Have No Fear! Doc Savage Is Here!

I'll be honest with you all. This month began all about Tarzan of the Apes and before I was finished planning it out it was clear it was going to be all about Doc Savage. And since that turned out to be the case, I thought now is as good a time as any to dedicate this month's posts to James Bama. Bama was the man who made Savage popular all over again in the 1960's. His covers for the Bantam reprints of the vintage pulp adventures of Street and Smith's "Man of Bronze" functioned much like Frank Frazetta's cover work for Tarzan of the Apes and Conan the Barbarian. It took what might've been presented to a new audience as some fussy relics and instead transformed them into intoxicating images of high adventure and super science. James Bama took a man perfectly designed by pulp smiths of the 1930's and super-charged him with a post-modern physique and head like nothing seen before or since. Sometimes I had a hard time reconciling the Doc of the covers with the Doc in the stories, but it didn't make me enjoy those covers any less. 

The detour down Clark Savage lane came about when I got fascinated all over again with the Philip Farmer's Wold-Newton family line. In his robust imagination, Tarzan and  Doc Savage and countless other breathtaking heroes and heroines were all part of a shared universe and in many cases related by blood. And to top it all off Farmer demanded that we understand that these seemingly fictional creations were really versions of dynamic men and women who actually lived. albiet under other names. I want to take another gander at works like Tarzan Alive - A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke and Doc Savage - His Apocalyptic Life again and other works as well such as the Secrets of the Nine series which recently was turned from a trilogy to a tetralogy thanks to Win Scott Eckert. 

That doesn't mean there won't be some Tarzan adventures such as those Dark Horse tales which were given the stamp of approval by Farmer himself in which the Lord of the Jungle matches muscles and wits with the Phantom of the Opera, Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein's Creature. 

But the majority of the weekly posts will be some revised and updated reviews of Marvel's delightful and timely runs of Doc Savage from the 1970's. These comics were my first introduction to Doc save for a few random paperbacks and it's been over a decade since I took a good look at them. DC was kind enough a decade ago to bring out the Marvel stories in some handsome and handy paperback volumes which saves wear and tear on my originals. 

And just as a counter to all this Doc Savage focus I want to wrap up my reviews of Dark Horse's reprints of the venerable Turok Son of Stone. So expect to see installments of "Sundays of Stone" return all through this month. 

 

All that and maybe a bit more even. Hold onto your hat, it's going to get exciting! Thanks you for all the thrills Mr. Bama! 

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