Doc Savage Returns!

Just got word that come July, Altus Press will release New Doc Savage novels written by pulp historian and writer Will Murray! The first book will be titled "Desert Demons" and include Doc's full crew as well as Pat Savage.

With DC's First Wave comics coming to an end and their mishandling of the various pulp characters, it's good news to hear that new books will be coming out. Murray has written several Doc novels under the old Kenneth Robeson byline. Making use of un-used Lester Dent outlines and plots, he penned novels that were longer than the old pulp novels but easily fitting in stylistically with the various ghosts Dent employed to toil under the Kenneth Robeson bylines. He achieved something almost impossible with the novels. He managed to tell stories that fit in stylistically and spiritually with the original stories and keep the characters in character and on model without actually coming off as parody or pastiche of another man's characters and style.

Murray's White Eyes stands out as a master crook organizes an underworld army and storms Doc's 86th Floor headquarters hoping to take out the hero and his crew. His Forgotten Realm is a wonderful lost race novel that has Doc investigating a mysterious man called X-Man. The story is a bit reminiscent of Kuttner's much shorter Thunder Jim Wade adventure "Waters of Death".


DeVito will be the cover artist making use of photos of the late Steve Holland, model for Bama's and Larkin's Doc Savage covers for Bantam. Holland was also used as model for the Spider, Avenger, and many other paperback covers. He also starred as Flash Gordon in a short-lived tv series in the 1950s.

Several of the older Murray Doc novels are being released as audio books for those that like to listen vs reading.

Also on the docket, least last I heard, is a reprint of Marvel's excellent b/w Doc Savage comic series. Now, if someone could do a comic series in the spirit of that magazine, that managed to meet the demands of comics and visual storytelling with the spirit and characterization of the original characters and making each immediately recognizable from the pulp descriptions (in fact, that series is how I usually picture the characters when reading the comics).