Kenneth Robeson - The Man of Bronze (1933)

 

I'm not going to make a habit of this because there are millions of these fucking things, but since reading Devil on the Moon I'd been on the look out for the very first book in the Doc Savage series, mainly in the hope that it might answer a few questions which the later title failed to answer. As is doubtless obvious, I've found a copy at last, and as hoped it does indeed give some account of Doc Savage's origin, although there isn't much to tell which is probably why they didn't bother repeating it in subsequent books; and I still have no idea why he's described as the Man of Bronze. I appreciate that it's because he has bronze skin and even golden eyes, but there's no accounting for why he should appear so beyond that it's because he's amazing. I'm therefore letting it go.

Doc Savage seems a more obvious precursor to the modern superhero than Philip Wylie's Gladiator. He's muscular, athletic, knows absolutely everything, enjoys punching bad guys, and he doesn't spend the entire novel agonising over the misery of being able to bend steel bars with his bare hands. He's on a mission to make the world a better place - in so far as it's possible to do so by punching bad guys - his first name is Clark, and he has a Fortress of Solitude specifically identified as such somewhere above the arctic circle. He's a character to which we might aspire, and he travels the world with a group of five pals, each of whom brings some specialist knowledge or ability to the whole and so - it could be argued - serving as a template for the superhero team-ups which were to come.

We join the story just as Savage's similarly adventurous and muscular father is murdered by an enemy, leaving Clark to continue his legacy, with the first item on the agenda being an assassination attempt which leads the gang to the jungles of the Yucatan and the miscreant who had Pop whacked.

The Man of Bronze is cautiously set in the Republic of Hidalgo where our guy encounters a lost tribe of Maya, still building those temple platforms, and unknown to the outside world. This is usually the point at which it goes tits up for me, but Robeson - or at least Lester Dent lurking behind the authorial pseudonym - bothered to do just enough homework to make it readable, keeping in mind that this amounts to a veneer of authenticity applied to the sort of narrative which had done so well for The Shadow and arguably reached its most vivid expression in Universal serials such as Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and others. Dent apparently missed the footnote identifying Kukulkan as the Mayan translation of Quetzalcoatl meaning they were the same individual rather than two distinct Gods, but that's probably forgiveable.

Anyway, these Maya are entirely civilised and are afforded more dignity than one might expect of a jungle adventure written in the thirties. The Princess is of course ravishing and in love with Doc, and the story spins on these Maya having a massive stockpile of gold which they intend to just give to Savage and his gang because that's how it works, but otherwise we have none of the usual rolling of eyes, wacky superstition, or human sacrifice fortuitously delayed by solar eclipse. While this may not quite add up to Shakespeare, Doc Savage doesn't aspire to Shakespeare. The writing such as we find in these pulps - and I'm still not entirely comfortable with that term - may seem odd and clunky in comparison to more literary contemporaries, and that which is often characterised as bad or inept writing is rather, I would argue, extremely stylised to very specific and admittedly narrow purpose. In other words, it's probably not fair comparing the Ramones to Emerson, Lake & Palmer*. The form this stylization takes makes heavy use of superlatives, and Doc's every action is described in terms making it clear that no-one else could have done it so well. It would be exhausting were it not rationed to certain scenes, but serves to set the mood and give pace to action sequences which might otherwise unfold too quickly and leave less of an impression. Doc's companions are written in similar terms, albeit with additional emphasis on how much they admire or are in debt to their bronzed leader. Once we're resigned to the fact of the narrative emphasising this angle whether we like it or not, there's plenty to enjoy.

Returning to the implication that we may as well be reading a Republic Picture serial with a slightly higher than usual degree of cultural fidelity, The Man of Bronze is single-minded yet mostly sensitive where it needs to be, and there's honestly not much to dislike unless you're actively looking for it.

Readers are now invited to proceed to the comments section where they may enjoy a selection of poorly articulated objections made by fan wankers who feel that while I enjoyed The Man of Bronze, I didn't enjoy it enough for their liking and maybe I should have fucking checked with them first.

*: Aside from anything, Emerson, Lake & Palmer were shit.

Devil on the Moon

Kenneth Robeson Devil on the Moon (1938)
It's taken me a while to work out what or who Doc Savage is or was. I first heard of him in reference to the disastrous George Pal movie adaptation in the pages of Starburst when I was a teenager. The name was a new one on me, and the piece assumed I would either know who the hell they were talking about or else might at least be capable of making an effort to catch up. This, as an aside, seems a more civilised way of going about things, crediting the reader with some intelligence, as distinct from the contemporary approach which would doubtless endeavor to catch our attention with Doc Savage was kinda like the Commander Shepherd* of his day.

Later I saw some of that movie, and I vividly recall a stereotypical Oirish person who wears a green bowler hat and goes around with a pig under his arm, but I can't find any reference to this character on the internet, and although Monk in the books has a pet pig, the resemblance seemingly ends there. Maybe I imagined it.

Anyway, there are a million volumes of these things to be had in the second hand places around our way, and I figured I should at least try one. The Man of Bronze was the first in the series, and I was holding out for a copy but it never seemed to show up, so I nabbed this one on the grounds of it having a promising cover.

Stan Lee has cited Doc Savage as a prototype for the entire superhero genre, which seems fair. He predates Superman and even got there first with an arctic Fortress of Solitude - which is even identified as such. He has adventures, fights crime, and so on and so forth. Most of the books were written by Lester Dent, Savage's creator, as was this one, although they're all credited to the collective nom de plume of Kenneth Robeson. Dent and his colleagues churned these things out for most of the thirties and forties, and as you might expect they have a pulpy quality - if you'll pardon what has become a somewhat condescending term - emphasis on action, peril, fast-pacing, intrigue, and characters painted in bold colours. That said, Dent knew how to work a satisfying, occasionally arresting turn of phrase beyond the basic requirements of delivering generic thrills, and I particularly liked the scene setting.

The Spanish Plantation was situated in Virginia, near Washington, and its old Colonial architecture was pleasantly distinguished. There was a colored orchestra and a sign which advertised chicken dinners. It was a nice place.

Occasionally we get splashes of the genuinely weird.

But the victim screamed terribly; the ends of his fingers bulged like stepped-on wieners under the pressure, and one fingertip split and emptied crimson.

Somehow I couldn't quite tell what the story was about, except that it involved a lot of kidnapping, plus the intimation of a bad guy controlling everything from somewhere on the moon. It's something to do with certain European countries which Dent leaves unnamed despite that he's obviously referring to Germany, Poland, and others then gearing up for the second world war. The anonymity strikes an odd note, almost implying a reluctance to offend any readers who might have thought Hitler was lovely, but there's nothing in the text to suggest unsavoury sympathies. Some genius on Goodreads has pointed out instances of sexism in the book but, well, you know…

Devil on the Moon didn't change my life, but there's really nothing much to be said against it and it's good of its kind. I'm more likely to pick up one of these than to bother with another Heinlein, for example.

*: Apparently a character from a console game called Mass Effect, which I had to look up for the sake of a contemporary reference. I don't actually know much about the world or characters of console games because games are for fucking idiots.