Four books for Doc Savage fans

Four books that I think every Doc Savage fan should have are:

• “Doc Savage: Arch Enemy of Evil” by Larry Widen (1993, 2006)
• “The Collector’s Handbook of Bronze, Final Edition,” by Jay Ryan (2009)
• “A History of the Doc Savage Adventures in Pulps, Paperbacks, Comics, Fanzines, Radio and Film,” by Robert Michael Cotter (2009)
• “Writings in Bronze,” Will Murray (2011)

“Doc Savage: Arch Enemy of Evil” is an excellent overview of Doc Savage. We first get an intro to Doc and his aides, then we get an overview of the original novels. Each page has two pulp covers (in black and white) with a paragraph write-up of the story, and notes on where it was reprinted or adapted.

Then we get a section that reprints all the paperback covers, four to a page. The next section goes into the new Doc stories (up through “Forgotten Realm”). The final section is a selection of foreign pulp covers, comic books, and other books. An enjoyable book on Doc.

More for the collector — though I think any serious fan will find it useful — is “The Collector’s Handbook of Bronze.” The edition from 2006 is billed as the “Final Edition,” which I think is premature, as new stuff is still coming out.

The book is divided into different sections. The first covers the Street & Smith era and gives details on the pulps, but also stuff put out by S&S, as well as foreign pulps. The charts in this section are useful, and include breakdowns of authors and cover artists, among others. The next section is the Bantam era, looking at the Bantam paperbacks. Here we get charts showing the reprint output and cover artists. We then get comic books, going from the S&S ones up through Dark Horse, as well as foreign comic books.

“Bronze Information Sources” is next, and lists all the various books and fanzine with information on Doc Savage. This helps for those wanting to find out sources of research on Doc. The Doc Savage movie is next, with information on all the materials put out that tied in, again both in the U.S. and elsewhere. A section on all the other Doc materials put out in modern times: trading cards, statues, busts, prints, and the like is next. The final section is a checklist. While I am not a heavy collector, I’ve still found the info in the book useful.

Unlike “Doc Savage: Arch Enemy of Evil,” “Bobb” Cotter’s work, “A History of the Doc Savage Adventures,” delves more deeply into the stories themselves. We get three chapters that take up about two-thirds of the work that delve into the pulp stories, each one getting anywhere from a couple of paragraphs to about a page each.

We then move into comics, and this one gets into the stories that appeared there, though we don’t get details on all the Street & Smith comics, we do get a thorough understanding. Next up is Doc on radio and movies, though nothing about the aborted Goodson-Todman effort, but we do learn about the movies planned after the George Pal effort. A welcome addition is a chapter on the fanzines, as we learn quite a bit of these. The last chapter is on the new Doc stories that appeared after the pulps ended.

There are several appendixes that add to it. One is a listing of people (writers, editors, artists) associated with Doc. There’s a list of the best Doc novels, pulp covers and paperback covers. And there are listings of all the Doc pulps, paperbacks, and comic books. All together, it’s a well-rounded package, and one that I think every Doc fan should have.

Hopefully, most people know that Will Murray is the new Kenneth Robeson. What they may not know is that Murray is a long-time pulp researcher who has written a wide range of works on the pulps, many of which has appeared in now hard-to-find pulp fanzines. While some of those articles have been reprinted, even those can be hard to find. This thick volume (around 450 pages) — “Writings in Bronze” — from Altus Press brings together over 50 articles on a wide range of topics involving Doc Savage. So instead of trying to track down those various small press booklets or fanzines, you can get this work. I do hope we will see further volumes of Murray’s pulp writtings on other pulp characters coming from Altus Press.

So there you go. Four non-fiction books on Doc Savage that every Doc fan should consider getting.  Happy reading!