Reading Room: DOC SAVAGE "The Man of Bronze" Conclusion

When Last We Left Our Heroes...

Art by Jim Steranko

Investigating the death of Doc Savage's father in Hildago, the Man of Bronze and his five associates entered the Valley of the Vanished and encountered the Mayan residents of a hidden City of Gold.
It's ruler, King Chaac and his daughter, Princess Monja, welcomed the son of the late Professor Savage and those who accompanied him.
However, urged on by the costumed "Son of the Feathered Serpent", others were not so friendly towards the outsiders.
Under cover of darkness, they kidnapped three of Doc's aides and threw them into a sacrificial well filled with snakes.
Monk, whom they'd left unconscious, followed them and...

Overall, a pretty good adaptation of the original pulp novel in about the same length as the previous Doc comic, the Silver Age adaptation of The Thousand Headed Man.

You'll note that Ernie Chua/Chan took over the inking from Jim Mooney for "Master of the Red Death".
Personally, I preferred Mooney.

After this, instead of reviving the color comic, Marvel decided to do a b/w magazine featuring long-form original stories rather than adaptations of the pulp tales.
(Marvel's foray into a field previously-dominated by Warren Publishing had proven successful, with b/w magazines in horror, martial arts, and the Planet of the Apes movie/tv franchise proving to be solid sellers.)
The eight-issue magazine run is considered superior by many (including me) to the earlier comic run, with longer, more involved, tales, all written by Doug Moench, that followed the Doc spirit more than the Lester Dent-conceived story structure.
They'll be reprinted in an upcoming Showcase trade paperback from DC.
Not to say the color comic didn't have it's good points including a couple of Steranko covers and some of Ross Andru's best artwork ever!

Doc would make two more appearances in Marvel's four-color line.
We'll be presenting those never-reprinted stories in the near-future!

Reading Room: DOC SAVAGE "The Man of Bronze" Part 3

When Last We Left Our Heroes...

Adventurer Doc Savage and his five associates, having survived an assassination attempt by a gunman in Mayan ceremonial garb at their NYC headquarters, are proceeding to the Central American country of Hidalgo to investigate the suspicious death of Savage's explorer father.
As they come in for a landing at the airport...

Are Monk's buddies dead?

Did Ham's suit get wrinkled?

And, where's the Man of Bronze when you really need him?

Tune in Tomorrow for both the Astounding Answers and This Titanic Tale's Cataclysmic Conclusion!

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Reading Room: DOC SAVAGE "The Man of Bronze" Part 2

When Last We Left Our Hero(s)...

Art by John and Sal Buscema

Learning of his father's death, adventurer Doc Savage returns to his headquarters in New York City, where he is greeted by his five associates, each an expert in a different science or discipline.
Suspecting foul play, they are about to read the elder Savage's personal papers to ascertain clues, when an assassination attempt is made on Doc.
The group (except for Ham, the lawyer, sent on another assignment) now goes in pursuit of the gunman...

To Be Continued, Tomorrow...

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Reading Room: DOC SAVAGE "The Man of Bronze" Part 1

In the early 1970s, bolstered by the success of Conan the Barbarian, both DC and Marvel attempted to relaunch other pulp characters who had successful paperback reprint series as comic book titles.
Hoping that the audiences for them would carry over as Conan's had, Marvel acquired the rights to Doc Savage, while DC snagged both The Shadow and The Avenger.
The Doc title lasted only eight issues from 1972-73, but the license remained in Marvel's hands when the George Pal movie came along and Marvel invoked their right to do a comic based on the movie.

Compare with page 7 below.

Since the flick was an adaptation of the novel The Man of Bronze, which Marvel had already used as the basis for the first two issues of their previous comic, it was decided to repackage that material as a double-sized one-shot to tie-in with the movie's release.
The art was modified to match the appearance of Doc in the movie, substituting an open-collared shirt for his Marvel-created blue vest and a buzz-cut for the James Bama/Bantam paperback "skullcap".
(I always wondered why Marvel didn't go with the torn-shirt look of the Bantam covers on the comics.
Maybe they didn't want people confusing Doc with their resident torn-shirt aficionado, Nick Fury.
Thankfully, they returned to the torn shirt "look" on the b/w magazine covers by Ken Barr.)
The original two-issue comic adaptation had updated the 1933 novel to the then-present 1970s.
The Giant-Size Doc Savage "re-mastering" modified the technology back to 1930s levels, except the adaptation's replacing of the Mayan assassin's elephant gun with a laser rifle, which remained!
They also re-did Monk's hair from the incorrect black-with-blue-highlights to the red color it had in the pulp stories (and the remainder of the Marvel run).

Without further adieu, Part 1 of Giant-Size Doc Savage begins now...

Tune in tomorrow as Doc and his buddies go in pursuit of the assassin...