Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) (56 page)

Although Lester set his Doc Savage novels all over the world, for some obscure reason he never saw the city of Chicago as a suitable locale for a major Doc exploit. Back in the 1940s, Lester was asked to lecture at the Chicago chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. Arriving late, he walked into the auditorium where a featured speaker was holding forth in his absence. When members of the audience noticed Dent, they stood up and burst into spontaneous applause, whereupon the speaker halted his talk, remarking, “I turn the podium over to the man you obviously came to hear.” It was one of the highlights of the Missouri writer’s life.

During the conference, Lester agreed to participate in a law-enforcement demonstration on how to defeat an armed assailant. Brandishing a .38-caliber revolver, the writer slipped around hotel corners until a Chicago police detective pounced, grabbing his arm and twisting it, deftly disarming Dent. A press photographer captured every step of the demonstration, and the dramatic shots subsequently appeared in newspapers and magazines nationwide.

Dent started writing pulp fiction in the late 1920s, when the Prohibition era was at its lawless bottom. Some of his earliest stories featured the classic underworld figures which remain semi-romantic well into the 21st Century. Only a few years along in Lester’s writing career, those classic gangster figures became passé. But they live on in the popular culture, in pulp fiction and in this present novel, which was built from one of Lester Dent’s unpublished gangster stories.

About the Author: Will Murray

WILL MURRAY is the author of more than 60 novels, including nearly 20 posthumous Doc Savage collaborations with Lester Dent under the name Kenneth Robeson, as well as 40 entries in the long-running Destroyer series. He has pitted the Man of Bronze against King Kong in
Skull Island
and teamed him up with The Shadow in
The Sinister Shadow.
His first Tarzan novel is titled
Return to Pal-ul-don.
His second is
the forthcoming
King Kong vs. Tarzan,
a project first envisioned by film producer Merian C. Cooper back in 1935. Other Murray novels star Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Mack Bolan and the Martians of the Mars Attacks! franchise.

For various anthologies, Murray has written the adventures of such classic characters as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, The Hulk, The Spider, The Avenger, The Green Hornet, Sherlock Holmes, Cthulhu, Herbert West, Honey West, The Secret 6, Sky Captain and Lee Falk’s immortal Ghost Who Walks, The Phantom. He also contributed to the Planet of the Apes franchise and co-created Squirrel Girl for Marvel Comics.

Murray’s non-fiction works include
The Duende History of The Shadow Magazine, The Assassin’s Handbook,
AKA
Inside Sinanju, Wordslingers: An Epitaph for the Western
and
Forever After: An Inspirational Story.
He has contributed to numerous encyclopedias and other reference works ranging from
The Dictionary of Literary Biography
to
Comics Through Time.

For National Public Radio, he adapted
The Thousand-Headed Man
for
The Adventures of Doc Savage
dramatic series.

Will Murray grew up in and around Boston, and visited Chicago but once. That was to rush from O’Hare Airport to Union Station in order to catch an Amtrak Superchief train bound for La Plata, Missouri, home of Mrs. Lester Dent.

About the Artist: Joe DeVito

JOE DeVITO was born on March 16, 1957, in New York City. He graduated with honors from Parsons School of Design in 1981 and continued his study of oil painting at the city’s famed Art Students League.

Over the years, DeVito has painted many of the most recognizable Pop Culture and Pulp icons, including King Kong, Tarzan, Doc Savage, The Shadow, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man,
Mad
magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman and various characters from World of Warcraft. Throughout, his illustrations have displayed an accent toward dinosaurs, Action Adventure, SF and Fantasy. He has illustrated hundreds of book and magazine covers, painted several notable posters and trading cards for the major comic book and gaming houses, and created concept and character design for the film and television industries.

In 3D, DeVito sculpted the official 100th Anniversary statue of Tarzan of the Apes for the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate, The Cooper Kong for the Merian C. Cooper Estate, Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman for Chronicle Books’ Masterpiece Editions, several other notable Pop and Pulp characters, including a Doc Savage statue executed for Graphitti Designs, based on DeVito’s own cover to Will Murray’s
Python Isle.
Additional sculpting work ranges from scientifically accurate dinosaurs, a multitude of collectibles for the Bradford Exchange in a variety of genres, to larger-than-life statues and the award trophy for the influential art annual
SPECTRUM
.

An avid writer, Joe is the creator of Skull Island and The Primordials. He is also the co-author (with Brad Strickland) of two novels, which DeVito illustrated as well. The first,
KONG: King of Skull Island
(DH Press), was published in 2004. The second book, Merian C. Cooper’s
KING KONG,
was published by St. Martin’s Griffin, in 2005. He has also contributed many essays and articles to such collected works as
Kong Unbound: The Cultural Impact, Pop-Mythos, and Scientific Plausibility of a Cinematic Legend
and “Do Android Artists Paint In Oils When They Dream?” in
Pixel or Paint: The Digital Divide-In Illustration Art.

Of his
Glare of the Gorgon
painting, Joe notes:

This image proved to be quite interesting in that it is the first close-up of Doc Savage I have painted for a front cover, and because of the concept itself, which is both symbolic and literal. At first, we entertained the idea of Doc standing against either a black or white background with the shadow of the Medusa falling over him. But that concept posed many problems, least of which was how to make the silhouette read properly and how to make it synch with the lighting on the classic Steve Holland pose we selected to work from.

I had always liked the idea of a somewhat graphic image. It solved the issues of how to make a realistic shadow work with either the black or white backdrops. That iconic Day-Glo poster of Jimi Hendrix with the wild hair silhouetted against the green flames on a fuchsia background from the 1960s immediately popped into my head. For those of you who had one of those ubiquitous black lights that caused everything to turn blue in their room—and made the Day-Glo colors wildly fluoresce—you know exactly what I am referring to. That Hendrix poster was
the
poster for that particular visual experience.

I could not get the image of using the outline of the Medusa’s snake-haired head as a graphic backdrop for Doc out of my mind. I chose a simple black background to echo that first
Man of Bronze
James Bama painting, since this pose is from that vintage photo shoot (which, coincidentally, I believe occurred around the same time that Jimi Hendrix poster came out). I also thought black was far better than white in conveying the desired mood. This approach worked well overall, but when the image was reduced, the green glow I put in Doc’s eye was not obvious enough to tie the image together and tell the story. The composition needed more. So after some discussion it was decided to add the Gorgon’s hand, and show Doc’s shirt slowly turning to stone to clearly get the point across. Suddenly, the image took on an unusual synthesis of the reality of Doc Savage, scaly hand and the stone shirt, with the symbolic halo of writhing green snakes behind Doc’s head. Combined, this made for a powerfully graphic, traditional yet uniquely satisfying Doc Savage cover.

Everything had come full circle. When finally discovered by the viewer this gives the original hook—the glow in the eye—exponentially more power: Now that Doc’s gaze has been caught, and his shirt has begun the transformation, can he resist, or will the Man of Bronze become one more victim of the Glare of the Gorgon?

I may have stated this before—if so, forgive me—but is this stuff fun or what?

www.jdevito.com

www.kongskullisland.com

FB: Joe DeVito-DeVito Artworks

About the Patron: Dave Smith

LIKE most adolescent boys of the 1960s, Dave Smith was into comic books. Even before the 1966
Batman
TV show aired, Dave had already filled his young mind with reruns of the old George Reeves
Superman
TV show. He began reading comics in the late 1950s and has been on the hunt ever since. He lived only a few blocks from downtown Anaheim and would ride his bike to his favorite drugstore selling the latest comics. Then in the late ’60s he stumbled upon Doc Savage and the awesome James Bama art that initially attracted him to the Bantam reprint books. Dave remembers starting with
The Man of Bronze
(you have to start with #1, don’t you?) which engrained the origin story deep in his psyche. He still recalls reading
Brand of the Werewolf
and
Resurrection Day
early on. The paperbacks’ copyright dates led him to discover the actual pulp magazines from which they originated.

Dave remembers the day when a used bookstore opened up in downtown Anaheim. He peered into the front window for the first time and saw on a pegboard display some old comic books. These weren’t just old, they were really old, like from when his dad was young––titles such as
Superman
#14 (January, 1942),
Green Hornet
#23 (March, 1945),
America’s Best
#14 (June, 1945) and many others. This new bookstore was The Book Sail and would be a life-changing place for this young boy. Dave started hanging around and learned all he could from the owner, who taught him about not just old comics, but pulp magazines and rare books. The first pulp magazines he ever saw were a run of
Amazing Stories
back to #1. Eventually, he was hired in 1969 to work for the store at age 14.

Dave also remembers his first hunt for a
Doc Savage
pulp magazine. He had heard about this one particular story called
Up From Earth’s Center
where Doc goes to Hell… well, maybe. That sounded intriguing to him and he started searching for that issue. Dave eventually discovered an outstanding copy at a comic book convention in Anaheim, CA. In retrospect, it’s interesting that the first
Doc Savage
pulp he ever bought turned out to be the final issue of the run.

Dave learned all he could about the history of comics and pulps, as well as all the characters and authors who started out in the pulps. He educated himself about the various artists and why some were more desirable than others. He also absorbed the traditions of being a book dealer and made many connections. He learned the art of negotiation, buying wholesale, and how to meet the needs of customers. He enjoyed speaking with collectors and helping them find what they were looking for. Sounds simple, right? Finding those last few pulps to finish a collection for a customer is not easy, but it’s one of the more satisfying parts of the job for Dave. Finding scarce and rare items for people has become a very important part of the business even to this day and it’s almost as much a thrill as filling in holes in his own collection.

Dave worked for The Book Sail on and off from 1969 to 1978, then opened his own comics store in Garden Grove, CA in 1979. Fantasy Illustrated went from a 500 square foot store-front a mile and a half south of Disneyland to an 800 square foot unit, allowing him to create a pulp section. Dave remembers one of his first big buys was a beautiful run of early
Docs.
He kept the really high grade
Red Skull
because of the striking cover and he still has that pulp to this day. Alas, most of the rest of the run was sold to pay bills and living expenses. Ah! The bitter world of being a collector-dealer.

In 1992, Denver-based Mile High Comics wanted a piece of the Disneyland area comic book action and approached Dave about buying his store. A deal was struck that allowed Dave to keep certain items in the store, including the pulp section. He then helped manage their Anaheim Mega-Store of more than 10,000 square feet of comics and pop culture items. After his 18 month contract was up, Dave moved to Seattle in late 1994 and purchased Rocket Comics while keeping the Fantasy Illustrated name for his mail order business.

Over the years, Dave has published 30 mail order catalogues in the Comic, Pulp and Paperback fields, publishing his last one in 1999. That was about the time he switched to selling on eBay as the source of most of his mail order business. That last catalogue Dave recalls fondly as the one that introduced the Yakima Pulp Pedigree collection to many pulp collectors.

A while later, he met his future wife, Kelli. She was an attorney becoming burned out as a public defender. She wanted to get into another area of law, but didn’t quite know how to go about starting her own office. Since Dave knew how to run a business and had been self-employed most of his adult life, they worked out a plan to open up their own law office. Dave went back to college and earned an advanced Paralegal certificate. A month after his 2005 graduation, they opened a law office. Today Dave works part time as a paralegal and office manager but the rest of the time buys and sells for Fantasy Illustrated. But it’s clear Dave doesn’t look at it as work. When you’re passionate about something, it really isn’t work, is it?

Currently, Dave spends a copious amount of his time buying and selling pulp magazines. In his spare time, he is a writer on the subject of pulps and also sharing what he has learned in the decades of running his own businesses. He has written for
Blood ‘N’ Thunder
and also publishes his own fanzine: “Dave’s Clubhouse” for PEAPS (Pulp Era Amateur Press Society). After decades of collecting, dealing and chasing down all kinds of pulps both for himself and his customers, Dave now owns two complete sets of the
Doc Savage
pulps: a personal set he has been working on and upgrading for decades and one for sale or trade. What a great life!