Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage Aug, Sept, Oct 1936

Well - Life has interrupted this blog….

While I haven’t been posting, I still have been reading (slowly) more Doc Savage stories. Here are some mini reports…

The Midas Man - August 1936 - Bantam #46

This adventure is most notable for having a mind reading helmet that actually works.

There is a scene where a couple of crooks discuss what happened to a crook friend that got caught by Savage. “There’s a rumor that he don’t ever kill anybody,” explained the crook. “But he does something queer to ‘em. I know this guy that had a brother that this bronze guy got. My pal later met his own brother on the street. The poor guy didn’t even know him.” 

Also Doc gas bombs a building and later has the police check on it to be sure that no one is injured (he doesn’t mention that he was the one that gassed the building, however.

At one point Ham gets hit by a bullet. “Ham’s head swam. Awful lights jumped in his eyeballs.” He was ok due to his bulletproof vest, but I liked the detail.

James Bama provided an evocative cover - the helmet is wonderfully low tech.

Cold Death - September 1936 - Bantam #21

Writer Laurence Donovan brings back the Cold Light from Land of Always Night as a horrible weapon that destroys a whole city block in Manhattan.

 South Pole Terror - October 1936 - Bantam #77

Doc and crew chase down a world threatening weapon at the South Pole. A good story by Dent and the paperback has a Fred Pfeiffer cover that also graces The Stone Man.

next up - back to full reviews

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage 41

  

July 1936 - The Black Spot

The Black Spot starts while Pat Savage is attending a costume party with a mobster theme at the ritzy Vandersleeve estate in tony Westchester. The party is so high profile and the guest list so exclusive that a newsreel cameraman is present. When the host is killed, Pat and cameraman Red Mahoney are witnesses and get involved in a real gangster mystery.

The Black Spot is a New York centered tale of villainous intentions penned by Laurence Donovan. A killer has invented an vicious and most mysterious murder technique that leaves the victim dead with only a small black spot on their chest. The killings start out in the ritzi suburbs of the Westchester hills outside of Manhattan. The black spot killer quickly moves to Manhattan and continues to target the super-rich.

This is a much smaller-scale story than Donovan's previous effort, but ultimately far more satisfying. There is tension here, and Donovan writes the team well, with a satisfying, exciting finish. My favorite non-Dent Doc Adventure thus far.

           
The pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer and the Bantam paperback cover is by Fred Pfeiffer. I'll give The Black Spot a 9 out of 10.

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage 40

June 1936 - The Haunted Ocean

The Haunted Ocean is another Laurence Donovan tale, this time with a lofty villian's goal: Defeating all the world's armies and using his own to enforce world peace. The US President (FDR at this time, although not named) telephones Doc and summons him to Washington, D.C. to discuss the disappearance of the peace commission.

At the meeting, the President stated, "The whole thing is fantastic, but it suggests such great possible calamity, it cannot be overlooked! We seem to be threatened by such a power as none of our government scientists and technicians have ever before seen."

Doc replied that science had advanced so rapidly that the threat could be genuine. "None can say what vast force can be discovered at any time. Unfortunately, the discoveries are not always made by those of balanced and straightforward minds."

The villain, The Man of Peace, seeks the same ends as the commission - to disarm everyone but themselves, although this is not acceptable to the great nations.

This was an odd story and in thinking about it, I find it is so strange that the writer and editor in 1936 would not find it strange or worry that the readers would not like the commission members to be Great Britain, France, the United States, Spain, Italy, and Germany! This is only 15 years after the Great War! William Harper Littlejohn (Doc's aide Johnny) was currently the US delegate and has gone missing.

There are plenty of planes and ships and submarines involved in the action, but I didn't find it all that engaging. I'll give Donovan's tale a 7 out of 10. The pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer, and the Bantam paperback cover is another great James Bama painting.

 

Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage 38

THE MEN WHO SMILED NO MORE

APRIL 1936

The Men Who Smiled No More is a very different Doc Savage tale for a number of reasons. It takes place entirely in New York state. It does not involve foreigners. And 95% of it has no super-science. Yet the plot is entirely about two completely different aspects of super-science. Writer Laurence Donovan contributed this tale.

The story begins with a humble shoe shiner. "Smiling Tony" Talliano was the first to quit laughing" is the first sentence of the story. What follows is a wild story where even Doc himself is afflicted with a strange condition where people become emotionless, flat versions of themselves. It's like they were replaced with a robot replica. The violence is also at a high level with killings perform is a callous and brutal manner. What intrigued me about this is that many people perceive Doc himself to be emotionless like this all the time anyway. That is not true. Doc has emotions, but he rarely displays them openly. Donovan also enhanced Docs' humanity to emphasize the difference when Doc is afflicted by the strange emotionlessness.

Donovan also brings the whole cast of regulars into this adventure, so we get to see Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, Johnny, and Pat Savage struggle and change into lethargic shells, with no humor, or passion in their lives. Chemistry is the only one left out.

The bulk of the tale is set in the Shinnecock Hills on Long Island in New York. Monk, it turns out, has a cabin retreat in the woods and strange things are going on in a neighboring cabin. The man there has a duck pond and gets particularly furious at anyone who comes near his ducks. Then everyone starts getting the affliction. One by one the cast loses their drive, their will to live or to be active about anything. Finally, Doc himself falls under its spell.

The Men Who Smiled No More itself is told far more like a mystery story than any of the other Doc Savage tales I have read so far,and it includes Doc giving a long, detailed wrap up at the end.

I'll give The Men Who Smiled No More an 8.5 out of 10. This is a fun story with a welcome stylistic change of pace - harder, more savage.

For this review, I read my Bantam paperback dated February 1970. The Pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer and the Bantam cover is by James Bama. Interestingly, that cover seemed to have nothing to do with the story for a very long time. It is an illustration of action from the story, however. Page 124 to be precise. I'm not sure that I have ever read a story with the cover happening so close to the end. Cherie Priest's The Inexplicables is the closest in recent memory, but even that cover was not nearly as close to the end as was the one for this Doc Savage story.