Doc Savage - The Thousand Headed Man!

This Gold Key comic book story starring Doc Savage by Leo Dorfman and Jack Sparling an adaptation of the vintage pulp The Thousand-Headed Man by Kenneth (Lester Dent) Robeson, one of the early Doc pulp stories. 

The one-shot comic seen at the top of this post was produced by Gold Key in 1966 in conjunction with a planned-but-not-produced film featuring Chuck Connors as Doc. 

The cover is by James Bama. It's a close-up of a full painting he created for the second of the very successful Doc Savage paperbacks from Bantam Books. 

The story is a solid Doc adventure with a mix of urban and jungle action. There's a neat mystery concerning three keys and some ancient treasure and there are villains galore. The mystery begins in London but winds its way in complex form to Cambodia where an ancient cult of cobra worshippers who use versions of the cobra venom to create mists that make folks unconscious. The London part of the story seems pretty much intact, though the notion of the keys is changed substantially in the comics story. They are just keys, but in the pulp original I think they are sticks which function as keys. The mystery here is in what they are composed of which is the same as the pulp. The Cambodian element of the story is very compressed, and I'll have to say the pacing of the story isn't completely successful. The first part seems neatly done, but they have to really run through the more exotic aspects of the story. A plane explosion is relegated to a single panel, and alas isn't at all threatening. 

Jack Sparling isn't a favorite of mine, though he does his typical journeyman job here. I can follow the story most of the time without fail, though the sheer number of Doc's aides seems a bit of a problem for him at times. Doc himself looks like the Bama painted version, but when rendered by Sparling here he looks like a very old man instead of the hard-bitten adventurer that Bama presents. It's nice that Sparling stayed close to the source material, but it doesn't completely work. All in all, this is a fun and diverting comic. Not a completely successful adaptation, but it's unclear if they were adapting the pulp or perhaps a screen treatment, so I'll not condemn the producers here for those flaws necessarily.

The Thousand-Headed Man was also picked by producers as a stirring radio by Will Murray and others in 1985. 

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Super Happily Ever After!

The imaginary story of Superman Red and Superman Blue is the ultimate happy ending. In this fondly remembered tale from Superman #162 by writer Leo Dorfman with sumptuous artwork by the always reliable Curt Swan we have a story which misses barely a beat in its relentless effort to tie up all the loose ends.

Superman is condemned by the people of Kandor for failing to successfully enlarge the bottle city. Likewise he comes under pressure as Clark Kent for failing to get scoops. Also on the list of complaints is the failure to end crime across the globe and find a cure for Kryptonite. Instead of telling the Kandorians to stuff it of course, Superman feels guilty, so much so that he attempts to boost his brainpower with an experimental machine, one which ultimately divides him into two beings -- Superman-Red and Superman-Blue.

With the added smarts and the added help he quickly finds a way to recreate Krypton by drawing back together all the Kryptonite from across the cosmos and enlarges Kandor to set back onto this "New Krypton". They even go the extra length to pretty it up for the nagging Kandorians. Then Red and Blue take another planet and makes it habitable for the Atlanteans and scoops them up in a space funnel to take possession of the newly dubbed planet "Hydra".

Not content with these accomplishments, the two Superman create an anti-crime ray and outfit satellites to circle the Earth and radiate this mind-changing ray onto the whole population of the planet. Criminals reform, the Soviets apologize, and even Castro releases his prisoners. Lex Luthor is a changed man and comes up with a super drug to end all disease, so effective it even allows Lex to grow a new head of hair. The Phantom Zone villains are released and reformed and Supergirl shuttles them to New Krypton to live. Even Brainiac and the Superman Revenger Squad are defeated for good.

And finally with all crime defeated, the Supermen decide its safe to wed and raise families. Red picks Lois and proposes while Blue does the same to Lana. Mr.Mxyzptlk shows up to build them a monument even. The heroes wed their chosen brides and even Jimmy Olsen and Lucy Lane join the party. Then Red and Lois move to New Krypton while Blue and Lana stay on Earth to fend off natural disasters when they occur. The story ends on the absolute happiest note it is possible to imagine with all parties content.

The mandate of this story seemed clearly to come up with a yarn that would solve all the problems and they do a pretty darn good job.

The Superman-Red and Superman-Blue gimmick is revived in the 90's and runs for several issues through the books. I only ever read a few, so I don't really know how they can compare to this Silver Age classic, perhaps the most beatific Superman story I've ever read, wish-fulfillment at its finest.

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Before And After The Fourth World!

This issue of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen featuring a typically dandy "Swanderson" cover was the last before the dramatic mind-bending arrival of Jack "King" Kirby. It's a typical issue featuring stories by Leo Dorfman and Bob Haney and artwork by Murphy Anderson and Pete Costanza. The story goes that Kirby did not want to displace other creators from their steady assignments, but Jimmy Olsen was getting cancelled anyway so he took the gig.

 What followed were fifteen Kirby classics where Jimmy encountered the cloned Newsboy Legion with their Whiz Wagon in tow, legions of Micro-Troopers, motorcycle toughs called "The Outsiders",  tech-savvy Hippies called "Hairies", the revived Golden Guardian,  alien Universal Monster wannabes, the Loch Ness Monster and much more.

After all that mind-blowing adventure though, the cover above is the first after the departure of the King for other opportunities. The cover is by Bob Oksner and the issue features a story drawn by Oksner and written by John Albano. It seems, given the cover tease, that Jimmy reverts to his old ways pretty swiftly. He seems unchanged fundamentally by his travels through the Wild Area, the Project, and beyond. The series would last fifteen issues after Kirby's departure, before it was folded into The Superman Family comic.

Sigh.

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