Dr Hermes Reviews - DOC SAVAGE 1943

Back to 1942

THE TIME TERROR (Aug 13, 2001) From January 1943, this short (under 100 pages) book is listless and unrewarding. It has a reluctant, grudging quality to it, as if Lester Dent had a deadline coming up and just put in his required time at the typewriter. The story is pretty much a rehash of 1940's THE OTHER WORLD, but with none of the enthusiasm or screwball asides of the earlier work. And compared to the feverish, testosterone-surging rampages of THE LAND OF TERROR, this reads as very dry and lifeless. There are frequent, lengthy footnotes which interrupt the flow, but which do show that Dent saved newspaper clippings to use in future stories. And on the sixth page, there is an paragraph in italics which takes up most of the page, telling new readers who Doc and his friends are. This is so dreadful that it must have been written by the editor as a blurb in the original magazine. (Who at Bantam Books thought it was a good idea to interrupt the story that way?) In brief, Doc and his aides (Johnny joins the usual trio this time, as does Pat) find your basic Lost World at the arctic circle, where they tangle with the same assortment of dinosaurs, mammoths and troglodytes as before. Thrown into the stew are a squad of Japanese soldiers and a scientist who has invented an 'evolution accelerator' (Someone give Stephen Jay Gould a call, I think he'd like to hear about this.) Everyone goes through their paces rather mechanically, like a local acting troupe rehearsing their first show. Dent's actual prose is startlingly awkward and stilted. Is it possible this was a first draft? There is no reason why Doc would give a taxi driver directions to his hangar and then describe the building. Why does Ham tell Doc that Johnny is an archaelogist and geologist? A little polishing and tightening would have done wonders here. You can see Dent start a paragraph, change his mind and go in a different direction. There is some excitement and momentum at the dramatic first appearance of the pteodactyl, but it's not sustained. Halfway through the story, there is a two-page recap of the action, something I can't remember ever seeing in a Doc Savage story. Doc decides to clarify matters and everyone chimes helpfully into the summation. Introduced here is 'Ga', an unfortunately-named and nearly-naked blonde woman from the lost world who is able to casually throw grown men over the top of a low plane. Watching this, even Doc is impressed. Unfortunately, Ga does not get much chance to show what she's capable of. On the plus side, even amidst the enraged propaganda of wartime, Dent retains enough objectivity to mention the villain Saki is of the war class who had brought so much suffering on the Japanese people as a whole. There's no "Kill 'em all!" speeches common at the time. Pat Savage is introduced as "one of Doc's few living blood kin", which flatly contradicts many statements that they are the only two survivors of the Savage family. She is her usual feisty self, adding a little zest which this story could have used more of. Johnny is so delighted with this antedeluvian world that he almost hops up and down. You have to wonder what other paleontologists thought about Johnny's radical theories based on his actual experience with dinosaurs. There are few interesting bits of information (the Fortress of Solitude is "west of Greenland" ) and it says something about the era that when the guys rush out, they head first for the hatrack (you don't see a lot of fedoras on the street today). But when Lester Dent tells us about a Mountie who painted his pet wolf red (?!) to intimidate his sled dogs, so he can keep them in line by sticking his tongue out at them... well, I have to wonder if the editor was paying attention.

WAVES OF DEATH (June 14, 2001) From February 1943, this one was a real treat. Lester Dent had developed strikingly as a writer in the decade since the first issue. The basic storyline is about two gangs of crooks wheeling and dealing over control over a mysterious invention which has caused destructive tidal waves in Lake Michigan, where in theory these tsunami couldn't happen. But the pleasure in this story is in the lively, more natural characterization. All five aides as well as Pat take part, each gets at least a few good lines and chance to shine. It's reallly satisfying to see the others do well on their own without Doc there to lead them. They seem for once like competent adventurers who could form their own detective agency. Johnny is more believable here than he normally seems. In a quiet moment, he reflects that he has never had many pleasures or real friends in his life; his calling in the fields of archaeology and geology is all quiet study and research. "His association with Doc Savage gave his life all the hot sparkle it needed." Upset when he thinks Doc and Monk are dead, Johnny loses his normal control and shouts accusations at a suspect. And I loved the moment when Monk is being gallant with a telegraph operator. Johnny snorts and tells her, "Monk will next show you his pet pig, following which he will ask you for a date." Long Tom is his usual sour self, giving Renny short, impatient replies as they get ready to take off. Pat calls them "Grumpy and Grouchy." Pat herself comes off very well here, seeming fully as capable as any of the five. It's worth noting that she herself has invented a device for her plane which makes it sound like a distant car motor. Even Long Tom calls this a "slick idea." Pat knows Mayan here, which someone has taught her against Doc's wishes. No one will admit doing this and she'll never tell. I seem to recall elsewhere that it was Monk who taught her, but the idea that the aides have their own little secrets is appealing.

THE BLACK, BLCK WITCH (July 31, 2001) From March 1943, this is better than the straightforward wartime beginning would suggest. The story has a number of surprises and twists which show Lester Dent was trying to throw different ingredients into the mix. For one thing, the plot reverses the usual approach, going from occupied France to New York City and then New Jersey. The main villains are not hardened veteran crooks but ordinary people who have been tempted by the possibilities of the weird discovery. So although they're ready to kill if necessary, the villains don't approach things as cold-bloodedly as most of the goons in these stories. The witch of the title was a 16th Century alchemist named Peterpence, who allegedly invented the potion which gave Nostradamus his precognitive powers. Now, sad to say, the predictions of Nostradamus (like the diagnoses of the 'sleeping prophet' Edgar Cayce) don't really stand up to critical investigation, but for the purposes of this story, the ancient clairvoyant actually seemed to be able to foretell the future. And if some of the potion which gave him this power still existed, and the Nazis got hold of it.... It's difficult to say what Dent himself believed, but a number of his stories indicate he thought telepathy and other forms of ESP were genuine phenomena. In THE MENTAL WIZARD and THE MIDAS MAN, mind reading and mental control over others are not explained away as hoaxes. In THE BLACK, BLACK WITCH, it's significant that Monk has a dream about a blonde on a motorcycle before he mets a woman who actually does own a motorcycle. Pat Savage appears in this adventure, and has some of the best lines, including a snappy debate with Doc. She later says, "Nobody expects me to follow orders when they give them to me," and she had an oddly poignant moment when she's captured by the crooks, along with Monk, Ham and Johnny. They expect to be killed, and she says, "I don't think I could take it if you three were murdered, so I'm glad I'm here." Monk replies quietly, "You're crazy...but it's a nice speech, anyway." Ham gets to show some competence as he flies undetected into occupied France to pick Doc and Monk up. In an understated aside typical of Dent, we're told that Ham has been voted the SECOND best dressed man in America this year, losing out to a Hollywood actor. Even this late in his career, Doc is still going full blast as the heroic Man of Bronze-- spotting traps, outwitting Nazis and gangsters, solving murders. He can read 18th Century Manx, the Celtic speech of the Isle of Man (this makes twenty-two languages for him, although he says he's "hardly an expert"). When he speaks Mayan on the radio to avoid being understood by the Germans, he's using a trick he innovated before the real-world use of Navajo speakers instead of code. Doc overpowers a German officer to make an escape, and the man is later executed. This depresses Doc, as he feels responsible. Despite the often repeated attempts by our hero to get into the armed forces, it's clear he would have been ruined by commanding troops in actual combat. The cover to the Bantam reprint is not completely successful. For one thing, it shares space with the huge logo and the other illustration, making it too small to have any real impact. Bob Larkin's painting of Doc punching a German officer, with others of the enemy close behind, lacks any sense of movement or menace. The cover to the original pulp also doesn't work very well, showing Doc and Monk parachuting out of a plane. The angle and the poses are rather unexciting.

THE KING OF TERROR (Sep 10, 2001) From April 1943, this is very odd and interesting but not at all convincing. If a few Doc novels had to be classified as apocryphal, this would be a good candidate. If I didn't know better, I'd think Harold Davis had a hand in this story; it has some of his wilder than usual gimmicks and cartoony dialogue. Lester Dent apparently turned this book out in a rush, possibly because of other projects underway or because a manuscript was sent back. The ending is abrupt and unsatisfying ("Oops, last page. Better wrap this up."), and there are many moments that are far-fetched (not in the usual enjoyable way). Right at the start, Doc uses a motion picture of himself being gunned down in the lobby of the Empire State Building to fool two would-be assassins, and we are told that he has prepared a number of movies showing him being killed by a bomb, a single gunshot, and so on. The odds against this actually working are astronomical (how would the shots in the movie match the timing of the real gunshots? ) and frankly the idea of filming realistic versions of your own murder is pretty morbid and unhealthy. Doc needs some time in the Fortress of Solitude, composing violin solos or something. Monk and Ham disguise themselves as two red-headed Argentine thugs, doing such a poor job on the accents and characterizations that none of the villians believe them. Yet, for some reason, the crooks hire these two as thugs for a huge project. The whole story rolls on this way, as if Dent wasn't trying to be plausible anymore and was satisfied just to turn in a story with plenty of action. (Monk wins the "Oh, Come On!" Award for 1943 when he goes into the jungle for a few minutes and fabricates from plants a bleaching agent that lets him alter fingerprints on a card. That's a task for an alchemist, not a chemist.) As wth Ham's half-brother in another story, Monk has a relative introduced for no clear reason. "Handsome Mayfair", as he's called is Monk's sixteenth cousin (?!), a good-looking Naval flier who is also obssessed with adventure and chasing women. He and Monk trade some grudging banter, and Handsome (along with his own partner, wisecracking Bill Adams) join in as if they were going to be a new pair of aides, but they don't contribute much. Maybe Dent planned a series of short stories about these guys, or maybe he wanted to introduce some fresh characters to replace the guys he had been writing about for ten years. The reworking of earlier elements turns up in this story. Three years earlier in THE EVIL GNOME, suspense and mystery was caused by the perfect anesthetic, so effective that victims didn't know they had been unconscious. Here we find "the arrestor" (a great name, by the way), which has the same properties but which also causes the subject to repeat an action. Not much is done with this gas, unlike the earlier novel's effective use. The main goal of the mastermind is to have perfect impersonators of world leaders like De Gaulle, Churchill, Roosevelt and Hirohito replace the actual men in the chaos of wartime and loot their countries. (Good luck with a project like that.) At the same time, there are some very neat touches. Some of the newspapers which are so critical of Doc's activities are ones which he himself owns. He makes no attempt to influence their reporting or editorial viewpoint (commendable objectivity there, Doc). At this late point, he is still using workable gadgets like a tiny flexible saw in a fake crown or a handkerchief saturated with sedatives that can be dipped in someone's drink. (Hopefully he has another hanfdkerchief for the more conventional purposes.) Doc also has a remarkably fair-minded comment (for that era), which reflects well on both him and Lester Dent. "You know how the peasant soldiery of any country become when aroused and maddened by killing and bloodshed and hate. Others are as bad as the Japanese, probably...." Compared to many pulp and comics stories of that time where the Japanese were treated as not really human, this is pretty tolerant. Also, considering the comments on Doc's racial beliefs, here he spends time with his huge guard, a South African black man named Goeie Maart, but called Robin, who claims proudly to be descended from a long line of kings. "Doc Savage had studied the big black. He had decided there was not a more intelligent man in the group, not one with more solid nerve." And when our hero has to skulk in disguise, he does it as Robin, putting grease paint on: "It did not take a great deal, on top of the already dark bronze of his skin." Also, we see that Doc is perceptive enough to realize much of his problem understanding women is that he never meets any normal ones in his line of work, just double agents and Dragon Ladies and beautiful daughters of elderly scientists. "It was hard to think that all of them could be as unpredictable as those he had met." So the bronze man is not completely clueless. But the best part of the book is Doc's brief return to the Republic Of Hidalgo. We learn that most of the inhabitants are of Mayan descent and know all about the Valley of the Vanished. It's their most sacred treasure, and they love Doc for three times rescuing it from destruction. In the clutches of the villains, Doc sings out instructions in Mayan for help, and soon he has an army of natives coming to his aid. All right! It's just speculation, but I sure think they honor and respect him because he is half Mayan himself and they expect him to someday be their leader.