The All-New Wild Adventures Of Kong!

Skull Island is story written by Will Murray and illustrated by Joe DeVito which brings together two of the great icons of pop culture from the 1930's. What we end up with is in fact a "secret origin" for Doc Savage himself.

The story begins at the end. Moments after King Kong plummeted from the top of the Empire State Building to his doom, the aides of Doc Savage are on the spot and soon enough Doc himself arrives to make the dramatic announcement that he is familiar with the "Eighth Wonder of the World" already. In fact he says he owes his life to Kong. This cryptic comment is left unexplained as Doc and his men make arrangements to transport the body of Kong out of Manhattan and return it to Skull Island. It's at this juncture that Doc begins to tell the story to his trusted aides of how he and his father Clark Savage Sr. once traveled to Skull Island in search of his grandfather Stormalong Savage. 

Now Doc's men are more able to believe the outrageous claims made by Doc about ultimately finding Skull Island and the creatures there, because the events chronicled in King Kong happened about the same time that Doc and his men began their careers and they had had a few adventures together already including a visit to "Thunder Island" which was populated by dinosaurs of all sorts. Nonetheless, the story Doc relates is a fantastic tale of his own relative youth, a time when as a man of nearly twenty-one he was contacted by his father and the two take a crew of Mayans and a clipper ship named "The Orion", the very ship Doc was born on, to search for his missing Grandfather, a famous sailor whose ship has recently been sighted adrift.

The story of Doc Savage's early mission which finds him on Skull Island can best be understood if one has already read Joe DeVito's and Brad Strickland's book Kong, King of Skull Island which created a rich back story for the island and for Kong himself. It is this Skull Island and not just the one revealed in the RKO classic which is the setting here for Doc's adventure. At least one character is common to both tales, and the story is told in such a way that nothing previously revealed seems to be unraveled. This intertwining of the sagas of Doc and Kong seems to fit well.

I found Will Murray's story compelling, and it pushes you along to find out what will happen next as a good adventure tale ought. The story is not a short one by any means. I'd reckon it's twice as long as a typical Doc adventure, and it's not the seasoned Doc we are familiar with. We get glimpses and to some extent explanations for some of Doc's more curious aspects. His unusual trilling is explained and in fact becomes a significant plot point as does the fact that the Savage family members have golden eyes. We get to see an early prototype of Doc's all-purpose gun, the Super-Firer. And we get to understand why Doc is hesitant to rely on guns by and large as an adventurer.

Tarzan of the Apes is mentioned a few times during the story and in fact Murray even adopts ERB's technique of switching narrators between chapters for certain sections. (More on the Ape Man in a few paragraphs.) This is certainly a Doc who is very comfortable in the trees of the jungle, something we've seen many times in his classic adventures. Interestingly Sherlock Holmes comes up a lot too, and in one place Doc and his Dad have a very entertaining exchange of quotes from Doyle's great detective.

I won't say too much more to avoid spoiling some really sweet moments and some true surprises, but I will suggest that if anyone wanted to read a Doc Savage novel in which he unleashes hell on his enemies this is the one. This is a blood and thunder Doc who is in a life and death struggle and who fresh from the rigors of World War I seems unafraid of bloodshed. There's a lot of mayhem in this book.

This is a story any Doc fan will love. Murray put his name on this one as opposed to the classic "Kenneth Robeson" nom deplume because it travels behind the scenes more and certainly there are details some Doc fans might take issue with. But for this reader, I found this peek into the vivid history of Doc "Don't-Call-Me-Clark" Savage fascinating, and I suspect most others will too.

I give this one the highest recommendation. And now the sequel. 

In King Kong Vs. Tarzan by Will Murray from Altus Books we get a reprise of sorts of the events of the classic 1933 movie King Kong. What we have here is a story which answers the long-standing question which many who see the movie will think of later as they reflect on it, how the heck did they get that big ape to New York City anyway. The movie effectively short circuits all those complications by jetting forward in time to after the transport to the moment when King Kong will make his debut before the American public. This novel answers that question and some of it is just as tedious as you might expect.

Just like the Doc Savage story which preceded it, the story operates in the same fictional universe fleshed out by Joe DeVito in his prequel to the original King Kong story Kong: King of Skull Island where we get a back story of sorts for Kong and the natives who live alongside him and the dinosaurs across the great wall. We see as the ancient woman dubbed the "Storyteller" who tends to Kong's legend and reality and who accompanies the The Wanderer and crew as they try to take the great beast across the vast oceans. She comes up with some herbs which sedate the great ape, and we learn more than we need about the care and feeding of a monster primate. We follow the ship as they try to navigate the oceans, taking care to avoid storms and the authorities who might object to transporting such a monster to foreign lands.

The Wanderer eventually finds a safe harbor off the coast of Africa and of course Kong escapes into the jungle. Enter Tarzan of the Apes, a mythic figure that some have heard of and as we learn Denham has encountered. We see Kong as the thirty-foot monster tramples across the wilderness terrorizing the prey he encounters. We eventually meet Tarzan (it takes a really long time) who takes steps to see to it that the "King" of Skull Island is neutralized as a threat. The best way to approach this novel is to see it as two pulps put together. The first deals at length with the transport of Kong and the second Kong's misadventures in Africa. Both are obviously linked and part of the same overarching narrative, but each part has a definite focus.

This is Will Murray's second King Kong novel in recent years. The first Doc Savage: Skull Island pitted Kong against a young Clark Savage Jr. and predated the events of the classic film and the novel in which Kong meets up with the Ape-man. And to be frank this is the best writing from Murray I've seen in a while. This novel for such a pulp adventure, but it has enough going on eventually to justify that length. I was eager to see how they solved all the issues, even though we all know how the status quo must be reestablished before the novel's end. That would seem to be an insurmountable problem, but it proves not to be in this instance. Here is a link to an interview with Murray about the project.

Both of these books are recommended for a King Kong fan. 

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Secrets Of The Nine - The Mad Goblin!

The Mad Goblin is one part of two which are together sequels to A Feast Unknown. The organization of this novel and its ACE Double mate The Lord of the Trees is made somewhat awkward because they are two adventures which dovetail into one grand battle which is shared between the novels. It's all rather complicated and led me this time read the books in a weird way, bouncing back and forth between them to capture the flow of both narratives and how they link. 

 

The Mad Goblin tells of Doc Caliban's battle against the near immortal member of the Nine named Iwaldi. Iwaldi plans to destroy most of the human life on Earth to return it to a time he remembered in his prehistoric past. His plans are opposed by the Nine who send agents to his German castle to stop him. Doc Caliban with his two aides Barney Banks and Pauncho Van Veelar (sons of his longtime associates) bring the battle to Iwaldi but are soon lost and trapped in the labyrinth beneath his castle. There they encounter two humans who claim to be archeologists who have themselves been trapped by Iwaldi's forces. There is a great deal of back and forth and many deadly traps are thwarted (more or less) but eventually Doc and his allies get free of the caverns and the forces of both the Nine and Iwaldi and head to Salisbury Plain and the monument Stonehenge where the Nine are to gather to bury one of their own. This quick-paced yarn ends with a brutal battle on the grounds of Stonehenge wrapped in a dense fog which makes finding all your allies difficult. More I will not say so as not spoil it all. 

Like its ACE Double companion, The Mad Goblin is designed by Farmer to be read at a breakneck pace. The action rarely stops and even when things become murky still there is an underlying motivation to race to the end. The final battle literally wrapped in the "fog of war" which allows it to dovetail effectively when the same battle is the climax of The Lord of the Trees. By the end of this story and its companion the Nine have suffered losses, but so have Doc Caliban and Lord Grandrith. The war against the Nine is not over. 

More on that tomorrow. 

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Secrets Of The Nine - Lord Of The Trees!

The Lord of the Trees is one part of two which are together sequels to A Feast Unknown. The organization of this novel and its ACE Double mate The Mad Goblin is made somewhat awkward because they are two adventures which dovetail into one grand battle which is shared between the novels. It's all rather complicated and led me this time read the books in a weird way, bouncing back and forth between them to capture the flow of both narratives and how they link. (More on The Mad Goblin tomorrow.)

 

The story picks up some months (undetermined) after the events of A Feast Unknown and Lord Grandrith and his half-brother and ally Doc Caliban are waging their war against the Nine, an ancient cabal which effects humankind in secret and offers to its agents the secret of near immortality. Lord Grandrith is planning to infiltrate the caves in Africa which have long served as a base for the Nine, but his plan is interrupted by many attempts on his life. He is captured by an agent of the Nine named Murtaugh and dropped into a sheer chasm where he encounters an old ally, a beautiful woman named Clara, and a new one named "Dick". Dick it turns out is one of the apelike creatures that raised Lord Grandrith so many years ago but Dick was plucked from the wild as child and raised in civilization (rather the opposite of what happened to our hero). John Cloamby (Lord Grandrith's real name) doesn't know who he can trust but he does escape and he takes his two new companions with him to complete his mission. There is treachery and I won't say much more in order not to spoil the story but eventually Lord Grandrith ends up in England on the Salisbury Plain  at the site of Stonehenge where he hopes to end the threat of the Nine once and for all. 

The story is told at a breakneck pace, as if Farmer wanted the reader to complete the book in one sitting. There are no chapter breaks but there are shifts in location which do serve to key the book to its companion The Mad Goblin. Lord Grandrith is of course supposed to be a version of Tarzan of the Apes, but Farmer pushes the idea that Tarzan as we've come to know him is much to civilized and human to have been raised by another species. His version of the feral man is much more savage and less sensitive to the moral qualms of polite society. This book does not have the extensive sex scenes which its predecessor had but a reader can easily see where Farmer might add some if he so chose. A Feast Unknown was for adults only, this book is for all Tarzan fans - young and old. 

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Tarzan - The Black Edition by Vallejo!

(Apparently, Neal Adams also produced a painting for Tarzan and the Ant Men. I must say his is superior in drama to Vallejo's below.)

When Ballantine contracted with Neal Adams to do a gallery of new Tarzan covers for their paperback reprints of ERB's classic hero, they apparently also contracted with Boris Vallejo to do the same thing. What happened is that we have two of the great artists of the time doing Tarzan covers at the same time. I'll be blunt and say that I don't like Vallejo's covers nearly as well. In fact most of Vallejo's work leaves me a bit cold. He is often compared to Frank Frazetta, who clearly insipred him, but Vallejo is all about surfaces while Frazetta and to some extent Adams are all about interiors. They capture a feeling, a mood, a notion while Boris Vallejo merely illustrates and paints brawny men and voluputous women in motion. There's something missing. That said, these covers are still fairly early in his career and he hadn't lost that certain something that first made him a so interesting. Later though that little bit of magic gets lost as an obsession with the human form overwhelms all else. Rip Off

The New Adventures Of Tarzan - 1935!

I've long read that Herman Brix was arguably the most accurate Tarzan on screen, and while from the stills and things I'd seen he sure looked the part, it wasn't until he spoke in normal unbroken English that I'd tend to agree. While Ron Ely is my favorite Tarzan, I must say that Brix does a magnificent job portraying the Ape Man, though his acting is suspect he's very earnest about the whole thing. He's perfect physically and apparently did many of his own stunts in this movie, and it shows. The stunts are pretty good too, especially a fight with a lion. It's clearly not Brix in this scene but it's the most rugged such scene I've encountered, it really looked like the lion was trying to gnaw on the guy. Brix jumping around in the trees is really convincing. Great stuff. 

The New Adventures of Tarzan, a serial from 1935 is pretty basic actually in terms of plot. There's an idol that holds the secret to riches and a formula for a ghastly explosive. It's hidden in the Guatemalan jungle and Tarzan and his allies Major Martling and Ulla Vale along with some guy named George for comedy relief go to Guatemala to get this "Green Goddess" and to rescue Paul D'Arnot, Tarzan's friend. They do the latter pretty quickly but keeping hold of the statue is tougher and despite its pretty hefty mass and weight the thing gets hauled all over the place by both sides. There's savage ancient culture that wants to sacrifice someone every few chapters and some spies who serve as nice villains for the piece. It's not a perfect story, but it's a pretty good one, and has that solid Tarzan feel to it. That's doubtless because of ERB's direct input in this production. 

The big drawback on this is the sound which on my DVD was pretty terrible in places, but it's not like this is Shakespeare, so missing a line here and there is not so critical. Apparently, the sound of the movie was bad from the get-go and there's even an apology in the print to say it was the environment of shooting. The action is on display and there's lots of it. The music is often absent from this story, and when there is music it's often a series of peculiar tones which get more effective as the story unfolds. The climax on the story is stupendous, but the final chapter is an odd one, and that's all I'll say. 

The serial was cut up into two feature films, one called The New Adventures of Tarzan and the sequel Tarzan and the Green Goddess. If you like Tarzan at all, you'll probably like this story and for the cheap prices this can be had at, it's a bargain regardless. Highly recommended. 

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