"The Crimson Plague" begins in New York where Doc appears to his men and tells them of his recent trip to Acapulco where he went looking for Miguel Hernandez a biologist. He found Hernandez in a daze and later he sees a giant red floating octopus threaten Hernandez and himself befor it disappears leaving the biologist dead. Then we cut to Brooklyn where another scientist a physicist named Scott Merril is likewise attacked by a red octopus and saved by a beat cop. The police call Doc who investigates learning of a connection to several cities including Los Angeles (where Renny and Ham had already gone), London, and Paris. Doc calls Renny but he's already been attacked by masked men who seem to be Hollywood stuntmen. Ham appears but is subdued also. Doc splits his men up and he goes to Hollywood, while Johnny and Long Tom go to London and Monk heads to Paris. In London the men find another masked gang pouring some sort of gas into a room and they attack to save the scientist Winston Veldt an astronomer. They find Veldt and the attempt an escape aboard the auto-gyro, but a plane attacks and only some tricky flying by Long Tom saves the day.
In Paris Monk meets a Professor Lemonde who is a scientist talking about the ecology. Another masked gang appears and after a skirmish Monk is beaten but the gang recognize him as one of the men on their list so they take both with them. Doc in Hollywood meets a mogul named Randolph Dorn who lies to him about not having seen Renny or Ham. Doc learns the truth and investigates running up against yet another gang of stuntmen. He finds some of his missing friends and the scientists in cages and releases them. They then invade the main underground lab and find Dorn at the center of an elaborate machine which is seemingly sucking the minds of great men such as Renny and Ham who are currently hooked into the machine. Doc shorts out the machine and engages the maniacal Dorn who is to his "Brain Bank" and consequently quite powerful. Doc ends up throwing the villain into his own equipment destroying the connection and destroying Dorn's mind at the same time. Later Doc revives all the men under Dorn's control and story ends quietly as they discuss the narrow miss in the hospital room. The explanation for the floating octopi was that they were literally projected into the mist which was poured into the atmosphere and appeared to move as the mist moved. So the movie producer literally attacked using a movie of sorts.
There's not text piece in this issue but there is an editorial announcing the end of the run. Ed Davis offers up a poster-style shot of Long Tom and the team of Bob Layton and Dick Giordano close the magazine with a poster shot of Doc Savage himself.
The series was a bit weaker in these last few issues. The main team was away and the vigor of the early efforts seemed to have dwindled. Doubtless the early enthusiasm for the George Pal movie had gone by this time and it was clear that Doc Savage was perhaps needing a slight rest before he was given another shot at the comics. On the upside while I found the Val Mayerik work back in #7 less effective it was still pretty good and Ernie Chan's work in #8 was very good, though the story was more clever than truly engaging.
It would be quite a while indeed before DC did bring Doc back.
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