Reviews for A History of the Doc Savage Adventures in Pulps, Paperbacks, Comics, Fanzines, Radio and Film

The average rating for A History of the Doc Savage Adventures in Pulps, Paperbacks, Comics, Fanzines, Radio and Film based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-08-15 00:00:00 Blayne Haubrich As a "history", this has both good points and bad points. Let's start with the good. It's a complete catalogue, in chronological order, of all the published stories. It also covers the character of Doc Savage in other media - the one movie is given an extensive analysis, as is the script for the planned but unfilmed sequel, while radio series and comic books get more of a broad overview. There is even a chapter about fanzines related to Doc Savage, as well as an appendix devoted to the people involved in the creation of the stories. The bulk of the book gives each of the original "novels" between half a page and nearly two pages of description. What is included here is kind of a mixed bag, based on the author's somewhat idiosyncratic interests. The publication history is almost always covered, as well as important characters in the story. Cotter is clearly fascinated by the super-science gadgets that Savage employs, and these are given loving coverage. Being an illustrator himself, he also discusses the artwork quite a lot. What is less prominent than you might expect is actual description of the stories themselves: Cotter usually brings up what he considers the most notable plot points, but there is never any complete synopsis (except, as noted above, for the movie). I found this a little surprising, to be honest. But the really bad part is not what I missed, but what is included instead. Cotter unfortunately has a trait that is not unusual among amateur students of history and literature: the fascination with drawing connections. He spends an inordinate amount of words pointing out similarities between Doc Savage stories and later pop culture entities, and implying or outright claiming that there was an actual influence from the former to the later. In a few cases this seems reasonable, but in the majority it is completely unsupported by any evidence and in some the link is so weak that it becomes laughable. Let's all remember: correlation does not imply causation. On the whole, this is a useful work of bibliography, but I can't give it top marks because of the space wasted on idle speculation that would have been better spent on hard facts.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-09-07 00:00:00 Theresa Souza The merits of this book obviously depend on whether you're interested in pulp hero Doc Savage, but I certainly am. While I'm very familiar with the pulps, Cotter does a good job of bringing fresh information about them, and he's exemplary in covering Doc's moves to other media--I'd never heard of his radio show before, for instance. Agood job.