At the end of 2014, Dynamite put out a trio of square-bound, one-shot specials with the three Street & Smith pulp heroes they were publishing: The Avenger, Doc Savage, and The Shadow.
As all three came out at the same time, with the same cover style and cover art by Robert Hack, I figured I’d review all three at once.
• The Avenger Special 2014: The Television Killers. Set in 1939, this is probably the best Avenger comic-book story I’ve seen ever. This beats out DC’s first attempt at an Avenger comic, which had been the best so far. The inside cover gives us an overview of the members of Justice Inc., though it makes the mistake of saying The Avenger’s wife and daughter died in a plane crash (but got it right later on in the story when recalling his “origin”).
The story actually has two plots. One is Justice Inc. helping protect singer Billie Holiday from racist thugs; another is a scheme that goes awry that turns people in to cannibalistic zombies. All the members of Justice Inc. are properly used. We see The Avenger use Mike and Ike, and also see Justice Inc. using their miniature two-way radios and celluglas armor. The Avenger is shown wearing the outfit from the Warner paperback covers, which isn’t correct, but I’ll let that pass.
I really hope Dynamite does more stories like this with The Avenger.
• Doc Savage Special 2014: Woman of Bronze. Set in 1939, this story is mainly about Pat Savage. Doc enlists her to babysit the young daughter of a Chinese scientist. But Japanese agents try to take her, and Doc is incapacitated. So it’s up to Pat to get her back. In the end, Doc seems to allow Pat to join him in future adventures.
This is a rare story focused on Doc’s cousin, Pat Savage, who has the same hair, skin, and eye coloration as Doc, and who also wants to go on adventures. For the most part, she runs an exclusive salon and spa. We actually met one of her employees who helps out a bit, though I thought having her also be a pilot was a bit much. Also, I doubt that Doc would have any biplanes in his warehouse. Most, if not all, of his planes were amphibious, which this one was not. And having a modern Nautilus-style exercise machine in Pat’s office was a bit of a stretch (or an artist flub). They also made it seem that Doc had a buzz cut, when the descriptions are of his hair laying close to his head, which is not the same.
Not sure if this was meant as a setup for future Doc stories that will include Pat. We haven’t see any announcement of further Doc stuff from Dynamite for 2015.
• The Shadow One Shot 2014: Agents of the Shadow. While undated, it’s clear this story is set in the 1930s. The basic story is that a new foe of The Shadow has somehow managed to take him out, perhaps permanently. However, several of his agents work to figure out who this foe is and how to defeat him. In the end they succeed.
This story used several of The Shadow’s main agents, though left out Harry Vincent, who I think of as his main one before Margo Lane came along later. I think they should have done something like with The Avenger Special of running info on the agents on the inside front cover. For most of the agents, we don’t know their names until someone mentions them. And for readers not familiar with the agents, this would have helped. We got Margo Lane, who is The Shadow’s “right hand girl”; Clyde Burke, who is a newspaper reporter; Cliff Marsland, a wrongly convicted ex-con who mainly infiltrated gangs; Moe Shrevnitz, a taxi driver and chauffeur for The Shadow; and pilot Miles Crofton, though I don’t understand why they showed him with a squinting eye. I was bothered by the impression given that others know who The Shadow’s agents are. This would be dangerous for them and defeat their purpose if that was the case.
Now, there were a few issues with the story. They make the mistake of saying Lamont Cranston is The Shadow, when we know that’s not true. Also, the travels of Miles and Margo would have taken too long for them to get back as quickly as they did. And I’m not a fan of giving The Shadow (or his foes) the kind of psychic powers as shown here. I can accept that The Shadow learned mental and martial disciplines in the Far East, but not the stuff they’ve tried to show in the recent Shadow comics.
Also, they gave Walter Gibson creator credit on the Shadow, but why not the same for Lester Dent and Paul Ernst in the other specials?
Overall, despite these issues, these are a nice trio of work. I hope that what we see from Dynamite in 2015 with these characters will be at least as good.
