Please don't take this the wrong way, Mr. Dent,

[camwyn]

but ... I think maybe I'm not going to buy any more Doc Savage novels.

I've read two. The first was really good. That was The Man of Bronze. Nice character intro, funky plot, etc. I shan't spoil it for anyone. All I'll say is that I can excuse your depiction of the group Savage & Co. ran into on the grounds that we didn't have the same archaeological understanding in your day as we do in mine.

However.

#2 was The Land of Terror, and it did not sit right with me from the very beginning. I'm really sorry, but aside from a fit of 'eee! I know this part of New Jersey!', the annoyances started piling up quickly. The first few pages are spent praising Doc, a LOT, and the only way the expository dialogue you gave the characters becomes tolerable is if I assume it's being spoken with Damon Runyon-esque Noo Yawk accents. Doc is better at absolutely everything than absolutely everyone, and is better-looking, to boot. I can only assume the reason he has five companions is because he cannot be in more than one place at one time.

I can excuse even these flaws; Gary Stu-ism is a very minor crime in pulp fiction. It's the dinosaurs that get me. Even with 1933 palaeontology, how the hell is a Tyrannosaurus rex that hops like a frickin' kangaroo supposed to be SCARY?? "This summer... terror goes boing. BOUNCING DEATH FROM ABOVE!"

I'm sorry, Mr. Dent. Unless someone can tell me the next book is way better than The Island of Terror and not given to heaping so much encomium upon the Doc's enormous bronze shoulders, I'm not gonna read it.

(Although I really did like the fact that your boy had an Arctic Island Fortress of Solitude, complete with the name Fortress of Solitude, years before Kal El of Krypton came along and turned the name into a condo franchise.)

Comments

[nesmith.livejournal.com]

Even with 1933 palaeontology, how the hell is a Tyrannosaurus rex that hops like a frickin' kangaroo supposed to be SCARY??

I don't know . . . I think a 20-odd foot lizard with teeth as long as my hand would scare me shitless if it was hopping towards me. ;)

[spiderine.livejournal.com]

Oh but you haven't yet met Patricia Savage, his cool kickass cousin! She ROCKS, and is the prototype for everyone from Marian from Raiders of the Lost Ark all the way to Lara Croft.

The Doc Savage books are very campy and very dated, but they are JEWELS of pulp fiction. I can't say that they get much better in quality -- remember, they were written by a stable of anonymous writers who all used the same pen name, so the quality varies -- but I adore them.

[crispengray.livejournal.com]

See the recent sad excuse for an American remake of Godzilla.

Godzilla should not prance amok.

Leaping lizards are generally not scary. Just silly.

[silly-dan.livejournal.com]

Plus, Pat Savage is Canadian. 8)

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

I had much the same reaction to "The Island of Terror" when I read it - it's not really one of the better ones. This was the second story, remember, when the series was still trying to find its feet. Most serials never have a hot first season.

Things start picking up in 1934 - starting strong with "Brand of the Werewolf" which introduces the inimitable Pat Savage, "The Man Who Shook The Earth", the villanous Mo-Gwei of "The Meteor Menace" which reduces two of our Fab Five to mindless drones. "The Thousand Headed Man" I have a fondness for, as well, if just for the title. There are dud bits as well as good bits, even within individual stories, but I can just lose myself in the banter and the cameraderie.

If you want to jump ahead, track down 1937's "Repel", about a metal that generates an anti-gravity field - "The Fortress of Solitude" and "The Devil Genghis" at the tail end of 1938 - those use the only villain Savage faces twice, the diabolical John Sunlight, who manages to track down the Fortess itself.

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

Ah, well - I'm a huge Doc Savage fan from way back; one has to go into them with the cheese detectors turned off, and it helps if one is as malleable as a 1933 ten-year-old, but if you can get past *that*... Hey, I love a good pulp, and even the terrible ones have a merit or two. Of course it probably says something about me that even as a teenager I managed to come up with a crush on Johnny (http://docsavage.info/antiope.html).

...okay, "The Land of Terror" was horrible.

I'd also like to point out that Doc was named "Clark" before any other Famous Superheroes You Care To Name.

[camwyn]

Okay. I can live with that. As long as things get better, I can deal with it.

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

Doc becomes less and less omnipotent as the supersagas go by. He's more fallible and carries far fewer gadgets by the end of the series--a case of burnout, perhaps?

I recommend Phil Farmer's "Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life" as a far more thorough discussion of the books than I'm capable of providing. :)

(And as far as the books themselves go, my recommendations tally exactly with Khaosworks'.)

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

"Stable" is pushing it. Dent wrote the vast majority.

[josephgreen.livejournal.com]

BOUNCING DEATH FROM ABOVE!

. . . I am so using that. Just to watch everyone else in the Maze *STARE*

Thank you.

*bows*

[quintus.livejournal.com]

Phil Farmer... Doc Savage...

A combination that led to one of the worst books in the English language...

My eyes! the goggles... they do nothing!