Doc Savage Archives - Black Mask

Doc Savage: Skull Island – Will Murray

adventure fiction, Doc Savage, King Kong, Will Murray Comments Off

Apr 012013

To Will Murray: You had me at "Doc Savage meets King Kong."

Seriously, that pairing of two of the most iconic characters in adventure fiction is irresistible. The set-up is great, with Doc, Monk, and Ham arriving back in New York City right after Kong has taken his plunge off the Empire State Building. When they go to see the body and Doc says, "I know this creature," . . . well, maybe it didn't send quite as much of a shiver through me as "They were the footprints, Mr. Holmes, of a gigantic hound!", but it's still a great line.

From there we're off to a flashback that reveals not just how Doc first met King Kong in the days soon after he returns from World War I, it also lets us get to know Doc's father Clark Savage Sr., who is a rather shadowy figure in the original novels, plus Doc's grandfather, the sea captain Stormalong Savage (a great name if there ever was one).

Once Doc and his dad, sailing on the ship Orion(the same schooner on which Doc was born) reach Skull Island in search of old Stormalong, the action is almost non-stop. Headhunters, dinosaurs, and Kong himself provide formidable obstacles for the Savages. This story takes place before Doc adopted his no-killing policy, like the first few novels in the pulp series, so the violence is pretty graphic. But there are quieter, more poignant moments, too, that are very effective.

One of the most appealing things about this novel for long-time Doc Savage fans such as myself is seeing the early, developmental stages of things that will figure prominently in the series later on, such as Doc's superfirer machine pistols and some casual mentions of Doc's uncle Alex Savage, whose daughter Pat becomes a major supporting character. There are also hints of much more Savage family history to be uncovered later on, as well as an explanation of how Doc's father came up with the idea of training him to be an adventurer. (It's not one that I would have suspected.)

If you've never read Doc Savage before, SKULL ISLAND would make a good starting point, although it is considerably different from the other novels in the series. If you're a long-time fan like me, it's even better. Will Murray's done a spectacular job here, the cover by Joe DeVito is breathtaking, and SKULL ISLAND gets the highest recommendation from me. It's currently available in e-book and trade paperback editions, with a limited edition hardcover on the way.

Pulp Con Season Starts in Two Weeks

Al Tonik, auction, awards, Doc Savage, Fu Manchu, Munsey, Promotion, pulp cons, Registration, Rusty Hevelin Comments Off

Mar 242013

With April approaching, the pulp con season begins. First up will be the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Show, followed by the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention beginning April 12th. PulpFest committee members Jack Cullers, Mike Chomko, and Ed Hulse (who will be releasing a new issue of Blood ‘n’ Thunder) will all be there with information about PulpFest 2013.

A couple of weeks after Windy City, the South’s leading “pulp culture” convention, Pulp Ark will take place in Springdale, Arkansas while Canada’s premier pulp event, the Fantastic Pulps Show & Sale, will be held May 11th in Toronto. About a week later, Morris, Illinois will host the 2013 Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship Gathering while Columbus, Ohio will be home to Cinevent 45 over Memorial Day weekend.

June 7th and 8th are the dates for Robert E. Howard Days in the author’s home town of Cross Plains, Texas. Still to be announced is the date for the spring edition of Classicon, but the Derby City Comic Con will go off on June 29th in Louisville, Kentucky.

Of course, all of these events are a prelude for the best pulp event of all, the summertime destination for fans and collectors of vintage popular fiction and related materials, PulpFest 2013. This year, we’ll be celebrating Doc Savage and the pulp heroes of 1933 and the centennial of the villainous Dr. Fu Manchu. Our guests will include Will Murray, author of twelve Doc Savage novels, including the just-released King Kong crossover, Skull Island; Lamont Award winner Don Hutchison, leading pulp anthologist and author of The Great Pulp Heroes and numerous articles about the pulps; Nathan Madison, author of Anti-Foreign Imagery in American Pulps and Comics, 1920-1960; William Patrick Maynard, the writer authorized to continue the Fu Manchu series; and pulp art expert David Saunders. There will also be a showing of the complete movie serial, The Spider’s Web, produced by Columbia Pictures in 1938.

PulpFest is now accepting registrations for this year’s convention, running July 25th-28th. From our registration page, you’ll be able to download our member and dealer registration forms. You can pay for memberships and dealer tables through our Paypal order page. You’ll also be able to book a room at the Hyatt Regency Columbus at the convention rate of $112 plus tax via our special link to the hotel.

We are also happy to once again supply a third table free of charge to dealers who stay at the Hyatt and rent two tables in our hucksters’ room. That’s three tables for the price of two, or six for the price of four. The massive size of the Regency Ballroom enables us to provide this extra exhibit space to loyal PulpFest dealers. Remember, this special offer is good only to dealers staying at the host hotel.

With about a quarter of the vast collection of pulp researcher Al Tonik tucked away in storage, PulpFest is delighted to report that the remainder of Albert’s superlative library of hardcovers, paperbacks, pulps, dime novels, comic books, fanzines, art books, and reference books will be sold during our Saturday night auction on July 27th. For additional details, including a link to the catalog, please visit the Tonik Auction page under our Auctions button.

All this and more can be found by clicking the buttons along the left side of our home page. And don’t forget, you can make your nominations for the 2013 Munsey and Rusty Hevelin Service Awards through the end of April. Please send the name of the person that you’d like to nominate and a short paragraph describing your reasons for your nomination to Mike Chomko, 2217 W. Fairview St., Allentown, PA 18104-6542 or to mike@pulpfest.com.

In the coming weeks, PulpFest will start previewing its highly respected programming on this site. So please visit often. We look forward to seeing you July 25th through July 28th.

This year’s Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention will be saluting ninety years of science fiction and fantasy magazines including the August 1923 issue of Hugo Gernsback’s Science and Invention magazine, its “Scientific Fiction Number” which sported front cover art by Howard V. Brown. The scan is from the January 31, 2012 Tellers of Weird Tales.

The World’s First Superhero

Bantam Books, Doc Savage, hero pulp, Lester Dent, Man of Bronze, Programming Comments Off

Feb 192013

“There was death afoot in the darkness. It crept furtively along a steel girder. Hundreds of feet below yawned glass-and-brick walled cracks–New York streets. Down there, late workers scurried homeward. Most of them carried umbrellas, and did not glance upward.”

Eighty years ago, nearly to the day, those words were urging readers to buy Doc Savage Magazine, a brand new pulp that first appeared on America’s newsstands around the middle of February 1933. Sporting a front cover painted by that “King of the Pulps,” Walter M. Baumhofer, and published by Street & Smith, the new rough paper magazine promised “a thrilling saga of a scrappy outfit hunting a treasure and being hunted in turn.”

“The Man of Bronze,” credited to Kenneth Roberts, was the work of Lester Dent, a writer who had broken into the pulp market in 1929 with an aviation yarn published by Top-Notch Magazine. In the ensuing years, he had sold about three dozen stories to a variety of magazines including Air Stories, Detective-Dragnet Magazine, Scotland Yard, Sky Riders, War Birds, and Western Trails.

Impressed by Dent’s ability to combine an “extravagant plot, scenes and action with comparatively high credibility and reasonableness of motivation,” the author was invited to the offices of Street & Smith to join business manager Henry W. Ralston and Shadow Magazine editor John L. Nanovic in a brainstorming session to flesh out a new adventure series–Doc Savage.

Although Doc Savage Magazine was the third hero pulp to premier in 1933, it would certainly become the most popular of the single character magazines that debuted in that year, tailing only The Shadow in total issues published. The character would go on to not only inspire the original pulp readers, but also the fans of the Bantam reprints that appeared from 1964 through 1990 and the readers of today who regale to the original pulp tales collected by Sanctum Books and Will Murray’s new adventures of the man of bronze, published by Altus Press.

Join PulpFest 2013 over the last weekend of July to celebrate eighty years of Doc Savage and the pulp heroes of 1933.

Dent, Lester. “The Man of Bronze.” Doc Savage #14. San Antonio, TX: Sanctum Books (2008).

Murray, Will. “The First Heroes.” Pulp Vault #3. Chicago: Tattered Pages Press (1988).

Murray, Will. “Introduction.” Doc Savage, Supreme Adventurer. Greenwood, MA: Odyssey Publications (1980).

Doc Savage Meets King Kong

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Feb 122013

For the eightieth anniversary of the Man of Bronze, Will Murray has teamed Doc with another legend who first appeared in 1933—King Kong—in Skull Island. Meet the author at PulpFest 2013, July 25th – 28th at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Columbus, Ohio. We’ll be celebrating the pulp heroes of 1933 and more.

Cover art by Joe DeVito for Kenneth Robeson’s Skull Island, forthcoming from Altus Press.

Kenneth Robeson Coming to PulpFest

Doc Savage, Kenneth Robeson, Programming, pulp, Will Murray Comments Off

Feb 022013

Following the astounding success of their first single-character pulp, The Shadow Magazine, Street & Smith publishing set out to duplicate its good fortune in the adventure magazine market. Working with the company’s business manager, Henry W. Ralston, Shadow editor John Nanovic spent a year developing a scientist adventurer who would travel the globe, righting wrongs and punishing evildoers. They were joined in late 1932 by Lester Dent, a former telegraph operator turned pulp writer. Soon thereafter, Doc Savage, the world’s first superhero, was born.

Doc Savage Magazine premiered early the next year with its first issue dated March 1933. The lead novel, “The Man of Bronze,” introduced Clark Savage, Jr. to a disheartened country thirsting for heroes amidst the dark days of The Great Depression. The magazine was an immediate success, soon rivaling the popularity of The Shadow Magazine on America’s newsstands.

Although the first tale of Doc Savage and his five trouble-busting assistants was credited to Kenneth Roberts, a name belonging to a former journalist and author of historical novels, later novels in the series would be said to be the work of Kenneth Robeson, a house name that hid the identity of Dent as well as Laurence Donovan, Ryerson Johnson, William Bogart, and other writers.

PulpFest is pleased to announce that the current “Kenneth Robeson,” Will Murray, will be one of its presenters at the 2013 convention for fans of pulp magazines and pulp fiction. The author of a dozen Doc Savage novels for Bantam Books and Altus Press, Will hopes to be Kenneth Robeson for a long time to come. Click on Will Murray under the Programming link of our home page for more details on our guest, one of the leading historians of the pulp era as well as one of the best adventure authors of our day.

The March 1933 issue of Doc Savage Magazine featured front cover art by pulp great Walter M. Baumhofer, illustrated Lester Dent’s novel, “The Man of Bronze.”

Murray, Will. “Doc Savage: The First 75 Years” in Windy City Pulp Stories #8. Normal, IL: Black Dog Books (2008).

Murray, Will. “The Duende Doc Savage Index” in Duende Vol. 1. North Quincy, MA: Odyssey Publications (1977).

Murray, Will. “Intermission” in Doc Savage #14. Encinitas, CA: Sanctum Productions for Nostalgia Ventures, Inc. (2008).

Celebrating the Pulp Heroes of 1933

Doc Savage, G-8, Lone Eagle, Nick Carter, Pete Rice, Phantom Detective, Programming, pulp heroes, THE SPIDER Comments Off

Jan 242013

Eighty years ago, following the great success of The Shadow, the pulp industry created a tremendous splash in the publishing world with the reintroduction of the single-character magazine. The Phantom Detective, Doc Savage, Nick Carter, The Lone Eagle, G-8 and His Battle Aces, The Spider, and Pete Rice all debuted in their own magazines in the glorious year of 1933. Join PulpFest on Thursday, July 25th as we begin our celebration of “Doc Savage and the Pulp Heroes of 1933.”

Happy Holidays from PulpFest

Doc Savage, hero pulps, Promotion, PulpFest Comments Off

Dec 222012

Here’s wishing everyone the happiest of holiday seasons. As we near 2013 and the eightieth anniversary of the “hero pulp explosion,” when characters such as Doc Savage, G-8, The Spider, and The Phantom Detective were introduced to the reading public, let’s hope there’s a copy of your favorite pulp magazine tucked into Santa’s sack to help tide you over until April 12th, when the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention will begin in the Chicago area.

After you’ve finished celebrating the winter holidays, please stop back at the PulpFest website as we gear up for next Summer’s Great Pulp Con. Better still, sign up for our email updates by filling in the little gray box titled “E-Mail List” right here on our home page. And while you’re at it, why not “like” our facebook page as more than 500 others have done. You can also follow PulpFest on Twitter.

Many thanks to Keith “Kez” Wilson for allowing us to use his Rescuing Rudolph fantasy Doc Savage cover, based on James Bama’s painting for the Bantam edition of Quest of Qui. You can see more of Kez’s great cover spoofs at his Doc Savage Fantasy Cover Gallery.

PulpFest 2013 Plans Are Underway!

dealer's room, Details, Doc Savage, Fu Manchu, hero pulp, Hyatt Regency, THE SPIDER Comments Off

Sep 272012

The PulpFest committee is delighted to announce that our 2013 convention will once again be held at the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Our 2013 confab will take place from Thursday, July 25th, through Sunday, July 28th. It will boast the same combination of product and programming that has made PulpFest the must-attend annual event for fans, scholars, and collectors of pulp fiction.

Two very important anniversaries will figure prominently in PulpFest’s 2013 programming. First and foremost, we are celebrating the hero pulp revolution that began 80 years ago in 1933, with the debuts of such popular figures as Doc Savage, The Spider, Nick Carter, Pete Rice, The Lone Eagle, The Phantom Detective, and G-8 and His Battle Aces. The success of Street & Smith’s Shadow pulp, launched two years earlier, spurred this revival of single-character magazines, which had been a phenomenon of the dime-novel era. The hero pulps revitalized an industry laid low by the Great Depression, and they dominated the rough-paper field for the rest of the decade. They remain the most avidly collected and frequently reprinted periodicals in the hobby.

We’ll also acknowledge the centennial of Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu, who made his American bow in a February 1913 issue of Collier’s Magazine. The initial cycle of short stories was published between hard covers later that year as The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. The first and greatest “Yellow Peril” villain, Rohmer’s Devil Doctor was widely imitated in American pop culture; rough-paper knockoffs included The Mysterious Wu Fang and Dr. Yen Sin, two short-lived pulps from Popular Publications.

With so many possibilities for panels and presentations, the PulpFest committee once again plans to offer a full night of programming on Thursday, before the convention’s “official” opening on Friday, so attendees are urged to make early arrival a part of their PulpFest travel plans.

The Hyatt Regency has asked for a modest increase in guest-room rates, which will be $112 per night as opposed to the $109 we paid this year. However, to reward loyal attendees who support the convention by staying at the host hotel, PulpFest is happy to be able to offer a ten-dollar rebate redeemable at the registration desk. This will cover the three-dollar nightly increase incurred by Hyatt guests.

We are also happy to once again supply a third table free of charge to exhibitors who stay at the Hyatt and rent two tables in our hucksters’ room. That’s three tables for the price of two, or six for the price of four. The massive size of the Regency Ballroom enables us to provide this extra exhibit space to loyal PulpFest dealers, for whose continued support we are most grateful. Remember, though, this special offer is good only to dealers staying at the host hotel.

Although the 2013 convention is still ten months away, you can rest assured that the committee is already hard at work on planning and promotion. Ideas for panels and presentations have already been proposed and, as always, we remain open to programming suggestions and volunteer presenters. Most importantly, though, we wanted to let you know that our venue is confirmed. So start saving for the next PulpFest right away and check back periodically for updates.

Win with Doc Savage or The Spider

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Aug 012012

Thanks to Tom Brown and Radio Archives, the leading producer of old time radio collections and pulp audiobooks, PulpFest 2012 will be giving away one door prize on Thursday, two door prizes on Friday, and two more on Saturday. We have five terrific Radio Archives audiobooks featuring superb readings of three Spider yarns and two Doc Savage adventures. Of course, you have to be at the convention for a chance to win one of these great prizes.

We’ll be awarding one audiobook per evening and one audiobook about noontime on Friday and Saturday. So if you plan to be at PulpFest 2012 from August 9 through August 12, you’ll have a chance to take home a free Radio Archives audiobook. Wow!!!

Doc Savage: The Desert Demons – Will Murray

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May 202012

I've been a Doc Savage fan ever since I picked up a copy of METEOR MENACE from the paperback spinner rack in Tompkins' Drugstore in 1964, when it, along with THE MAN OF BRONZE and THE THOUSAND-HEADED MAN, was published to launch Bantam's long-running reprint series. (Long-running is an understatement. Bantam reprinted all 181 novels from the original pulps, plus a lost novel, plus several original novels by author and Doc Savage expert Will Murray, based on fragments and outlines by Lester Dent, the co-creator and main author of the pulp series.)

After a hiatus of several years, Murray is now writing new Doc Savage novels again, the first of which is THE DESERT DEMONS. I just read it, and as a Doc fan of nearly 50 years, I can safely say that it's great stuff. California is being terrorized by mysterious red clouds that descend from the heavens to destroy anything they touch. Oilfield wildcatters and colorful Hollywood moguls are running around in a panic. Doc's aides show up to investigate and are attacked by a crazed meteorologist. Pat Savage, Doc's beautiful cousin, is missing.

And that's just in the first few chapters.

The pace never lets up for long, with Murray skillfully breaking up the multitude of breath-taking action scenes with the sort of comedy that fans of the series have come to expect, mostly involving Doc's aides Monk and Ham. (To be fair, some people don't care for this aspect of the series, but I grew up reading the books and it's just part of the Doc Savage universe as far as I'm concerned.) Before the book is over, we get a great scene of a dirigible being attacked by the demonic clouds, as well as a chapter entitled "Gator Hell". How can you not love that? Murray tops it all off with an intriguing explanation for the phenomenon of the Desert Demons and a satisfying ending.

As most of you know, the past week or so has been pretty stressful for me, without much time to read. But when I did get a chance to sit down and read a few chapters of this book, it never failed to entertain me. THE DESERT DEMONS is well-written, with Murray proving once again to be a master of recapturing Dent's style, and for Doc Savage fans it should be pure fun. For this Doc Savage fan it was a great escape. Thanks, Will.

(THE DESERT DEMONS is available in both trade paperback and e-book editions. Murray has two more original Doc Savage novels out now, HORROR IN GOLD and the just-released THE INFERNAL BUDDHA. And both of them are already on my Kindle, waiting to be read soon.)

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