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Doc Savage Sanctum Editions #1
Fortress of Solitude Plus The Devil Genghis
Pulp fiction's legendary Man of Bronze returns in two of his most engrossing adventures. In this issue, he confronts "The Devil Genghis", a mad genius armed with incredible scientific inventions stolen from Doc Savage's "Fortress of Solitude". This volume reprints both appearances of Doc Savage's greatest enemy, the diabolical John Sunlight, and features the classic pulp cover art, along with the original interior illustrations by Paul Orban.
128 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1938
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67 people want to read
About the author
Lester Dent
347 books58 followersLester Dent (1904–1959) was born in La Plata, Missouri. In his mid-twenties, he began publishing pulp fiction stories, and moved to New York City, where he developed the successful Doc Savage Magazine with Henry Ralston, head of Street and Smith, a leading pulp publisher. The magazine ran from 1933 until 1949 and included 181 novel-length stories, of which Dent wrote the vast majority under the house name Kenneth Robeson. He also published mystery novels in a variety of genres, including the Chance Molloy series about a self-made airline owner. Dent’s own life was quite adventurous; he prospected for gold in the Southwest, lived aboard a schooner for a few years, hunted treasure in the Caribbean, launched an aerial photography company, and was a member of the Explorer’s Club.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 6, 2014
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: Pulp fiction's legendary Man of Bronze returns in two of his most engrossing adventures. In this debut issue, he pulps' greatest superman confronts "The Devil Genghis", a mad genius armed with incredible scientific inventions stolen from Doc Savage's "Fortress of Solitude". This volume reprints both appearances of Doc Savage's greatest enemy, the diabolical John Sunlight, and features the original paperback cover art by James Bama, along with the original interior illustrations by Paul Orban.
My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is to discuss the book you'll put down to watch the Wimbledon final.
I can think of few books I'd put down to watch tennis. This double novel is one. I'm not a superhero kinda guy, and I don't like Übermenschen very much in or out of fiction. But Doc Savage...the Man of Bronze...well, he's so, so, innocently perfect, so completely a creation of the desperate, dark, horrible 1930s, that it's not in me to rag on him or on Lester Dent his creator.
I wasn't sure I'd like re-reading any Doc Savage books, since I never caught The Bug and read them all in the first place. I wasn't, as it turns out, so far from wrong to be trepidatious. It was not so easy to push past the silliness of the plots. What let me find my way in to the story was the exuberant silliness of the exercise. I think, in this equally dark and nasty economic passage in American life, the rise of superhero movies and the comic books that spawn them are readily explained by the foreword of this double novel. They're rescue fantasies for the mass of disheartened, disempowered, disgusted humanity.
But good lawsy me, are they a chore to read. Very much like reading the comic books that are so popular among today's youffs. All this work and *this* is all I get? For realz?!
Yep. For realz. This is a classic case of WYSIWYG. If that's not okay with you, if you're looking for Lit'ry Meddit or even just plots that follow common sense, horseman pass on. Otherwise, immerse yourself in the long-surpassed-by-reality fantasies of another time and get the pleasures you can find from them.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The Publisher Says: Pulp fiction's legendary Man of Bronze returns in two of his most engrossing adventures. In this debut issue, he pulps' greatest superman confronts "The Devil Genghis", a mad genius armed with incredible scientific inventions stolen from Doc Savage's "Fortress of Solitude". This volume reprints both appearances of Doc Savage's greatest enemy, the diabolical John Sunlight, and features the original paperback cover art by James Bama, along with the original interior illustrations by Paul Orban.
My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is to discuss the book you'll put down to watch the Wimbledon final.
I can think of few books I'd put down to watch tennis. This double novel is one. I'm not a superhero kinda guy, and I don't like Übermenschen very much in or out of fiction. But Doc Savage...the Man of Bronze...well, he's so, so, innocently perfect, so completely a creation of the desperate, dark, horrible 1930s, that it's not in me to rag on him or on Lester Dent his creator.
I wasn't sure I'd like re-reading any Doc Savage books, since I never caught The Bug and read them all in the first place. I wasn't, as it turns out, so far from wrong to be trepidatious. It was not so easy to push past the silliness of the plots. What let me find my way in to the story was the exuberant silliness of the exercise. I think, in this equally dark and nasty economic passage in American life, the rise of superhero movies and the comic books that spawn them are readily explained by the foreword of this double novel. They're rescue fantasies for the mass of disheartened, disempowered, disgusted humanity.
But good lawsy me, are they a chore to read. Very much like reading the comic books that are so popular among today's youffs. All this work and *this* is all I get? For realz?!
Yep. For realz. This is a classic case of WYSIWYG. If that's not okay with you, if you're looking for Lit'ry Meddit or even just plots that follow common sense, horseman pass on. Otherwise, immerse yourself in the long-surpassed-by-reality fantasies of another time and get the pleasures you can find from them.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
January 21, 2019
When I was - 11 or 13 or so, I think, around that - I got a hold of an omnibus edition of Doc Savage novels. Details are pretty blurred in the old Doug brainbox, but looking through Amazon, it was possibly volume 2. The only actual memory I have, besides a blurred impression of the cover, is that I enjoyed it. I remember being invested in it for awhile. I do not remember plots or characters. My primary book shopping avenues, at the time, were when the library sold off paperbacks and when we took a trip out to Brewton (AL) to visit the Good Will. Or the Walmart, also in Brewton (as well as on in Andalusia). I presumably got the first paperback from one of these places (I'm thinking Good Will), but I never spotted any more. I did see the movie, at least partially, but I did not invest into it in the way I invested in the books.
That Doc Savage book, and the hint of other stories in his line, took on something like a mythical quality to me. I would occasionally perk up when I heard the name. It was like an one-time imaginary friend that had been beloved, had stuck with me, and then had left and I was left only with vague memories. If you had asked me, I would told you the books were "quite good" and then be left with the problem of not being able to tell you why. "Because I was once 12(ish), and I read four of them, and they seemed ok," would have been the only honest response.
Once I found out that there were indeed reprints of the venerable series, I thought it would be good fun to get back into a series that had had such a strange impact on me, and ordered the first three volumes (note: I mean the first three from the Vintage Library repints*, which are not the first three in character or publication order). Now that I have started reading them, feelings are mixed. It's a little like some indie movie where a 30+ man goes through a second-coming-of-age story because he finally meets his {father | grandfather | high school buddy | childhood hero | new favorite manic pixie dream girl } and is largely underwhelmed, even maybe repulsed at first, but learns how to relax and love the situation over time.
This collection deals with the first "two parter" badguy seen in the series (and since pulps were kind of a new thing, surely one of the first recurring villains in literature, overall...I mean, Moriarty, the king of literary villains, is only directly in a single story), John Daylight, who dresses in striking single color outfits and seeks world dominance. This weird science Napoleon is pretty much like many other Doc Savage villains according to basic readings of the plots, but for whatever reason he tends to be treated as the villain.
First off, I give this first collection of two "novels" (more like pulp novellas, I think, but the magazine printing style gives a hard guess as to how many pages these would really be) four stars and I stick by that, but honestly these are largely 2 (or even, if you are a big meanie, 1)-star books if you go by the standard notches of the craft: the writing is mediocre with occasionally highlights, the dialogue is often poor, the characterizations are outsize or ludicrous and not always in a fun way, the grasp of world-politics and human issues is pitiful**, and the plot is largely a device of ebbs and flows to drive a story toward a particular page count. However, and this is something that more modern faux-pulps seem to miss, there is a certain innocence in these stories, a type of joy that is had in telling a tale about good guys and bad guys and dames and airships and hidden citadels and savage armies and world domination and weird science and fistfights and gunfights and truth serums and hypnotisms. It is delightful myth building, but unlike actual, real world myths that are often complicated and morally confusing and as much metaphors for psychological and scientific principles our forebears did not understand, these are much more of a lighthearted version of bloodshed and murder and monmania and despair. According to an unsourced quote on Wikipedia (as of January 2019), even Lester Dent, the man most responsible for writing them, considered them mostly "sellable crap". And yet, they are good and pure in their own way.
There are air fights and British hotels gun battles and New York concert halls and espionage agents and invisible ink messages and Arctic sanctuaries of weird, dangerous inventions and it is a time of voluntary madness. Timeless and so utterly rooted in their time. Wonderful and so...uninformed. Full of danger even though you know that Doc and his boys are going to pull through (and somewhat bloodlessly, as far as innocent lives are concerned). No wrong can they not fix. No spot of bother they cannot overcome. No life they cannot save. No matter how dark (and Lester Dent knows how to keep the stakes looking like they are impossible, James Wan could learn a thing or two about constant pacing of danger). I mean, there's an industrial chemist who goes by Monk, and Monk has a weird pig named Habeas Corpus, and his best-friend/worst-enemy is a lawyer nicknamed Ham, and Ham has a weird chimpanzee named Chemistry, and by gods did that make me giggle for a good three minutes at one point. This is what we are dealing with, folks.
By the time Daylight gives a speech about conquering the world under a single rule to bring about peace, you see in him the archetype of major comic book villains and James Bond villains and science fiction baddies...but maybe you also see a sly jab towards Hitler (who was starting to ramp up hostilities at the time this was being written). You very nearly can accept his philosophy, but you see it as wrong and as bad, and you delight the overthrow of it. The pulp has gotten you. Swing the fists in, old chap, and let's get home for supper.
Speaking of comic books, one of the best ways to read these now is to see them in the context of being progenitors of comic books and the various post-pulp entertainments that followed.*** In Doc Savage's larger-than-life-and-twice-as-innocent strength and reflexes and wit you can very much see a forerunner to Superman. Likewise, his many gadgets and gizmos lead one to seeing a proto-Batman. There is even a Fortress of Solitude (presumably, Superman's Fortress is a direct reference to Doc Savages, much like Batman's Arkham Asylum is a direct nod to Lovecraft). The crime fighting team of experts would go on to be copied any number of times. Likewise, this sort of "science group" of world-saviors leads to similar set-ups in Ultraman and other science fiction series. This is the genetic code. The birthplace of the 20th century's new mythology. No somewhat forgotten, considered outdated. But still containing their magic.
* As a warning: I placed a second order last week and have received no sort of confirmation nor does it look like the "number in stock" number has changed, before you order directly maybe let me confirm that they are still functioning as a store-site. I sincerely hope so.
** As Will Murray discusses in his informative afterword, Lester Dent seems to think Genghis Khan's name is the honorific and so has war leaders of a region somewhere past Afghanistan and near Tibet (which, really, could be a huge amount of land) called "Genghis" instead of "Khan". Likewise, the country he most associates with the burqa is India, which isn't wrong, per se (there are Muslims in India that wear burqas, though it wasn't exactly the standard mode of dress for women), but odd. While his discussion of London is better, it does feel like he avoided even the most basic research and just went for something like perceived wisdom on facts. Of course, racism and sexism abound. At least the larger-than-life masculinity tends to not be too terribly toxic.
*** See also The Shadow, Zorro, Lone Ranger, and the Scarlet Pimpernel (whose secret disguises and pretend dandyism very much sets up most "secret identity" comic book heroes).
That Doc Savage book, and the hint of other stories in his line, took on something like a mythical quality to me. I would occasionally perk up when I heard the name. It was like an one-time imaginary friend that had been beloved, had stuck with me, and then had left and I was left only with vague memories. If you had asked me, I would told you the books were "quite good" and then be left with the problem of not being able to tell you why. "Because I was once 12(ish), and I read four of them, and they seemed ok," would have been the only honest response.
Once I found out that there were indeed reprints of the venerable series, I thought it would be good fun to get back into a series that had had such a strange impact on me, and ordered the first three volumes (note: I mean the first three from the Vintage Library repints*, which are not the first three in character or publication order). Now that I have started reading them, feelings are mixed. It's a little like some indie movie where a 30+ man goes through a second-coming-of-age story because he finally meets his {father | grandfather | high school buddy | childhood hero | new favorite manic pixie dream girl } and is largely underwhelmed, even maybe repulsed at first, but learns how to relax and love the situation over time.
This collection deals with the first "two parter" badguy seen in the series (and since pulps were kind of a new thing, surely one of the first recurring villains in literature, overall...I mean, Moriarty, the king of literary villains, is only directly in a single story), John Daylight, who dresses in striking single color outfits and seeks world dominance. This weird science Napoleon is pretty much like many other Doc Savage villains according to basic readings of the plots, but for whatever reason he tends to be treated as the villain.
First off, I give this first collection of two "novels" (more like pulp novellas, I think, but the magazine printing style gives a hard guess as to how many pages these would really be) four stars and I stick by that, but honestly these are largely 2 (or even, if you are a big meanie, 1)-star books if you go by the standard notches of the craft: the writing is mediocre with occasionally highlights, the dialogue is often poor, the characterizations are outsize or ludicrous and not always in a fun way, the grasp of world-politics and human issues is pitiful**, and the plot is largely a device of ebbs and flows to drive a story toward a particular page count. However, and this is something that more modern faux-pulps seem to miss, there is a certain innocence in these stories, a type of joy that is had in telling a tale about good guys and bad guys and dames and airships and hidden citadels and savage armies and world domination and weird science and fistfights and gunfights and truth serums and hypnotisms. It is delightful myth building, but unlike actual, real world myths that are often complicated and morally confusing and as much metaphors for psychological and scientific principles our forebears did not understand, these are much more of a lighthearted version of bloodshed and murder and monmania and despair. According to an unsourced quote on Wikipedia (as of January 2019), even Lester Dent, the man most responsible for writing them, considered them mostly "sellable crap". And yet, they are good and pure in their own way.
There are air fights and British hotels gun battles and New York concert halls and espionage agents and invisible ink messages and Arctic sanctuaries of weird, dangerous inventions and it is a time of voluntary madness. Timeless and so utterly rooted in their time. Wonderful and so...uninformed. Full of danger even though you know that Doc and his boys are going to pull through (and somewhat bloodlessly, as far as innocent lives are concerned). No wrong can they not fix. No spot of bother they cannot overcome. No life they cannot save. No matter how dark (and Lester Dent knows how to keep the stakes looking like they are impossible, James Wan could learn a thing or two about constant pacing of danger). I mean, there's an industrial chemist who goes by Monk, and Monk has a weird pig named Habeas Corpus, and his best-friend/worst-enemy is a lawyer nicknamed Ham, and Ham has a weird chimpanzee named Chemistry, and by gods did that make me giggle for a good three minutes at one point. This is what we are dealing with, folks.
By the time Daylight gives a speech about conquering the world under a single rule to bring about peace, you see in him the archetype of major comic book villains and James Bond villains and science fiction baddies...but maybe you also see a sly jab towards Hitler (who was starting to ramp up hostilities at the time this was being written). You very nearly can accept his philosophy, but you see it as wrong and as bad, and you delight the overthrow of it. The pulp has gotten you. Swing the fists in, old chap, and let's get home for supper.
Speaking of comic books, one of the best ways to read these now is to see them in the context of being progenitors of comic books and the various post-pulp entertainments that followed.*** In Doc Savage's larger-than-life-and-twice-as-innocent strength and reflexes and wit you can very much see a forerunner to Superman. Likewise, his many gadgets and gizmos lead one to seeing a proto-Batman. There is even a Fortress of Solitude (presumably, Superman's Fortress is a direct reference to Doc Savages, much like Batman's Arkham Asylum is a direct nod to Lovecraft). The crime fighting team of experts would go on to be copied any number of times. Likewise, this sort of "science group" of world-saviors leads to similar set-ups in Ultraman and other science fiction series. This is the genetic code. The birthplace of the 20th century's new mythology. No somewhat forgotten, considered outdated. But still containing their magic.
* As a warning: I placed a second order last week and have received no sort of confirmation nor does it look like the "number in stock" number has changed, before you order directly maybe let me confirm that they are still functioning as a store-site. I sincerely hope so.
** As Will Murray discusses in his informative afterword, Lester Dent seems to think Genghis Khan's name is the honorific and so has war leaders of a region somewhere past Afghanistan and near Tibet (which, really, could be a huge amount of land) called "Genghis" instead of "Khan". Likewise, the country he most associates with the burqa is India, which isn't wrong, per se (there are Muslims in India that wear burqas, though it wasn't exactly the standard mode of dress for women), but odd. While his discussion of London is better, it does feel like he avoided even the most basic research and just went for something like perceived wisdom on facts. Of course, racism and sexism abound. At least the larger-than-life masculinity tends to not be too terribly toxic.
*** See also The Shadow, Zorro, Lone Ranger, and the Scarlet Pimpernel (whose secret disguises and pretend dandyism very much sets up most "secret identity" comic book heroes).
July 21, 2008
This is a great reprint of the original 1938 stories. There are a couple of things you can count on these type stories -- people will be killed callously and horribly, the good guys will win, the bad guys will loose, and usually die while doing so. The stories are formulaic but I find them to be a great way to relax my mind after a busy day dealing with technical issues.
August 10, 2011
Now THIS is what pulp is all about: compelling tales and go-go-go nonstop action.
June 1, 2024
Definitely a good pick by Audible to adapt this story. Doc Savage does all his genius stuff, including a lot of stealth. It is a 1930s story, so there is a woman being rescued, but also too naive to be of any help. There are 2 Amazon women who can't help but are still interesting, and determined to thwart the villain. Monk being distraught is always fun, and Doc withholds info from him a couple of times in tense action scenes, so it's cool. I like this different perspective on medicine: Doc seems to be very quick to do surgery and brain-tampering in general with people A LOT in his stories. I gravitate towards Doc, myself, because I find geniuses solving problems inspirational, especially if they have to do some action. Because the story is antiquated in its writing, and because there weren't that many character moments, I was only a 3/5 entertained by it.
March 18, 2017
Simple and action packed with an earnestness that's almost quaint. It's fun but pretty minor stuff. It was neat to see where superman lifted the fortress of solitude from though.
April 10, 2012
This was fun! I'll confess immediately that I did not read "The Devil Genghis." My goal was to read at least one Doc Savage story. One short Doc Savage novel is probably enough for this short life of mine.
Apparently, Doc Savage was originally a pulp magazine, and each issue contained a complete, short novel by Lester Dent, who wrote under the pseudonym "Kenneth Robeson." The magazine began publication in 1933 and ended in 1949. Dent cranked out one short novel a month about the eponymous hero, and probably got some assistance from ghost writers from time to time. So you may notice that the writing is not of the highest quality. This stuff was written under pressure and there was probably no time for Dent to revise anything.
I read somewhere in my edition of "Fortress" that Doc Savage sold as many as 300,000 copies in one month back in the '30s. So Doc has deep roots in our cultural consciousness. I'd bet that many people have at least seen one or two Bantam paperback reprints with the stunning James Bama paintings. If this doesn't ring a bell, do an Internet search, and then come back and let me know if that refreshes your memory.
Doc Savage was, by many accounts, the first true modern super-hero. He was more like Batman than Superman, however, because he had no super-powers. Instead, he was an ordinary human who had been trained by his scientist parents to excel at everything. Consequently, he could speak numerous languages; he could invent amazing devices; his body was extraordinarily agile and strong; and he was a master of disguises and ventriloquism. In some ways, Doc may also have been the model for 007, except that he's not a spy and not a womanizer.
According to a Wikipedia article, Doc's salient traits are " . . . a mix of Sherlock Holmes' deductive abilities, Tarzan's outstanding physical abilities, Craig Kennedy's scientific education, and Abraham Lincoln's goodness."
In case anyone is wondering whose "Fortress of Solitude" came first (Superman's or Doc's), it was Doc's. Mort Weisinger, who wrote for the Superman comics, stole the concept straight from Dent. In both cases, the Fortress is located in the Arctic, and the hero uses it as a retreat from the world.
In this book, the Fortress is described as an impenetrable blue dome. Doc uses the Fortress as a secret retreat, where he tinkers with his inventions. The Fortress is breached, while Doc is away, by a villain named John Sunlight. Sunlight has escaped from a Siberian prison with a group of fellow inmates, whom he has come to dominate. They stumble upon Doc's Fortress and Sunlight finds his way in by observing some local Eskimos who have been trained by Doc to guard the Fortress.
Once inside, Sunlight hatches a plan to take over the world by selling Doc's dangerous inventions to some evil Balkan dictators who are at war with each other. Doc only discovers Sunlight's breach of the Fortress because Sunlight comes to New York City to assassinate the Soviet ambassador who was instrumental in Sunlight's conviction and Siberian exile.
Ordinarily, Doc lives at the top of a skyscraper in NYC. Because he has several sidekick assistants, some people have said that the Doc Savage stories were also the model for Marvel's Fantastic Four. I can certainly see the parallel between "Monk," Doc's chemist sidekick, and The Thing. The parallels don't seem to go much beyond that, however. Doc's other sidekicks include a lawyer known as "Ham," two engineers, and an archeologist.
Anyway, Fortress of Solitude is a non-stop, rip-roaring action story about how Doc stops John Sunlight. Dent's writing is on par with what you'd expect to find in a super-hero comic book. It's totally preposterous, but enjoyable if you let your guard down and don't let your adult skepticism intrude. Save this one for a vacation, or for some time when you are in a light-hearted mood and looking for an action-packed escape.
Apparently, Doc Savage was originally a pulp magazine, and each issue contained a complete, short novel by Lester Dent, who wrote under the pseudonym "Kenneth Robeson." The magazine began publication in 1933 and ended in 1949. Dent cranked out one short novel a month about the eponymous hero, and probably got some assistance from ghost writers from time to time. So you may notice that the writing is not of the highest quality. This stuff was written under pressure and there was probably no time for Dent to revise anything.
I read somewhere in my edition of "Fortress" that Doc Savage sold as many as 300,000 copies in one month back in the '30s. So Doc has deep roots in our cultural consciousness. I'd bet that many people have at least seen one or two Bantam paperback reprints with the stunning James Bama paintings. If this doesn't ring a bell, do an Internet search, and then come back and let me know if that refreshes your memory.
Doc Savage was, by many accounts, the first true modern super-hero. He was more like Batman than Superman, however, because he had no super-powers. Instead, he was an ordinary human who had been trained by his scientist parents to excel at everything. Consequently, he could speak numerous languages; he could invent amazing devices; his body was extraordinarily agile and strong; and he was a master of disguises and ventriloquism. In some ways, Doc may also have been the model for 007, except that he's not a spy and not a womanizer.
According to a Wikipedia article, Doc's salient traits are " . . . a mix of Sherlock Holmes' deductive abilities, Tarzan's outstanding physical abilities, Craig Kennedy's scientific education, and Abraham Lincoln's goodness."
In case anyone is wondering whose "Fortress of Solitude" came first (Superman's or Doc's), it was Doc's. Mort Weisinger, who wrote for the Superman comics, stole the concept straight from Dent. In both cases, the Fortress is located in the Arctic, and the hero uses it as a retreat from the world.
In this book, the Fortress is described as an impenetrable blue dome. Doc uses the Fortress as a secret retreat, where he tinkers with his inventions. The Fortress is breached, while Doc is away, by a villain named John Sunlight. Sunlight has escaped from a Siberian prison with a group of fellow inmates, whom he has come to dominate. They stumble upon Doc's Fortress and Sunlight finds his way in by observing some local Eskimos who have been trained by Doc to guard the Fortress.
Once inside, Sunlight hatches a plan to take over the world by selling Doc's dangerous inventions to some evil Balkan dictators who are at war with each other. Doc only discovers Sunlight's breach of the Fortress because Sunlight comes to New York City to assassinate the Soviet ambassador who was instrumental in Sunlight's conviction and Siberian exile.
Ordinarily, Doc lives at the top of a skyscraper in NYC. Because he has several sidekick assistants, some people have said that the Doc Savage stories were also the model for Marvel's Fantastic Four. I can certainly see the parallel between "Monk," Doc's chemist sidekick, and The Thing. The parallels don't seem to go much beyond that, however. Doc's other sidekicks include a lawyer known as "Ham," two engineers, and an archeologist.
Anyway, Fortress of Solitude is a non-stop, rip-roaring action story about how Doc stops John Sunlight. Dent's writing is on par with what you'd expect to find in a super-hero comic book. It's totally preposterous, but enjoyable if you let your guard down and don't let your adult skepticism intrude. Save this one for a vacation, or for some time when you are in a light-hearted mood and looking for an action-packed escape.
January 7, 2016
The good and bad of these two in one Doc Savage reading:
The Good:
Attempt at creating an arch villain for Doc (John Sunlight)
The Fortress of Solitude revealed
The first half (Fortress) gives Long Tom a chance to come to the fore
The second half (The Devil Genghis) gives Johnny some good "screen time"
A decent female character in The Devil Genghis (Toni Lash-much better than 99.9% of the women in a Doc Savage pulp era tale)
The Bad:
Just about a complete failure at creating the arch villain by the end of Devil Genghis (really poor way to get rid of the character)
The Fortress-so little revealed
Monk and Ham were really boring in The Devil Genghis
Overall I think I prefer Lester Dent's story telling over Walter Gibson (The Shadow), but I feel bad in saying I think Doug Moench and Chris Roberson did a better job with this template and characters in the comics.
(It still remains one of my favorite bad movies-Doc savage Man of Bronze).
The Good:
Attempt at creating an arch villain for Doc (John Sunlight)
The Fortress of Solitude revealed
The first half (Fortress) gives Long Tom a chance to come to the fore
The second half (The Devil Genghis) gives Johnny some good "screen time"
A decent female character in The Devil Genghis (Toni Lash-much better than 99.9% of the women in a Doc Savage pulp era tale)
The Bad:
Just about a complete failure at creating the arch villain by the end of Devil Genghis (really poor way to get rid of the character)
The Fortress-so little revealed
Monk and Ham were really boring in The Devil Genghis
Overall I think I prefer Lester Dent's story telling over Walter Gibson (The Shadow), but I feel bad in saying I think Doug Moench and Chris Roberson did a better job with this template and characters in the comics.
(It still remains one of my favorite bad movies-Doc savage Man of Bronze).
August 20, 2009
The two stories featuring John Sunlight, the only man to fight Doc Savage twice!
Fortress of Solitude is the better of the two stories, as it showcases Doc's secret lab in the artic and Sunlight really gets to cut loose and made to feel like a villain that could actually challenge Doc. He had the potential to become Doc's Lex Luthor.
'Devil Genghis' feels more like at the last minute they decided to jam Sunlight into the story. He comes across as pretty weak and uninteresting and while the story is good and full of action, the big reveal of Sunlight's return is weak and drags the rest of the story down.
Fortress of Solitude is the better of the two stories, as it showcases Doc's secret lab in the artic and Sunlight really gets to cut loose and made to feel like a villain that could actually challenge Doc. He had the potential to become Doc's Lex Luthor.
'Devil Genghis' feels more like at the last minute they decided to jam Sunlight into the story. He comes across as pretty weak and uninteresting and while the story is good and full of action, the big reveal of Sunlight's return is weak and drags the rest of the story down.
August 29, 2009
Decently written adventure stories, but Doc Savage is a bit too much of a Mary Sue that he is really more of a plot device then he is a bona fide character. The stories are fun, but the stories haven't grabbed me enough so that I want to read his 180 or so other adventures.
September 5, 2008
Fun pulp stories of an american superman. Nice format with enjoyable illustrations throughout. Wonderful train reading.
October 25, 2008
Superb fun, true pulp poetry, and rocking adventure!
November 27, 2013
True pulp, much fun, nicely collected!
October 10, 2014
A thoroughly enjoyable compilation of Doc Savage adventures battling against the villain, John Sunlight.
May 25, 2016
reread Fortress of Solitude some time in 1988
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews