Heroic Halloween Hospital Horror GIANT-SIZE DOC SAVAGE "Master of the Red Death!" Part 1

We Have Already Seen...

Scientific 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 by unknown disease 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 Next Friday for both the Astounding Answers and This Titanic Tale's Cataclysmic Conclusion!

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Heroic Halloween Hospital Horror GIANT-SIZE DOC SAVAGE "The Man of Bronze" Conclusion

When Last We Left Our Hero(s)...

Art by John and Sal Buscema

Learning of his father's death due to a rare disease, adventurer/scientist 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 lawyer Ham, sent on another assignment) now goes in pursuit of the gunman...

To Be Continued...Next Friday!

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Heroic Halloween Hospital Horror GIANT-SIZE DOC SAVAGE "The Man of Bronze" Part One

 Who's the superhero whose origin is tied to deadly disease?

And, ironically, he's one of the few superheroes who's also a practicing MD!

Doc and his buddies go in pursuit of the would-be assassin...
Next Friday!

In the early 1970s, bolstered by the success of Conan the Barbarian, both DC and Marvel attempted to launch other pulp characters who had successful papaerback reprint series as comic book titles!

Hoping that the audiences for them would carry over just 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 Groege Pal-produced movie came along, and Marvel invoked their right to do a comic based on the film!

Compare with page 7 above.

Since the flick was an adaptation of the premiere novel "The Man of Bronze", which Marvel had already used as the basis for the first two issues of their 1972-74 comic, it was decided to repackage that existing material as a double-sized one-shot to tie in with the movie's release!

The art was modified to match Doc's appearance 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" (see left).

(I always wondered why Marvel didn't go with the torn-shirt look of the Bantam paperback covers on the comics.

Maybe they didn't want people confusing Doc with their resident torn-shirt aficionado, Nick Fury, who still appeared in both his WWII Sgt Fury incarnation and his present-day Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. version!

Thankfully, Marvel returned to the torn shirt "look" on the 1975-77 b/w magazine covers by Ken Barr.)

The original two-issue comic adaptation of "Man of Bronze" had updated the 1933 novel to the then-present 1970s.

The Giant-Size Doc Savage "re-mastering" retro-fitted 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-colored 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).

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The Man of Bronze
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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 8am 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!
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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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!