Showcase Presents: Doc Savage by Doug Moench & Various

I do love Doc Savage. It’s possible that I may even devote a future post to some of my favourite Doc Savage pulps if time allows (yeah, right). But with this post published, I’m entirely up to date with the blogging and that doesn’t happen very often.

This volume (ISBN: 9781401231255) contains about 450 pages of black and white reprints, but the original strips were printed in a B&W magazine, so there’s no loss of colour for this book. The original magazines cover dates are between August 1975 and Spring 1977. Curiously, the original books were published by Marvel, but because Doc Savage was a licensed character and DC now have that license, this collection is published by DC. This is not a new concept (Dark Horse have been doing it for a while with Tarzan, Conan, John Carter, etc.) but it’s not common between Marvel and DC (possibly a first, but I’m not sure.)

The volume reprints the complete run of the Doc Savage magazine. The original mags included Doc Savage related articles and interviews but only the strips, covers and pin-ups are reprinted here. Each issue is a self-contained story of approximately fifty pages, written in the pulp style, which basically means that the narrative hurtles along at break neck speed, Doc Savage instantly jumps into the action and time is always of the essence.

Moench’s quite verbose style suits the pulp characters perfectly, there is a lot of narrative and dialogue, but even at 50 pages the stories are condensed to fit the page count, or at least that’s how they feel when you read them, which could well have been Moench’s intent.

Splash Page from Doc Savage #1

As the title would suggest, these are all Doc’s stories. If you’re hoping to see the good Doctors entourage expanded upon in this volume you may be disappointed. They provide a little comic relief and the odd minor assistance, but generally speaking Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, Johnny and occasionally Pat are superfluous to the plot or, at best are used as a cipher for a plot point.

The stories themselves mostly have a fantastical bent. Whether it be lost civilisations or Dieselpunk technology, the feel of the book is a slightly skewed real world, but with larger than life characters.

 Like many of the old pulp characters, when handled well, Doc transfers beautifully to the comic medium. Moench seems to have an affinity to this type of character, in his woefully underrated Aztec Ace there a several pulp tropes, but that story is on a grander scale than these self contained strips.

The artwork, the lions share of which is produced by Tony DeZuniga is solid and refined, but not, in all honesty, anything above and beyond the norm. It is certainly not poor and there are several fantastic panels and splash pages, but my enthusiasm for the highs that are reached is tempered by the general mediocrity of the main body of the art. The art seems very safe. As the magazine was a bit of an experiment for Marvel, I can understand them wanting to play it safe, but a little more dash and inventiveness would have suited the story and added to the pulpishness (I’m remembering some of the garish but incredibly eye-catching original pulp covers) of the stories.

Doc Savage #3 p.22

As I mentioned above, this volumes strength is Doug Moench. He captures the immediacy and full throttle adventure that was the bread and butter of the pulps. I was left in no doubt that the Doc Savage of this volume is the same Doc Savage that appeared in over 180 pulp adventures. His almost super-human abilities dwarf that of his colleagues and even the original pulps recognised this as many of the later stories minimised the involvement of his aides.

I’m not sure why, but although it’s a relatively recent publication, I had a little trouble getting hold of a copy. It’s well worth tracking down though. The Showcase Presents are always good value for money, especially this one, as these stories were always intended to be printed in B&W.

Heartily recommended (Yes I’m biased, but there are plenty of other Doc Savage comics that I wouldn’t recommend.) and won’t cost you the earth. What more could you ask?

Mad Thinker Reads……..

With No Regard For Anything But Justice.

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Captain America by Jack Kirby: Part 3- Old Soldiers Never Die

Would you believe it, I’m behind in the blog department again. I read this ages ago and have had trouble finding the time to write this post. So, yet again, I’ll have to keep this short, sweet and to the point.

This review is for the Captain America by Jack Kirby Omnibus, which reprints:

Captain America Annuals 3 & 4

Captain America Bicentennial Battles

Captain America 193-214

All printed in 1976 & 1977 and it weighs in at about 570 pages.

This is the first time that Kirby was left solo with Cap, he was writing and pencilling the book and that gives it a different flavour to any of his previous runs.

Throughout this volume we have, what I consider to be, Kirby at his prime. Whilst I love Silver Age Kirby, when he was working for Marvel in that period, he had a very high output of pages, as dynamic and iconic as his Silver Age work was, to my mind, it was often obvious that he had to rush through many of the pages resulting in some books that were quite sparse, particularly in the backgrounds. By the mid seventies he wasn’t putting out so many pages on a monthly schedule, so the ones that he was producing look that little bit more refined. I should also say that my first exposure to Kirby was his work done in this period, so for me, this later mature style, with all of those exaggerated Kirbyisms, is the style that I most strongly associate with him. So, yeah, I’m biased, but this is perfect Kirby for me.

Cowboy Cap from Bicentennial Battles

Kirby’s writing and dialogue is often said to be his weak point, but early in this volume we’re treated to the giant Bicentennial Battles and the time hopping adventures of Cap through American history. Whilst the story itself is a very loose affair, with Cap moving from adventure to adventure, often within a few short pages, the payoff is fantastic. Kirby really plays on the heart strings in those last few pages, it’s entirely sentimental and you see it coming from a mile off, but it works perfectly, nostalgia and hope for the future are deftly amalgamated in one of the most emotional (if slightly corny) scene’s of Kirby’s, that I’ve ever read. There’s even an appearance by a younger version of the King Himself (not Elvis) that any fan with half an eye will spot and have a knowing smile at.

CA 193, Not scanned from this volume.

Into Madbomb, and Kirby just doesn’t let you take a breath. The pacing for this run is a little off, with a fair amount devoted to a half baked love interest plot that clearly isn’t going anywhere, but the meat of the tale is so brilliantly bizarre that only Jack could have pulled it off. The story revolves around an elitist extremist attempting to take control of America, with the intention of reverting to a rigid class system. I’ve read a negative assessment of the ending for this story, but in my opinion the final scenes were quite powerful and bravely executed. Rather than the usual fisticuffs, Kirby, through Cap, exposes the pathetic cowardice of the main villain, resulting in this once seemingly powerful figure being left entirely impotent and devoid of menace, with only the most condescending of pity registering with the audience. There is no glorious defeat at the hands of the Hero, only the nerveless shell of the Villain is left.

CA 208, Not scanned from this volume

The final major arc is a real jumble of events that sees Cap bouncing from one story to another in a way that offers little sense of completion. Previously collected in a volume called Captain America & The Falcon: The Swine, which is certainly a misnomer. Initially Cap is drawn in to an investigation of a South American dictator, subjugating the population in extremely hard labour prisons, he is the Swine. But Kirby switches the action part way through, with a dramatic change that lacks resolution and we are suddenly confronted with the outlandish Arnim Zola and his inhuman creations. As the action plays out we get to the core of the story when we learn that Zola’s benefactor is (at last) The Red Skull. Kirby weaves several disparate threads together into a satisfying whole by the close of this story, I wonder if his intent with this tale was to experiment with the multi-book storytelling of the Fourth World stories, but condensed into one title following various protagonists. If that was his intent, I don’t think it worked as well as the Fourth World epic, but the off kilter story does pull itself together in the final pages, which are intentionally repulsive using the ultimate manifestation of Zola’s experiment as a literal visual device to mirror the horror contained in the Red Skull’s philosophy.

As a whole package this volume contains some superb examples of Kirby’s mature phase. I wouldn’t describe it as hit and miss, but some of the arc’s and experimentations work better than others. One thing that definitely cannot be said is that Kirby allows the stories to stagnate. Yes, there are highs and not so highs, but this volume is constantly playing with the tropes of the genre and medium. There’s the emotionally driven ending of Bicentennial Battles, the lack of a physical confrontation at the climax of Madbomb and the mid story shift of The Swine. All of which are unexpected and show a creator willing to take a chance with his audience rather than playing it safe with a tried and tested formula.

There’s no question that Kirby’s Captain America, whether it be from the Golden Age, Silver Age or Bronze Age should take up space on your bookshelf. Many have tried, but no one could do it like Kirby because not even Kirby does it like Kirby more than once.

Mad Thinker Reads..............

Three Ages of Kirby Greatness

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Captain America by Jack Kirby: Part 2- Second Phase Assault

I know I always say this, but I am really behind with this blog at the moment. As much as I enjoy writing about comics, I enjoy reading them a lot more. To be fair, I read way more comics than I blog about because I only like to write about books that are of particular interest to me. But since Christmas I have a lot of good stuff sitting on my book shelf, all killer, no filler.

And this one is a Killer.

But first, a little background. Feel free to skip the next paragraph if you’re already familiar.

So, Marvel reintroduce Captain America into their Universe in Avengers #4 (I should re-read Kirby’s Avengers books when I have time, just for the sake of Cap completism) and of course, one of the original creators of the character, Jack Kirby, is drawing the book. The character is a success, people want to see more of him so they give him half of a split-book with Iron Man starting in Tales of Suspense #59. So far as I understand, the reason for Marvel producing a lot of split books is that, for reasons that I won’t go into, National/DC, Marvels main competitor, were the distributors of Marvels books and they limited the amount of Marvel books that they would put on the news stands, so if Marvel wanted to market more characters in solo stories they had to share books with other characters, hence the Cap/Iron Man split in Tales of Suspense (just to be clear, a split book has half the page count devoted to solo, unconnected stories of the characters, rather than a team up book which would feature the characters together in one story.). This continued from issue 59 to 99, when the comic was renamed Captain America with issue 100, and featured cover to cover Cap. Kirby’s run as artist continued unbroken from Tales of Suspense #59 until Captain America #109 and he returned for one issue, #112 and that is the entirety of Kirby’s involvement in Cap’s Silver Age solo adventures. (The Annuals from this period did have Kirby stories but they were reprints from the main title, nothing new.)

Background done. Read on, one and all.

The comics I’ll be talking about in this post are all collected in the Captain America Omnibus (2011) ISBN 9780785150787. The full compliment is Tales of Suspense 59-99 and Captain America 100-113, which includes a couple of issues not by Kirby.

The copy I have features the variant cover by Ron Garney, which looks like this:

What I wanted, but couldn’t find anywhere, was the one with the original cover of Captain America 100, by Jack Kirby, which looks like this:

I actually like Ron Garney, I have some of his Cap stories, but why would you want to see Ron Garney re-imaging a Jack Kirby cover, when you could just see the Jack Kirby cover?

It really annoyed me. Probably more than it should have, but still, Garney vs. Kirby is a no-contest for me, especially when this collection is, in essence a Jack Kirby Omnibus. Dang you Marvel.

The first thing that struck me when I was reading, bearing in mind that I read Golden Age Cap right before this, was the panel layout. As I mentioned in the last post, the Golden Age Cap layouts are very fluid and unusual in places, but these Silver Age panels are much more rigid and structured, often with a strict six panels per page format. This is purely guess work, but Kirby was producing a lot of pages per month in this period so I imagine this was one way to streamline the process, along with some relatively sparse backgrounds which also serve to speed up the pencilling but with the benefit of focusing the readers attention on the subjects, particularly for the high energy action sequences which Kirby excels at. Another possible reason for the rigid panel layout could have been the page count for the Tales of Suspense stories. Because Cap shared the book with Iron Man, the stories needed to be condensed into roughly ten pages, so the opportunity for flamboyance was perhaps limited by this. I have to say that I don’t think the stories suffered because of this, the one thing that this type of layout provides is an obvious progression from panel to panel, there is little room for ambiguity in regard to the flow of the story.

Scanned from original comic, not this volume.

One of the highlights of this run is the reintroduction of one of my favourite villains back into the Marvel Universe. Tales of Suspense #66 brings the Red Skull back into prominence as a major antagonist for Cap. This guy is just a perfect foil for Cap, he exudes evil. There’s no sympathetic element here at all, we are given an origin, but the truth is that Red Skull isn’t truly a character, Red Skull represents an idea, the most base elements of humanity distilled into an ugly avatar of hate. He doesn’t need a name, he doesn’t even need to operate in a manner that makes sense, all he needs to do is corrupt, subjugate and control and that is what we see. A totally self obsessed and arrogant embodiment of Baddyhood. Steranko says in the afterword that when he took on the book, he wanted to move away from Red Skull as he felt that the character and his ideals were dated. As much as I enjoy Steranko’s work, in this instance I have to disagree absolutely. The Red Skull and his Nazi origins are a perfect shorthand for establishing his threat to everything that Cap holds dear, he’s iconic, he’s an archetype in the Jungian sense and he’s here, in this book. Look out.

A perfect Red Skull quote:

Gruning: Was that not why we lost world war two, because we underestimated the skill and the courage of free men.

Red Skull: No! It was because the Fuehrer did not listen to me!

There is a run of stories early in this volume which are retconned tales of Cap and Bucky in WW2. As they disappeared after a few issues I can only assume that they weren’t particularly favoured by the readers at the time. Personally, I loved them, but I can understand why they may not have been too popular at the time. Readers were buying these books to see solo Cap stories and this was the only place to find them, so they possibly felt a little cheated to find that he was not interacting with the Marvel Universe in the way that pretty much every other book did at the time. As a modern reader, knowing that there are plenty of Cap stories to come that have a contemporary setting, I found these issues an interesting early experiment in retroactive continuity and satisfying stories to boot. The narrative of these stories explores the relationship between Cap and Bucky with the occasional knowing wink in regard to the audience being aware of the fate of Bucky, but, when all is said and done, these are primarily action driven tales, which is exactly what they should be.

What I wasn’t expecting to find in this volume were the original letter pages as printed in the issues. I thought this was a great addition, I’ve always enjoyed reading letter pages of older books, it’s a telling insight into how the books were received by the fans on their initial publication, which isn’t always the same outcome as when they are looked back on years later. I won’t spoil it for you but I was surprised at the number of letter writers in this volume that went on to have notable careers in the comic book industry.

In regard to the presentation of this volume, it’s nothing new in terms of Marvel. A satisfyingly heavy and solid volume, beautifully bound with a high quality printing. It is all done to a high standard (hence the price tag) but, on a purely personal level, I would rather have seen a non-glossy paper stock with a more muted colour palette. (Benday dots anyone?) But having seen some of the feedback on the DC volumes that have done exactly that, it’s obvious that Marvel are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. There’s no accounting for taste.

Mad Thinker Reads................
The Most Base Elements of Humanity Distilled Into an Ugly Avatar of Hate and Other Pretentious Musings.




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The (Almost) Complete Marvel Sinbad

Mini Post

The reason that this is almost complete is because it doesn’t include the Marvel Classics issue that adapts the Sinbad stories from Arabian Nights. I don’t really know why I’ve chosen not to include that issue, it just didn’t seem to fit with the others.

Here’s what it does include, in order of release date:

Worlds Unknown 7 & 8. These two issues adapt the film “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” and they are my favourite Marvel Sinbad comics. The story was adapted by Len Wein with the art of George Tuska. I remember, as a kid, going to a comic mart and picking up some Thor issues by Wein and some Iron Man by Tuska, I fell in love with them instantly so this is a great combination of talent for me. Well paced over the two issues. An all round good egg.

Marvel Spotlight 25. One issue adaptation of “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” film by John Warner and Sonny Trinidad. This one’s not so good. The story is told in about 18 pages and it’s a hell of condensed tale. Warner & Trinidad use illustrated text panel to cram as much as possible into the low page count, but I found their choices of what to include as text rather than standard story panels odd. It’s difficult to lay the blame at the feet of the creative team because of the restricted number of pages, but it was still no as good as I’d hoped for.

Finally there’s The Fantastic 4^th Voyage of Sinbad. An original story by Chris Claremont & Pascal Ferry. I was expecting a reasonably straight forward time travel story, something comparable to Fantastic Four #5, where Ben gets to be a pirate. I was way off the mark with this one. Claremont & Ferry present us with a dimension hopping caper, with Ben reminiscing about his childhood heroes, but there’s not a great deal of Sinbad featured. Still, Sinbad is in it and it’s a pretty good read.

So, there you go. A lightning quick appraisal of The (Almost) Complete Marvel Sinbad.

Gotta Have It.

Mad Thinker.

Triple Treasure Island Treat

There are a couple of books that I can go back to and re-read again and again. Of these very few, there is one which I can truly claim as my favourite book. You may have guessed from the title which book that is, but just in case you haven't worked it out, that book is Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

But, as this is a comic blog I won’t be discussing the novel per se. What I will be commenting on are three comic book adaptations of the great work. I don’t intend to go into a whole lot of detail, but rather a quick review of  the three most accessible and easy to acquire comics that are available. The reason that I chose these three versions is that each is done in it’s own particular style, and, hopefully, at least one of them will appeal to the readers of this blog. None of them are perfect, but as ever, I guarantee that you’ve read worse comics than these and enjoyed them.

So, with no further delay and in no particular order, here we go.

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First up is a modern reprint of the Classics Illustrated Treasure Island. I don’t know who wrote the adaptation, but art is by Alex Blum. Originally published as Classics Illustrated 64 in October 1959, my copy is a reprint published by Classic Comic Store in June 2010, numbered as 21. (ISBN for my copy is 1906814472, and is available from Amazon with a cover price of £3.50)

For anyone already familiar with Classics Illustrated, I’m sure you’ll know what to expect, but if you’ve not seen one before I’ll let you know how it is. In a word, Truncated. Classics Illustrated: Treasure Island provides the reader with a sure footed and accomplished adaptation from start to finish, with accurate depictions of both characters and hardware, albeit filtered through contemporary TV & Film versions, but being limited to 52 pages means that any scenes and dialogue that don’t drive the narrative forward are, understandably, cut. Having said that, for anyone familiar with the story prior to reading this version, it does move along at a cracking pace, and everything that needed to be included in order for the story to make sense is there.

In short, if you are a fan of old school, super-condensed story telling in the Golden Age & early Silver Age style, this is the one for you. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

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Number two is Marvel Classics: Treasure Island, written by Roy Thomas with pencils by Mario Gully. Originally published as a limited series in six parts, I read it as a collected edition paperback. (ISBN: 0785125957, 160 pages, published February 2009)

Of the three mentioned in this post, this adaptation has, by far, the most satisfying ending. Thomas really takes his time winding this tale down, allowing us to see how the violence and betrayal has taken it’s toll on the characters, the young Jim Hawkins in particular. It is a reasonably text heavy work, with a lot of narrative boxes and speech balloons in every panel. Thomas has a great sense of pacing and a firm hold of the characters throughout. Even though this is the only adaptation mentioned in this post that was serialised, there were no obvious panel to panel, or page to page cliff-hangers that can often feel forced in a collected edition, so it feels like Thomas has approached this project as a single, unbroken piece.

Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Unfortunately it isn’t all roses. The art, my god the art. Mario Gully seems to have done no research whatsoever. Eighteenth Century galleons look like Roman Man ‘o Wars, obese pirates perform flying kicks to the face of enemies and apparently, Jim Hawkins father was Adolf Hitler (see interior art above). Shall I go on? The hamlet near Hawkins’ inn looks like a London thoroughfare, aging seamen must be using illegal horse steroids. And the list goes on.

So an otherwise great adaptation, that is definitely worth reading is knocked down a few pegs by dismal art. Damn you Mario. Straight to Davy Jones you go.

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The final book of this post is Treasure Island adapted by Tim Hamilton. (Published by Puffin in September 2005, 176 pages, ISBN: 0142404706.)

As far as I’m aware, this is the first work by Hamilton that I’ve read, but I don’t think it’ll be the last. Atmospheric, bleak and emotive art that is perfectly matched to the characters really raises the bar for any future adaptations that I read. The research, to my eye at least, seems impeccable and the Island itself, which is a major character, is rendered perfectly. Dense, dark jungle and a real sense of fear is created with heavy shadow and a style that changes from silhouettes to stark detail as and when required. For those unfamiliar with Hamilton I would compare his style to Kevin O’Neill, but with less of the grotesque. Each character is recognisable at a glance, not only from the face, but also from the posture.

Whilst the writing is solid, it isn’t quite up to the standard of Roy Thomas, it’s a difficult call to make, me being so familiar with the source material, but I wonder if someone who had no experience with Treasure Island would be a little unsure of some of the characters motivations in this version. The story itself however is executed brilliantly in Hamilton’s eerie manner. It looks almost like a horror comic, which I believe works beautifully.

My only complaint (which is in no way Hamilton’s doing) is the published format. It’s printed at a little over half the size of a standard comic, Hamilton has clearly compensated for this with foresight by reducing the number of panels per page, rather than forcing the reader to squint at reduced art. But four panels a page is not enough to tell this story.

But, if I had to call a winner, Hamilton’s adaptation would creep to the top of this pile of booty by a single Spanish doubloon.

Mad Thinker Reads…………

Comics Featuring Parrots.