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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The Man of Bronze
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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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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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SuperHero Surgeons DOCTOR MID-NITE

Some super-hero "doctors" were also MDs in their secret identities...

....such as this "creature of the night", who, sadly, never made it big, despite having a long life as a second-stringer!

Though the character retained his license and served as a consultant to other MDs, he wasn't permitted to perform surgery.

(He occasionally did so in emergencies, as you've seen above!)

Note: While Charles McNider's costumed persona was comics' first blind super-hero (beating Marvel's Daredevil out by 23 years), he wasn't the first blind super-hero!

(A pulp magazine character called the Black Bat preceded him by a couple of years)

Dr Mid-Nite had a long run as a back-up feature in DC's All-American Comics, as well as being a member of comics' first super-hero team, the Justice Society of America.

But when superheroes (except for Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and a couple of others) faded out after World War II, his strip was one of the casualties.

Then came the 1960s, with both the Batman and James Bond fads in full-swing, Mid-Nite was revived with the rest of the Justice Society...albeit with a whole new modus operandi and lots of medical-oriented gimmicks...

The good Doctor eventually went back to his nighttime activities and blackout bombs.

Charles McNider was killed during the "Zero Hour" event which ran through all of DC Comics in 1986.

But the Dr Mid-Nite name has been continued by two other characters in DC Comics, both of whom are MDs rendered blind by villains!
Plus, the good doctor appeared on the recent Stargirl TV series, both as Charles McNider in flashbacks to the Golden Age, and Beth Chapel, who, in the present, finds his helmet (which contains an AI progammed with McNider's brain patterns) and goggles which have heads-up displays!

If readers ask for them, I'll do additional posts...

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Dr Mid-Nite
(featuring Dr Pieter Cross, the third Dr Mid-Nite
Charles McNider never had his own series)
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