic battle with the Mad Viking and his cohorts which results in the destruction of the delicate balance that made the underworld possibe and water rushes in destroying all. Doc and his aides along with Sandy Taine escape via the Hydro-Glider while Taine's father chooses to die with his people believing himself to be a god.
This main story is followed by an interview with "Ron Ely: The Man of Bronze". Ely discusses his early life, his role as Tarzan, and what he thinks of the Doc movie, being particularly unapologetic for the humor so many Doc fans find so irritating in the movie. Again, there seems to have been discussion of a second Doc movie as Ely talks about it briefly.
This issue was a solid Doc story, with all the elements. The ending is a bit nihilistic for Doc with the whole civilization destroyed, but everyone seems in character. The artwork is good, but shows signs of deadline pressures in the latter pages. DeZuniga's rendering of Doc in particular is excellent most times.
More next time.
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