Flashback Radio: The Adventures of Doc Savage (1985)

In 1985, NPR ran a Doc Savage serial in the style of old-time radio. The series adapted two of the original novels by Lester Dent Fear Cay and The Thousand-Headed Man, in 13 episodes. The latter adaptation was done by Will Murray, who has also penned original Doc Savage novels.

The series was released on CD by Radio Archives, but it also appears to be available on a couple of places on the internet, including here.

Fabulous Five Thoughts on a Doc Savage Movie

This week it was announced that Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock, is going to star in Shane Black's Doc Savage movie.

Most of the reactions I saw to this announcement were positive, like my own. However, as I started thinking about it, a couple of things occurred to me.

1) Johnson's track record is sort of hit and miss isn't it? I mean for every San Andreas, there's a Hercules.

2) Director Shane Black is the guy responsible for Iron Man 3, which I sort of thought was a complete mess. I liked the stuff between Tony Stark and the kid who helped him rebuild his Iron Man suit, but that was really about it.

3) Was the old 1970's Doc Savage movie really that bad?

I haven't seen it in a long time (I think I was 11 when it came out.) I know it wasn't well received because it was seen as too campy. That's going to be something this movie will have to avoid as well.

4) The script of this movie is going to have to do a LOT of heavy lifting. I think that Doc Savage's name recognition is NOT very high among Mom and Pop America. I would place it somewhere between Solomon Kane and Fu Manchu.

So since a lot of people (especially the youngsters who are the primary movie audience) aren't going to know who Doc Savage is, that's gonna mean the trailers will be about 90% responsible for getting people excited about the move. Look for a very Guardians of the Galaxy feeling trailer on this one.

5) Will it be a period piece? I don't think so. I think it will be set in the present day. There *might* be some flashbacks to the 1930's, but that will probably be all we get.

Nor do I think we will see the original Fabulous Five in this movie. For one thing, they were all a bunch of white guys, which was fine in the 1930's, but that country club roster won't fly in the 21st century. Look for this version's Fabulous Five to be less WW II and more CW crew.

With that said, I think you could actually just dump a lot of the original Doc Savage stuff and still have a successful movie. I know. Heresy. But hear me out. In a world where Dwayne Johnson is also set to star in The Janson Directive because the success of the Jason Bourne series has prompted Universal to decide to create a Ludlum Cinematic Universe, I don't think adherence to source material is that necessary. People more or less just want to see a big action movie. And let's be honest, before those Bourne movies, how many people really knew who Jason Bourne was?

Also, you look at the BBC's Sherlock series as a good example of a character who was moved successfully into the modern era.

So, on paper it sounds like a workable proposition which could turn into a successful movie franchise.

Or, it could be a complete disaster.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

- Jim

The Golden Age Series: Public Domain Heroes in Prose

 I recently introduced readers to The Steel Ring, a prose novel featuring many of the characters from the Centaur Universe written by R.A. Jones and edited by Jeff Deischer of Westerntainment. As it would so happen, Jeff saw the interview and contacted me. He was kind enough to provide me with this excellent interview which introduces us to his series of Public Domain Superhero novels under The Golden Age banner.

FBU: Jeff, how would you introduce yourself to the readers of the Flashback Universe?

Jeff: I’m best known for my chronologically-minded essays, particularly the book-length The Man of Bronze: a Definitive Chronology, about the pulp DOC SAVAGE series. It is a definitive chronology, rather than the definitive chronology, because each chronologist of the DOC SAVAGE series has his own rules for constructing his own chronology.

 Adventure fiction made a lasting impression on my creative view as a child, and everything I write has Good Guys and Bad Guys – in capital letters. As an adult writer, I try to make my characters human, as well.

I primarily write fiction, and, combining my twin loves of superheroes and pulp, began THE GOLDEN AGE series in 2012. This resurrected, revamped and revitalized the largely forgotten characters of Ned Pines’ Standard, Better and Nedor publishing companies.

These characters, drawn from superhero, pulp and mystic milieus, fill the “Auric Universe”, as I call it.

FBU: Why you enjoy working with Golden Age characters?

With the characters already created and possessing backgrounds (and foes), it provides a great base to start from. Ideas just start flowing. That’s true of any “resurrection” of old characters (at least for me). I specifically wanted to try golden age superheroes because superheroes are my first love, and I thought that they’d work really well with my style, which is pulpish. They’re not far removed from the pulp era, and really, they’re the next step in pulp – visual, long on action and short on characterization.

I looked through the various defunct comic book companies and saw that Ned Pines’ companies (Standard, Better and Nedor) had the most characters. That gave me a lot to work with, which fit into my plan of introducing an entire universe of characters in the book – which turned out to the first in a series. I also didn’t want to use characters that other writers were using, like R. A. Jones and the Centaur THE PROTECTORS. It wasn’t until I’d finished the first volume, The Golden Age, that a friend of mine said, “You know, Alan Moore’s using some of these characters. Tom Strong is Doc Strange.”

 D’oh! I found that he’d used very few characters and had altered them even more than me!


FBU: What new things have you brought to the characters

Jeff: Anyone who’s read golden age comics knows that the characters don’t have much personality, so that was my primary goal – giving the characters personality. This included detailed origins for them (which many didn’t have). I also did some revision to make the Auric Universe a more cohesive whole, altering a few names and such. Mostly, readers have liked this, though a few think I went too far in a couple of cases. That’s one reason I call it my Auric Universe – Ned Pines’ universe is still there, exactly as fans remember and want it. That said, I did as little revising as possible. Some of this was due to my lack of knowledge about the characters, relying on a couple of internet sources. I was over halfway through the first volume when I discovered online archives, and later books reflect my greater knowledge of the characters as I worked my way through the stories. I started to use more villains from the actual comic books in later volumes, and they are much more “comic booky” as a result (from Dark of the Moon on).

Here is a list of the books in the series so far:

	The Golden Age (Volume I) In 1942, the world is at war. Spies and saboteurs seem to lurk around every corner in America. But, in the shadows, real danger awaits. Following the Battle of Midway, the Dragon Society of Imperial Japan sends agents on a secret mission to knock the U.S. out of the war. And only the superheroes of the Auric Universe can stop them.
	Mystico (Volume II) 1940: The Nazis are obsessed with mystical artifacts. Believing one was hidden in America centuries ago by the mysterious Knights Templar, the black wizard Nacht sends a party led by the sorcerer the Baron to find it. He is aided in his quest to gain one of the greatest prizes of all by Reinhard Heydrich, the infamous “Hangman”, who now controls the dreaded Vril power, becoming Nietzsche’s Ubermensch.
	Dark of the Moon (Volume III) The Auric Universe's oddball, fringe and civilian heroes get play here as Dr. X, an “occult scientist”, sends his team, which includes his niece Cynthia, her fiancé Bob Stone, Judy of the Jungle and her companion Pistols Roberts of Europol, and a patchwork giant called Jobe, to investigate as cities are being destroyed by mysterious tidal waves.
	Future Tense (Volume X) Like many other heroes of the Auric Universe, Major Future seemed to come from nowhere. In his case, it was more true than in others’. In 1943, a man with superhuman powers that included strength, agility and the ability to see radio waves, found himself in Los Angeles. How he got there and why he had these special abilities, he did not know. Impelled by some inner drive to help others, he took the name “Major Future” and became a superhero.
	Bad Moon Rising (Volume XI) The spotlight is on Major Wonder, my homage to the fun (i.e., smartass) superheroes of my youth. In this volume containing six independent but interrelated short stories adapted from his series in MYSTERY and WONDER, he faces dark times that run the gamut from superhero to horror to Sci-Fi.

Included in each volume are End Notes, which describe the factual or historical basis for things in the story, as well as a documentation of the changes I made in original story or characters. There is also a timeline of events of the book, and a lexicon of characters used, as well as an Afterword.

My webpage is jeffdeischer.blogspot.com, where I post the first chapters of the first novel of each of my series, so that potential readers can peruse my work without having to spend several dollars on a trade paperback to find out if they like it or not. The publisher’s website is westerntainment.blogspot.com.

Thank you Jeff!