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| Number 10 |
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| Number 9 |
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| Number 8 |
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| Number 7 |
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| Number 6 |
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| Number 5 |
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| Number 4 |
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| Number 3 |
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| Number 2 |
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| Number 1 |
Sanctum Books, Anthony Tollin and the gang featured an interview with James Bama in one of those tasty reprints they treated us to some years ago. Of course. James Bama is the artist who elevated Doc's reputation with a new generation of readers in the 60's and 70's with his stunning covers for the Bantam reprints. The core of that interview (conducted by Brian M.Kane) was Bama's picks from among his awesome sixty-two covers for his top ten. Above you see the results with volume thirty-two's "Dust of Death" winning the number one slot. Among the comments Bama added was that the number two cover "World's Fair Goblin" was his chance to do a King Kong cover. These aren't necessarily the same covers I'd have picked. But it's interesting to read what the artist himself thinks about the work. He says now he was sad to leave the gig since Bantam left him alone to design the covers which were he said almost exclusively symbolic to help elevate Doc's mythic status.
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I'm doing an article for the Bronze Gazette that will survey what fans think are the top five Bama Bantam covers. I'd love to include the choices from you and your readers:
ReplyDeletehttps://bit.ly/BamaSurvey
Good luck.
DeleteI don't like Doc Savage's hairstyle which looks more like a white helmet than actual hair! He looked a lot better on the covers of the original magazines in the '30s and '40s!
ReplyDeleteWhen I learned that Doc in fact wore a skull cap of sorts at times I've assumed that Bama hit on that detail. While the Doc of the pulps is more human the Doc of the paperbacks is iconic and weird. He is an odd man and Bama makes that evident.
DeleteEveryone is a wonderful piece of art. Great to see all of these in one place and many are new to me. My favourite is number 3.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to choose among such stellar candidates for me.
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