Friday, January 25, 2013

Reading Room: DOC SAVAGE "Television Peril"

Doc Savage, though incredibly-popular in pulps, never made it big in comics.
But it wasn't for lack of trying, as this never-reprinted tale from Shadow Comics #91 (1948) shows!
Oddly, Doc, who doesn't hesitate to utilize captured equipment (like the HellDiver submarine*) in his fight against evil, doesn't adapt this teleportation device in later stories to enable him to reach distant locales faster than otherwise possible!
The writer is unknown, but the art is by Bob Powell's art studio, which was "packaging" (providing editorial and art services) for several titles for the publisher.
Doc Savage went thru a couple of incarnations in the 1940s.
He started out as a backup in Shadow Comics for three issues before receiving his own 20-issue book featured a bare-chested version wearing a hood with a mystic jewel from Tibet that gave him various powers as needed by the scriptwriter.
After the title was cancelled, Doc returned to the back of Shadow Comics, where he was portrayed as a better-than-normal (but not superhuman) investigator battling weird threats, staying to the end of the title in 1949.

Note: there's lots of currently-available Doc Savage material (pulps, comics, movies, and even radio shows), all well-worth picking up (most of them are in my personal collection), but we're be showing only the stuff not included in those volumes!

*The HellDiver was captured by Doc in The Polar Treasure.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment