One That I Always Wanted To See! by Dave Goode

James Bama was to Doc Savage as was Frank Frazetta to Conan. I, like so many others, came to the Doc Savage through the paperback covers illustrated by Bama. The same way Frazetta's Conan covers drew me to Robert E. Howard's barbarian hero. Though that "skull-cap" hairstyle Bama gave Doc in his paintings had me wondering at first what kind of stories they'd be.
















I much preferred Doc's look on the original pulp covers by Walter Baumhofer.
The one thing that I always regretted not seeing by either artist was the Man of Bronze in mortal combat against a gorilla ala' Tarzan. But since no such scene occurred in the original pulp stories there was no reason to have seen such a scene illustrated.

 
And speaking of Tarzan, just about any (but not all) the actors who portrayed Edgar Rice Burroughs' Lord of the Jungle could have done double-duty portraying Doc Savage. I've long imagined Buster Crabbe playing Doc in a 1930s serial.

Graphics by Vance Capley

In the alternate universe that runs through my mind Crabbe was hired by Street & Smith to pose for publicity pics as the Man of Bronze soon after he won his Olympic gold medal in 1932.

Herman Brix, Lex Barker, and Jock Mahoney all might have been good as Doc Savage.

Heck! Ron Ely did play both pulp heroes.

 

Can you imagine a cover for Phillip Jose Farmer's novel A Feast Unknown with an artist illustrating both Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban to resemble Ron Ely.

Knowing how much I always wanted to see the Man of Bronze battling a gorilla my buddy Vance Capley created this bosso-keeno faux Doc Savage comic book cover. Enjoy.

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The Olympian and The Burlesque Queen by Dave Goode

I'm a huge fan of low-budget jungle adventure movies.The kind with potted plant jungle sets and tons of decades old stock footage.I think I developed this particular flick fetish in my pre-teen years watching the syndicated Ramar of the Jungle and Jungle Jim television shows.

I also loved PRC jungle programmers. The ones starring Buster Crabbe were special favorites.As I've said before Crabbe in safari togs and a pith helmet was a dead ringer for Doc Savage. My favorite of these was Nabonga.Where you not only have Crabbe fighting a crocodile and delivering the line "Those crocodiles can sure give you a work-out." But you also get the ape-suited Ray Corrigan. Plus a teenage Julie London. 

But another Crabbe jungle flick I've come to enjoy is Jungle Siren. Directed by Sam Newfield and written by George Wallace Sayre and Milton Ralson this flick stars legendary burlesque queen Ann Coriro in the title role playing Kuhlaya a Sheena-type who helps Crabbe fight Nazis in the wilds of Africa. Buster plays Captain Gary Hart and Paul Bryar is his comic relief sidekick Sgt. Mike Jenkins.

Bryar has the flick's funniest line. He wakes up one morning and starts flexing his muscles while commenting "Another 10 days of this and I'll have a physique like Buster Crabbe."

And I suppose this was the purpose of casting the former Olympic swimming champion opposite Coriro the ecdysiast.The PRC producers probably thought putting two such perfect physical specimens in the the same movie as romantic leads would be good box office.

Eva Lynd..The Girl on the Sweat Mag Cover by Dave Goode

Born Eva Von Fielitz on Sept.2,1937 in Orgyte,Sweden,Lynd posed for glamour girl pin-up pics and appeared as eye-candy on television shows and in movies. She was best known however for her appearances on the covers of "men's sweat magazines". She was a favorite model of Norm Eastman,Al Rossi and Bruce Minney. She was recognizable as the lingerie-clad victims of Nazi brutality. Other times she'd be a sexy resistance fighter battling alongside American GIs and British commandos. And on still other occasions she was the SS She-Wolf torturing a captured P.O.W. If there was more than one woman in the scene look carefully. Chances are it was Eva with different hair coloring.

I was watching the camp classic

SHE DEMONS again the other day and was struck by how

much the story resembled something

out of a sweat mag. Only with more of a sci-fi/horror bent. 

Then I began to imagine

this flick starring Eva Lynd

and Steve Holland instead

of Irish McCalla and Todd Griffin.

Hmmm. Irish McCalla might have

made a good model for Pat Savage

as well. Tarzan actors like Buster

Crabbe, Herman Brix, Lex Barker

would have been great

portraying Doc Savage. Heck

TV's Tarzan of the 1960s Ron Ely

actually did play Doc in a

70s flick.So it's not hard to

imagine McCalla, the definitive

Sheena Queen of the Jungle

portraying Pat Savage..

the Girl of Bronze.

Written by Dave Goode

Layout and graphics by

Vance Capley

Steve Holland...Manly Man Model by Dave Goode

  Holland was a male model turned actor. He was best known for portraying "Doc Savage" on the Bantam paperback series for artist James Bama. Bama called him,

 "the world's greatest male model."

 

  Holland portrayed Flash Gordon in 39 episodes from October 1 1954 to July 15 1955. The syndicated television series was filmed in West Germany.

 

  He also stood in for a number of other heroes. He appeared on photo covers as Bob Colt Fawcett's western comic book series. A series created because Fawcett Comics didn't want to have to license the likeness of a cowboy star. 

 

You can see him on several of Gold Key's Magnus,Robot Fighter 4000 A.D. covers as well as posing for a couple of Phantom covers as the "Ghost who Walks".

  On the covers of Warner's revival of that popular 30s pulp hero, he portrayed the Avenger. He was The Man From O.R.G.Y , The Executioner and judoka Jason Striker just to name a few.

 

  

  Holland was probably best known as the "manly man" on men's sweat magazines.One month you might find him as a U.S.Marine in the Pacific rescuing nurses from fiendish Japanese soldiers. The next he might be a British commando captured and tortured by a Nazi dominatrix.

   It was entirely possible to find him on several different covers in the same month. As a jungle explorer on safari, an American soldier fighting Nazis or a private eye rescuing a comely co-ed from white-slavers or bikers. And the titles for these stories were just as much fun as the illustrations themselves.

"I Found the Pleasure Geishas of Kamikaze Island and Death Cruise of the Cuban Cuties.

In the alternate universe that I sometimes find myself inhabiting A.I.P made a series of low-budget action movies adapted from these stories and starring Steve Holland.The reason they cast Holland was because he already appeared on the cover illustrations that saw double-duty as movie posters.Starring opposite model/actress Eva Lynd who appeared with him on several sweat mag covers,Ginger Grant,Starliss Knight and several other B-Movie actresses he rose to cult movie stardom.

    

Graphic design and layout by Vance Capley