Doc Savage - Death In Silver!

My reading of Marvel Comics adaptation of the Doc Savage novels continues. Doc Savage #3 begins a two-part adaptation of the Kenneth (Lester Dent) Robeson novel Death in Silver. Under an outstanding Jim Steranko cover, the story is written by Steve Englehart and illustrated by Ross Andru on pencils with Tom Palmer offering up inks and colors. This issue and the next are the absolute best the series will look in my opinion. Palmer brings a great sense of mood to Andru's very dynamic pencils. 

The story is titled "Death in Silver" and it begins with a hectic phone call by Paine L. Winthrop who threatens to turn in a mystery partner who tricked Paine into building something undetermined for a foreign power. The phone call is abruptly halted when the office Paine is in explodes. That office was in the building shared by Monk Mayfair who at that moment was visited by Ham Brooks and Long Tom Roberts. They investigate find a witness who then is suddenly killed by an arrow fired by a assassin clad head to toe in silver. A chase is given through the building ending up in the basement where the silver costume is found and the killer disguised as a janitor escapes but not before overhearing Monk say that they need to get Doc Savage involved. Doc is reluctant to take the case but then an armored tank car bursts through the wall and the three aides are kidnapped. Doc races to the scene but finds only a few clues which lead him to the waterfront. Meanwhile more witnesses have been killed by the murderous Silver Death's-Heads. 

Doc heads to the waterfront and stumbles across a woman named Lorna Zane and man named Harry "Rapid" Pace who both worked for Paine. The Silver Death's-Heads appear and a battle breaks out but Pace and Zane are protected in a closet while Doc battles the villains. Afterwards he takes Zane to his cousin Pat for safekeeping and he and Pace go to see Bedford Burgess Gardner a rival of Paine's. As they arrive the Butler is shot, Doc races into the mansion to find Gardner very hostile to the idea of help. He and Pace split up. Soon a mysterious figure speaks to the assembled Silver Death's-Heads who are hiding in the basement giving them orders. Doc encounters some of the Death's-Heads and fights them off. One is captured. Then a man is found in the closet, one Hugh McCoy who claims that Gardner shot the Butler, Then Doc and McCoy find Pace unconscious. The captured Death's-Head swallows a capsule he thought would induce amnesia but instead is poison, and realizing he's been betrayed the villain utters a single clue "Indian's Head". The story closes with Doc vowing to save his men. 

Doc Savage #4 gives us the second and concluding part of the story. It's titled "The Hell-Diver!" and it's again written by Englehart with the art team of Andru and Palmer returning. The cover this time is by Gil Kane with great inks by Palmer. 

The story opens with the Silver Death's-Heads holding a wanted poster signed by their leader Ull offering $10.000 for the death of Doc Savage. They see a blind cripple and harass him only to find that the man is Doc in disguise who rises up and beats them up. Doc is wearing a bulletproof vest this time out. Along with Doc are both Hugh McCoy and Rapid Pace. Doc breaks down a door to the Indian Head Night Club and finds his three captured aides in a backroom. Quickly Monk, Ham, and Long Tom are freed. Silver Death's-Heads appear and shoot pointblank at Doc but his vest saves him. He battles the villains and ultimately a grenade is lobbed through a skylight ending the battle. A search for clues gives them a set of tracks left in spilled vaseline jelly and Doc using ultra-violet equipment follows the trail to a trapdoor to a hidden lair in which they find a revealing map of New York harbor. Doc sends Ham off to research the business dealings of Bedford Gardner while he and the rest head to the Hildalgo Trading Company location and break out Doc's submarine the Hell-Diver. 

Not long after entering the waters around NYC, Doc finds the Silver Death's-Heads by using their own buoys which guide their secret submarine, the technology they'd using to both evade capture and destroy their enemies with the guns the sub possessed. A battle between the two submarines ensues and Doc and his men disptach the Death's-Heads forcing them to surface. Doc sees two men escaping capture, follows them and finds the leader of the Death's-Heads Ull talking to another masked man, his boss who is chastising Ull for wasting time with his wild crimes while he the true boss was making milliions with their true scheme. Doc arrives, dispatches Ull and evades the secret leader's knife-pistols and unmasks him to reveal Bedford Burgess Gardner. But in a twist he then rips off a wig and false beard and reveals the true face of Hugh McCoy who had previously slain Gardner and had been impersonating him to arrange the crimes. The story ends with Doc explaining the plot and Lorna Zane and Rapid Pace finding perhaps some romance. This is a solid tale, very pulpy in its way. The move to keep the stories set in the 1930's really pays off in this one, and there is a lot of great atmosphere. 

Walter Baumhoffer

James Bama

 More Doc Savage adventure next time with "The Monsters". 

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