‘The Bronze Gazette’ for 2018

It’s early 2019 and so we take a look at all of The Bronze Gazette issues from 2018, as I’ve done for previous years. Subscriptions are taken for a year’s set of issues.

So here are issues #81 and 82 of this long-running Doc Savage fanzine.

• #81 (Spring 2018) has a cover by artist Dan Brereton, along with an article by the artist on how it came about. (Prints of the cover are available.) The recent Doc comicbook series, The Ring of Fire, is the subject of two items. One is a review; the other is an extended version of author’s commentary from the trade paperback collection.

Doc researcher Dafydd Neal Dyar writes about Doc’s cousin, Pat Savage, which is available in his collection of articles, The Savage Dyaries, now out in paperback. From researcher Julian Puga, we get a look at Satan Black and where it should fit in the Doc chronology. And from Art Sippo, there is a reprint of his afterward on the Titan edition of A Feast Unknown, which helps explain this work and how it fits into Philip José Farmer‘s overall pulp works.

Finally, we get a short (one-page) article on “Doc Has a Gun!” that looks at the idea of Doc being shown on covers with a gun. While there is a good listing of the items Doc has on the Bantam covers, some are left out: Doc with a “space gun” on the covers for Green Death, The Freckled Shark, and Omnibus #4; plus Doc having some kind of gun on the cover of The Land of Fear, having a hypodermic needle on Resurrection Day, flashlight on Spook Hole. On the Escape from Loki cover, he has a .45 automatic pistol.

• #82 (Fall 2018) focuses on the latest (and maybe last?) new Doc, Mr. Calamity. We get a new cover that has the two recent covers done as a Bantam Doc Double. Tied to this is a review of The Valley of Eternity by Duane Spurlock and an article by Will Murray on the writing these works.

Rounding out the issue is a tribute to the late artist Ron Wilbur, a look at PJF’s Escape from Loki by Murray, another look at PJF by Christopher Paul Carey, and another of Julian Paga’s research articles. This time Puga looks at the real-life events that may have inspired The Fiery Menace.

Bronze Gazette subscriptions are sold in three-issue cycles. #83 will conclude the current subscription cycle, and will come out sometime this year, after which we can subscribe for the next three issues. I’m looking forward to it.