It figures.
In the past, I have been reviewing issues of The Bronze Gazette based on each subscription set. For 2018, it was planned there would be three issues, #81-83, and after only seeing #81 and 82, I went ahead and posted that review.
And then, issue #83, the “last” for 2018 (though it really came out in March 2019) arrived in the mail. And PULPlications is now taking subscriptions for the 2019 issues, though only two this time. So here, then, is my review on #83 of this long-running Doc Savage fanzine, rather than waiting until the 2019 recap.
• #81 (Late Winter 2018) has another great set of articles, actually giving us more than two articles each from researchers Dafyyd Neal Dyer and Julian Puga, along with some great artwork. The front cover is by Tom Morgan, and the back cover is by Tim Faurote, who “updates” the Bantam paperback backcover with the original pulp counterparts. A nice touch.
Okay, from Dyer we get an article on “The Outlaw Doc Savage,” basically looking at the various way Doc and his aides broke the law, what with imported gold (soon illegal), the crime college, and more. Then he looks at why Doc didn’t wear a hat, something that most men did at the time, and finally the related idea of Doc’s hair and whether he wore an armored skull cap. The last shows where this idea came from and where it was used.
Then, Julian Puga attempts to fix the chronology of some stories based on the position of the sun, and a more interesting article that looks at who the real-life basis for Baron Karl from “The Fortress of Solitude” was.
Rounding out the issue are three more articles. One looks at mapping out the Doc adventures. Apparently a group was working on this years ago, but the website they kept their materials on is no more. Here Catherine Lavallee-Welch maps out “The Land of Always-Night.” Frankly, this is a topic that could be used for future articles. Craig Rogers reassesses “Se-Pah-Poo,” which many dislike. And then Chuck Welch looks at the 1932 Major League Baseball team, the Hidalgo Bombers, made up of Doc and friends. The article includes their trading cards.
As always, it’s a great issue. I have already subscribed for the 2019 issues, and encourage others to do the same. Hopefully they will come out more regularly and will include some special issues, as we didn’t get any this past year.
