Reading Room: DOC SAVAGE (& SPIDER-MAN) "The Future is NOW!"

When Last We Left Our Heroes (in two different eras)...

Art by Gil Kane & Frank Giacoia.

Both Doc Savage (in 1934) and Spider-Man (in 1974) are lured to the same Manhattan building (in their respective time periods) by the same beautiful woman from another dimension.
(Only in comics would such a statement actually make sense!)
The woman, Desinna, warns both of them (in their respective time periods) about the presence of her associate, Tarros, mutated and driven insane by an accident during the testing of an experimental dimensional portal.
Suddenly, in 1934, Tarros appears...

Though the Doc Savage comic had been cancelled in 1973 after only eight issues, Marvel still held the license, and with a Doc movie coming out in the summer of 1975, they did one more new color comic, along with a reprint of the first two issues of Doc's series (which we re-presented HERE), before initiating a b/w magazine featuring all-new stories rather than adaptations of the pulp/paperback novels.
The movie tanked.
The magazine, though a critical success, was cancelled after eight issues.
Doc would make one more Marvel appearance, in 1976's Marvel Two-in-One #21 (which we re-presented HERE), teaming up with The Thing in a similar split-time period story with a notable exception...the two heroes actually met!
Ironically, DC Comics has reprinted both the color and b/w Doc series from Marvel Comics!
(In the world of entertainment property licensing, truth is stranger than fiction, even science fiction!)
However, due to licensing restrictions, neither Marvel nor DC has reprinted the two team-up tales we've re-presented on this blog, nor will they ever do so.