This Sunday: Doc Savage: the MD of Bronze

UnCut! WideScreen! Hi-Def!

The only (to date) movie/tv production featuring the first pulp/comic character who's nom-de-guerre and civilian names are both "Doc"!

Adapting the premiere novel, The Man of Bronze, which involves Dr Clark Savage Jr investigating his father's death from a rare disease, the film isn't a perfect re-telling of the tale.
Whether Warner Bros execs pressured him to camp it up, or producer George (War of the Worlds) Pal was unduly-influenced by the then-recent Batman TV series, it's definitely not a classic on the level of Superman the Movie (1978), but it is a fun "Saturday matinee" flick.
Ex-Tarzan Ron Ely was an excellent physical match for the role, and does his best with the character as written.
Unfortunately, the lead villain (created for the film), Captain Seas, is a moustache-twirling over-the-top fiend who chews the scenery and spits toothpicks.
Doc solves the medical mystery, produces a cure, and (of course), saves the day!
It airs Sunday morning at 9am ET on Turner Classic Movies.without commercial interruption.
Check out the TCM page HERE and the IMDB page HERE.
Trivia: This was not the first time the character was proposed for a feature film!
In 1966, during the peak of both Bat-Mania & Bond-Mania, when the paperback reprints of Doc Savage's pulp adventures were flying off bookshelves and racks to eager readers on a monthly basis, another studio wanted to create an ongoing multi-film franchise!
The details of what happened (and more importantly didn't happen) can be found HERE at our "brother" RetroBlog Secret Sanctum of Captain Video!
And wait'll you see who was cast as Doc!
Read the story of "The Doc Savage Movie that Never Was" HERE!
Finally, for October, instead of the usual Halloween Hospital Horrors, we're presenting the complete (non-campy) Marvel Comics adaptation of The Man of Bronze by Steve Englehart and Ross Andru!

No, wait...that's not right!
We're presenting the complete "remastered", never-reprinted version Marvel published in 1975, in conjunction with the feature film's release!

Confused?

Be Here Next Friday, and we promise it'll all make sense!
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Doc Savage: the Man of Bronze
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MY GREATEST ADVENTURE "Cure Our Robot Ruler--or Die"

Yes, This is a Weekly Blog about Doctors, Nurses, and Other Medical Personnel...

Art by Lee Elias

...but nobody said the patients had to be human!

Ever see the movie Crisis (1950)?

Cary Grant plays a doctor vacationing in a South American country, where a revolution is brewing.

He's grabbed by the dictator's (Jose Ferrer) police to operate on him since they don't trust any of the surgeons native to the country to keep the secret of the ruler's infirmity!
The sadly-unknown writer of this never-repinted story from DC's My Greatest Adventure #77 (1963) obviously based his script on is, adding a cybernetic variation of that concept!

Interesting that the whole story comes down to "turn off the device and reboot", which was all-but unknown back in 1963!

9-11 WORLD'S FINEST COMIC BOOK WRITERS & ARTISTS TELL STORIES TO REMEMBER "The Job"

25 Years Ago Today, Our World Changed...

...and Americans, particularly first responders/medical personnel, rose to the challenge and dealt with it!

Writer Josh Kratch, penciler Scott McDaniel, and inker James Pascoe tell a tale of two determined EMTs/paramedics on-site at the Twin Towers, helping mo matter what the cost, in a story published in the DC Comics charity benefit comic World's Finest Comic Book Writers & Artists Tell Stories to Remember (2002).
All the creatives, as well as the printers, donated their time and materials (including printing ink, paper stock and presstime) to the project.
Interestingly, copies of this comic are available on-line and in comics shops from $2.50 to $75 each, but none of the price you'd pay now will go to charity...

Hospital Hookup TRUE LOVE CONFESSIONS "Fool's Gold..."

Why is it that most stories involving two medical personnel in love show the woman as a nurse?

And that she's in the profession only to find a doctor to marry?

This never-reprinted tale from Premier's True Love Confessions #8 (1955) features not one but two studly doctors for the nurse to choose from!

The story, illustrated by Hy Fleishman, also gives Lila a third guy (rich, older, but non-medical) to choose from!

But in the end, she opts for the poor, but dedicated, Roc!

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Agonizing Love

The Golden Age of Romance Comics
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The Doctor is IN! DOC STERNE: MR MONSTER!

We've Presented Doc Savage...

...a pulp/paperback/comic character whose name reflects the fact he is actually an MD HERE!

But there was another "Doc", who was also a physician in his civilian identity!

This is his story....

Doctor Jim Stearne was, initially, a Doc Savage clone, an MD (specifically, a psychiatrist) turned scientific adventurer.

After a brief run in the Canadian comic book "WOW" Comics (yes, the quotation marks were part of the title), the character was reconceptualized for his next appearance in Terrific Comics #31 (1945)...

Stearne then moved (not to Unusual Comics, which was never published) but to Bell Features' Super Duper Comics #3 (1946)...where he finally appeared in color!

You can see it HERE!

And, that was the end for Doc Stearne: Mr Monster...or was it?

In the early 1980s, writer-artist Michael T Gilbert revived the concept and name, doing a new version, Doc Stearn: Mr Monster (the missing "e" in "Stearn" isn't a typo.), revealed to be the son of the Golden Age character, as explained HERE!

That version continues, on and off, to this day.

Trivia: Originally, Canada imported American comic books and pulp magazines, filling their newsstands with Superman, The Shadow, and loads of other American characters.

But, when World War II broke out, Canada banned all "non-essential" imports, including comics and pulps!

This opened up a whole new industry for Canadian writers and artists to finally do their own characters!

One major difference between the American and Canadian comic books was that the World War II Canadian books were black and white inside, not four-color like American comics!

(British comics were also b/w inside until the 1950s, when they started using a second color on some books.)

Some American companies licensed Canadian publishers to reprint US comics, but the interiors for those were b/w as well.

In addition, there was a limit to how much "non-Canadian content" could be included in Canadian magazine print runs, so there were relatively-few American reprints during the war.

After the war ended American comics were again imported, so most Canadian publishers began doing color insides to compete with the imports.

But the American characters were far better-known, and, within a year, the Canadian characters had all but disappeared!

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Doc Stearn: Mr Monster

His Books of Forbidden Knowledge

Volume 1

(includes both the Golden and Bronze Age Misters Monster!)

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