Dr Hermes Reviews - DOC SAVAGE 1938

Back to 1937

"We're off the coast of Norway?? That damn Monk told me to pack my Hawaiian wardrobe!"

THE LIVING FIRE MENACE (Aug 25, 2001) From January 1938, this was written by Harold A Davis, and it shows both his strengths and weaknesses. It has creative energy, imagination and momentum. But the sequence of events are sometimes confused and the descriptions are often vague. Davis does work up real excitement in the cliffhangers, but some of his ideas could have used judicious editing (the glass revolvers are a bit hard to take). The deadly gimmick this time involves dense, electrically-charged ore from the center of the earth. Crooks are using a literal Mad Scientist and a hundred freed convicts in an attempt to harness the force in the ore. The 'living fire' seeps into the human body, gradually turning the skin a bright cherry-red and charging it up until contact with metal or water is fatal. So you have an underground facility (where everything is made of rubber or glass) manned by desperate killers who are glowing with electricity, and the force is slowly making them insane. Yikes! Quite a situation. There is a lot of feverish activity, last second escapes and desperate gambits. All five aides join Doc this time, and he specifically forbids the pets to be brought alone, as the situation is too unpredictable. There are a few points worth noticing. In the laboratory where the dangerous ore is being studied, the skills of Johnny, Long Tom and Monk are all put to use in analysis. Ham is imprisoned in an electric chair and the twisted Professor Torgle says, "The lawyer is of no use down here anyway." When I say twisted, it's literal. Torgle has a flat skull, glowing red eyes and feet which go in a different direction from his body, as if he had been almost broken at some time. Despite the professor's gruesome appearance, Doc is able to disguise himself as Torgle, using only the ingredients of his utility belt. Monk shows real powers of observation that Ellery Queen wouldn't be ashamed to display. Four thugs say they've been playing poker for two hours and there's plenrty of cigarette smoke...but the chemist notices the ashtrays are clean. Okay, Monk! There is a strange moment where Renny is described as the worst fighter of the five aides, despite other moments in the story where he flattens thugs in all directions. It sure seems Davis has confused Renny with Johnny (who may well have been the least effective brawler). In the next breath, Davis writes that Renny wanted "time to study the queer geological strata, prepare papers on it that would confound his scientific associates." Doesn't that sound like Johnny, not Renny? When being attacked by a hundred armed, crazed, electrically-charged killers, Ham wishes he had his sword cane. Yeah, a lot of help that would be. Monk yells, "I'll take 'em! I'll take 'em all!" while jumping up and down and actually beating his chest (?!) I wonder if Davis ever planned to write a story which showed Monk was a surviving Neanderthal? Johnny is the only one of the five aides not to use a military rank from the Great War, and it's suggestive that he refers to being in the Army with an undercover agent called Z-2 from the Department of Justice. Was William Harper Littlejohn a former spy? Doc is able to perform miracles. Not only can he disguise himself in seconds to look like Torgle, the Man of Bronze can hide a few feet away from a crook and throw his voice into the crook's mouth...despite the man's protests. Doc can also run into the battery room of a submarine and use the chemicals there to whip up a harmless anesthetic gas. From a dead stand, our hero can jump onto the roof of a 1938 touring car and from there over a twelve-foot wall. On the other hand, Davis shows Doc as willing to be killed to protect his friends more than once. He insists on trying the device to remove the deadly charge from his own body first, instructing Long Tom to keep trying if he's killed. And when confronted with the crazed workers, Doc stops their charge with sheer charisma and talks them into redirection. He does this a number of times in the books and it's impressive. A man with his wealth and accomplishments, not to mention appearance, would have a commanding presence. There is an odd reference to "Stephan Pribil, a Hungarian scientist" who has invented an invisibility process. Was Davis referring to one of his own stories? Or was this some real-life scam of the time? I also like the reference to the aides meeting for dinner at a place called "Reefers", and Monk saying something sounds like "a pipe dream" a second later.

THE MOUNTAIN MONSTER (June 12, 2001) Has anyone else read this book? Mercy! It is so far-fetched and hard to believe that every few pages I put it down and said, "Oh, come on!" If I had been expecting a parody or a screwball take-off, that would have been one thing but the cover did say "Doc Savage" and "Kenneth Robeson" so there was no warning just how goofy this February 1938 book would be. On a basic level, it's a familiar plot. A gang of international crooks tries to cover up their activities with a marauding monster of their devising – in this case, a spider 'two stories tall' that appears in thunderstorms. Its odor terrifies and mesmerizes its victims, who are found mangled after The Monster leaps away over the trees. The setting is a government homesteader project in Alaska, Arcadia Valley. But the things that go on in this story... ! Chemistry jumps onto an ambulance stolen by crooks. "Pedestrians report that the ape is no longer on top of the machine. He is driving it." To which Monk yells, "Something's wrong!" When Monk and Ham are bound and gagged, "they continued some experiments in thought transference and telepathy they had begun back in New York. The results were pretty good. Ham almost choked on his gag at the insults Monk was hurling at him." In the few seconds he is covered by one of his smoke bombs, Doc switches clothing with a crook, then uses make-up to make them resemble each other so closely that no one notices at close range. A radio operator is relaxing with a copy of THE SHADOW Magazine. (!) Doc doesn't merely imitate other voices or make his own voice sound like it's far away. He literally throws it so it sounds behind a gunman, distracting him. Fighting the thirty-foot spider, the boys use rapid-firing elephant guns with explosive shells which Doc had designed "for cases just like this." And Chemistry more than ever seems to be a prehistoric hominid, some close ancestor to humans,rather than a mere ape. He is eager to go into battle with the aides, despite the fact that he knows what gunfire means. He goes back from a scene to fetch Ham and Long on his own initiative. "Chemistry bounded forward, trying to talk. He made weird sounds." He races to snatch Habeas Corpus from an oncoming streetcar. When a frightened girl tries to flee, he brings her back with a paw over her mouth and a grip on her arm. Doc tells him he did very well. "Chemistry beamed under the praise." He's almost the sixth aide in this story. When the heroes are captured, Chemistry is tied up alongside them. In a whacky, hallucinatory way, THE MOUNTAIN MONSTER is entertaining but it's sure not what you'd usually expect from a Doc Savage adventure. This one was written by Harold A. Davis, and it has a lot in common with his earlier THE GREEN DEATH. Maybe I should check out the other books Davis ghosted for Lester Dent.

DEVIL ON THE MOON (July 30, 2001) From March 1938, this is a very creative story and a lot of fun. It starts with great energy and finishes with a strong, bizarre ending. Toward the end, the pace slackens just a bit but that's a minor criticism. Books and movies usually slow down a bit before building up to the climax, as a straightforward headlong rush tends to wear the audience down. The villain here is operating on a huge international scale. The Man on the Moon runs an organization of spies and saboteurs who hire out to cause trouble for nations. They have aided a European nation's invasion of a weaker country by preventing another world power from intervening. (I read this as Italy conquering Ethiopa, with Britain distracted from stepping in, but other interpretations are possible.) The Man on the Moon is one of the 'merchants of war' so reviled in the 1930s, international muntions manufacturers who stir up conflict to sell weapons. These were used as villains in pulp fiction up to World War II; Daddy Warbucks is a good example. Doc takes a dim view of these masterminds. What makes the Man on the Moon unique is that he apparently takes enemies he wants to interrogate and keeps them in a prison camp which is literally on the moon (?!) There is a sequence in which Doc and his aides are knocked out by gas in a huge bullet-shaped rocket which is set for launching. They wake up in a cold, barren crater which has a sky overhead that's an eerie gray half-light. To say any more would be a real spoiler for fans who haven't read this book yet. Even more appealing though is the first third of the book. The Man on the Moon's spy ring has a new hireling, a huge bald-headed man with red hair on his chest and hands, lots of freckles and splay teeth. 'Behemoth' is slangy, goofy and very inquisitive. As soon as we meet this thug, he is shown climbing the outside of a brick building with just his fingers and toes (so the reader knows right away it's Doc). Doc Savage is obviously having a blast as Behemoth. He gets to smoke cigars, be rude, nosy and boisterous, and he manipulates the gangsters he works with effortlessly. Here, and in THE FRECKLED SHARK and KING JOE CAY, Doc enjoys being disguised as a no-good so much that it seems clear he's acting out his own impulses to stop being so noble and serious all the time. Many times in the books, the bronze man gets into elaborate disguises and personas when there really is no need for them, and he must be getting a kick out of it. This is a very human side to our hero. You can see why super-heroes tend to have secret identities. Pat Savage is in the entire story, but she doesn't make a good showing. Aside from getting everyone captured as she falls for a simple ruse, she seems altogether too eager to maul other women. As soon she meets the suspect Lin Pretti, Pat's reaction is, "I'll probably box this hussy's ears," and she instructs Monk to hold the woman so she can start. Later, when the tension has Lin Pretti right on the edge of hysterics, Pat slaps her "once, very hard" and the woman draws back, pale and unspeaking. This story is filled with interesting little asides. Doc meets with the government's espionage department ("there wasn't supposed to be a United States spy system, of course" the narrative blandly states) so he's obviously cleared above Top Secret. And there is a paragraph about the 86th floor that is written a bit confusingly and may have been an editorial insertion. The building has been re-numbered to skip the 13th floor so the top floor is now unnumbered and officially doesn't exist. Doc is also trying to give the impression that he no longer can be found there, but that attempt goes nowhere and for the rest of the adventures, people still go to the 86th floor either for help or to try to assassinate Doc. The Man of Bronze is so strong that when he grips a thug's wrist to wrestle a gun away, "the ends of [the crook's] fingers bulged like stepped-on weiners under the pressure and one fingertip split and emptied crimson" (So don't challenge Doc to an arm-wrestling contest.) Still, in the final escape attempt, Doc is wounded with a knife and weak from the gas used on him, so his friends rescue him. It's one of the few times Doc is saved by the aides, but it's always good to see them come through when needed. The cover to the Bantam reprint is pretty odd. The James Bama version of Doc is shown in great detail and heroic pose, looking up as if into the sky. Behind him, gazing down slyly, is a really stereotyped Devil, complete with a skullcap and horns, pointed ears and arched eyebrows, holding a trident that looks exactly like the plastic toys sold around Halloween. (Maybe this is supposed to be a human crook obviously disguised as the Devil?) The cover to the original magazine appearance is in that tradition of illustrating a minor moment from the story. Doc is shown clearly giving an injection of truth serum to Lin Pretti (hypodermic needles were then and still are upsetting to many people). Holding the woman's arms from behind is Pat, in a very unflattering rendition. Pat Savage is shown with skin much paler than Doc's (despite the descriptions in the stories), and her hair is tied back tightly. She's not shown as particularly attractive; the other woman is considerably sexier. Maybe that's why Pat was so quick to slap her around.

THE PIRATE'S GHOST (July 7, 2001) From April 1938, this book is a lot of fun. There's not as much headlong action as usual, although it does perk up at the very end, but there are enough puzzling developments to keep the pages turning. Lester Dent seemed to decide to give the readers something a little different and he's good at giving you just enough information as the story unrolls. The Mad Science gadget is an invention called the Static Translator, which produces written documents dictated by spirits from the great beyond. The theory here is that some radio static is actually caused by ghosts trying to contact the living. What I enjoy is that Doc examines the machine and promptly declares it worthless. The device is in the possession of a pair of ex-carnival con artists named Hoke McGee and Everett Everett Barr, who get the American public in a fervor of belief, obviuously as part of a scheme to defraud people of vast piles of money. The 'pirate's ghost' of the title, despite the cover of the Bantam paperback (which initially put me off on reading this book, expecting another crook posing as a spook) never makes an appearance and in fact never existed. Captain Scuttle's alleged treasure is just part of the bunko racket. The five aides all make appearances but don't get to do very much. Ham does screw up while undercover by yielding to his weakness for hot babes, something he always accuses Monk of doing. Tangled up in the goings-on is a rather likeable young cowboy called Sagebrush Smith, who acts as a surrogate protagonist for most of the story. Dent also did this in THE GREEN EAGLE; a native of Wyoming and long-time resident of Missouri, his Western details are convincing and not quite overdone. (Smith says he'd like to see what trouble is like, to which Monk ironically replies, "Doc, he ain't got no sense." Look who's talking.) Doc himself is the competent, heroic figure most of his fans like best. Investigating the strange scene at the Death Valley lab of Meander Surrett, the bronze man exhumes a corpse and does a makeshift ballistic test to determine the gun used, then performs an autopsy on another body which he suspects was poisoned. These are things which Indiana Jones or James Bond (the adventure heroes most often compared to Doc) would not be likely to accomplish. One of the little asides which Dent throws in has Doc taking some readings and doing some experiments while in the desert. These have nothing to do with the mystery at hand, it's just that the bronze man always has a number of projects underway. I enjoy details like this, which make it more plausible that Doc can accomplish so much. He's always busy. At one point, Doc is gassed and lies unconscious in the hot sun for three days. He is realistically weakened and in need of water, and even his dark-tanned skin can still get sunburned. Our hero carries on but it isn't easy. There is also the moment when a bullet flattens two of the containers in his utility vest-- if they had contained grenades or acid, he might have ended his career right then. At this time, he is still using distinctive bronze-colored planes (some vanity there, but also a choice of color that blends in well with many backgrounds) and he is flying a true gyro--that is, a helicopter that can rise straight up and hover, which the earlier autogyro couldn't. There is a startling, lengthy speech which Doc gives in which he emphatically defends the belief in life after death. (Although he thinks this spirit communication at hand is a phony.) It's rare to see Doc so intense in presenting his views. On the one hand, having raised by scientists, you might expect him to be an atheist or agnostic. But much of his training in his formative years was under Hindu yogis, Tibetan lamas, shamans and other teachers who would have exposed him to spiritual beliefs. So it's hard to say just what our boy would have believed. Meditating in the Fortress of Solitude far from the distractions of the world, he might have reached some surprising revelations.

THE MOTION MENACE (Aug 19, 2001) THOROUGH SPOILERS AHEAD From May 1938, this is a real delight, an adventure that is fast and action-filled but at the same time has a cheerful, almost goofy quality to it. After reading a few of the grim, bitter postwar Doc novels, this was a refreshing treat. Following a hectic series of events in the first few pages, a character remarks, "And this is just the first chapter." W. Ryerson Johnson has been credited with submitting the original idea, which Lester Dent re-wrote so thoroughly that there is no noticeable trace of Johnson's style left. In his afterword to THE FRIGHTENED FISH, Will Murray says that this story was first begun in 1935, put aside for a year and then rewritten in 1937 but not published until 1938. I have one minor criticism, though. In a tight fix near the end, Doc escapes by abruptly whipping his 'atomic gun' from a pocket and causing explosions to blast his way free. Is this the same inexplicable weapon that Harold Davis had Doc use the same way in THE GOLDEN PERIL? In any case, it's a bit of a disappointment. One of the specific joys of a Doc Savage story is that our hero is seen preparing for his escapes or else shows some quick thinking. In this case, it feels like a bit of a cheat to have the Man Of Bronze solve his problems this way. The Mad Science menace this time is a real doozy. Remember the Spoiler Warning...a Minnesota Swede named Captain Cutting Wizer has come up with a device which can erect force fields in which inertia is completely halted. Planes come to a stop, bullets stop in mid-air, people and animals die as their vital functions stop. There is no defense and in a startling moment when Doc first encounters the field, he has his right hnd held motionless in mid-air and can't budge it. It's pretty creepy as flies and birds stop abruptly and slowly sink to the floor, and the fact that nearer insects drop next means that the deadly effect is coming closer. As if that's not wild enough for one story, Wizer is being duped by the Elders, a mysterious group of bearded old men in gaberdine topcoats and white fur hats. These Elders run an enormous international organization of spies, and they turn out to be exiled Russian nobility who want to overthrow the Soviet government. Opposing them is a wisecracking young man with the unlikely name Ky Halloc whose motives are dubious. We learn that Doc has in the past done work for the Ogpu, the Soviet secret espionage service, and they owe him some favors. This is okay in 1938, but just a bit over ten years later, Doc must have hoped the Red-fearing Congressioal investigators didn't find out about it. Pat Savage has a bit more time on stage than usual, brandishing her vintage six-shooter and doing some quick thinking of her own. This is the story where she talks some enemies into thinking Doc is not the big bronze-skinned gold-eyed character the public knows (he has disguised a paralyzed thug to look like him and the substitution has been detected). This gains valuable time. Monk and Ham are a bit more lively than usual (Monk robs the New York Museum of Natural History to get some corn for Habeas!), and Long Tom joins the team to add a little vinegar. At one point, the three men (despite being tied up) are giving their captors so much trouble that it seems almost like a fair fight. As one goon is knocked down the stairs, a chief below yells, "What the hell's going on up there?". One thug says, "We're torturing the prisoners," and another gangster (who has lost a couple of teeth) snarls, "So you say!" Note here that Chemistry is described as just over two feet tall and that Long Tom can lug him around in an oversized suitcase. In other stories, he's over five feet tall and can pass for Monk when clothed. Maybe he was an infant whatever-he-is when captured and grew to adult size. Doc himself is in his prime here. Not only is he constantly a step ahead of everyone, manipulating his opponents with one trick after another, he's physically still at his peak. He runs for a mile with a man over one shoulder (Dent slyly remarks that Doc did not break the four-minute record but he wasn't racing on a level cinder track), after he climbs a ladder with just his hand and arm strength because he is carrying the man clamped between his legs. With a trained spy watching, Doc walks a few paces and seems to vanish, leaving no marks behind. And, when he is being shot at, Doc flings his prisoner aside because 'the man was too heavy a missile to throw quickly." If the thug had been a bit lighter, Doc would have hurled him at the gunman. That's our boy.