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.

Hope you enjoyed this weeks' blog! Help support us by buying cool items!!

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

THE MAN OF BRONZE SERIAL by Dave Goode

If you're a fan-boy like me there probably hasn't been a time while watching a Buster Crabbe jungle adventure from PRC that you haven't imagined the former swimming champion playing Doc Savage.Clad in sport shirt, jodhpurs and riding boots Crabbe pretty much looked like one of illustrator Walter Baumhofer's pulp magazine covers come to life.Though the artists at Street & Smith were told to make Clark Savage Jr. look as much like Clark Gable as possible. As popular as the Doc Savage pulps were I'm sure that a serial would have been just as popular.

I imagine the serial starring Crabbe would feature the likes of Reed Hadley, Ben Weldon, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams and other serial and B-Movie regulars as his companions the Amazing Five. A fifteen chapter serial from Pre-Republic Mascot that would begin with the "The Man of Bronze" in New York for the first three chapters. In the next three chapters he and his men would end up in Asia. Chapters seven through nine would find our heroes in the jungles of Africa. And the final chapters would find them back in New York where they would thwart the villain once and for all.

The serial wouldn't be based on any particular Doc novel. And it would feature a villain specifically created for the chapter-play. More importantly the serial would have had Doc going up against a gorilla in one of the chapters. Something that the Man of Bronze, as far as I know, never did in any of  the original 181 published stories. Something this fan boy would have loved to have seen on the cover of one of the pulps. Or illustrated on one of the paperback re-issues by James Bama.