[OtherEric]

DC has announced that they're going to do a Doc Savage series.  In the DCU.  Starting with a Batman/ Doc Savage special.  So far, not too bad.  Brian Azzarello is writing, I honestly haven't read much by him.

The bit on the DC blog claims "Azzarello is no stranger to noir or gritty storytelling".

So, are there some Doc Savage stories I've missed where noir or gritty applies?    The SHADOW, yes.  Noir & gritty fits right in there.  But Doc Savage at best rarely winds up being gritty and is about as far from Noir as you can get.

We'll see what happens, and I'll probably try the first few issues.  But this seems just horribly misdirected; has anybody involved with the book actually READ any of the original stories?

[Ed Love]

I agree. I've not read anything by Azzarello but it's because his stuff gives the impression that it's all noir-crime type stuff. Their whole take seems a little odd as the news I've heard is that they aren't doing a Doc Savage comic per se. They are doing a "pulp earth" comic. It takes place in the "today" world but one with pulp elements ala the Timm-Dini Batman cartoon. It will be with Doc, the Avenger, possibly the Shadow, the Spirit, Blackhawks and other non-powered types. The Avenger is being described as a "Tommy Lee Jones" type. Other than listing Rags Morales as the artist, I've not heard anything that actually makes me think it would be good as it seems like the set-up is going to require much of the story be about world-building and continuity. Too much to cram in to make it feel natural. Personally, I think they are approaching it from all the wrong angle.

I think they should do it the way DC handled similar characters in the 80s. Remember how Green Arrow and the Question were pretty much allowed to carry the Mature label and pretty much exist in their own corner of the DCU without flashy skin-tight costumes and superpowers and supervillains? They even crossed over amongst themselves in their annuals, pulling in Batman and the Butcher who easily matched their sensibilities. They were part of the DCU, just not required to actually reflect it or refer to it and it worked. Didn't need a whole separate continuity and universe set up for them. Produce a quality book. Let the continuity take care of itself. Besides, they already had a hint that Doc and his men are in the main DCU anyway, when some familiar silhouettes showed up at the end of Superman's pulp annual some years ago.

[OtherEric]

Well, we'll see what happens.  I'm VERY strongly predisposed to like a Doc Savage book; but it just seems like an uncomfortable fit at best.  Oh, well, if they screw up I've still got my bookshelf with all the Bantam reprints of the pulps to fall back on.

Total side note:  I keep waiting for collectors to jump on Giant Size Spider Man 3 as the flavor of the month, maybe this will do it.  Since it has a Doc Savage appearance, it also has the distinction of being the earliest Spider Man story that's never been reprinted, as far as I know.  Which would seem to me to make it a candidate for speculation.

[Astaldo711]

I've never read a Doc Savage story but want to. He was my Dad's favorite. All the things I've read about him though,I picture him more as an Indiana Jones kind of character as opposed to someone like the Shadow or Spider.

[Ed Love]

I didn't care for that Spider-Man annual, I just didn't buy the reveal at the end. Now, the Marvel-Two-One that he appeared in on the other hand is one of my favorites.

Think of Doc's crew as the Challengers of the Unknown while Doc is part Captain America and part Reed Richards.

[John C]

This seems, sadly, to be DC's approach to everything, these days.

Premise #1:  Everything prior to 1986 was horribly depressing and gory, The further back, the more that must be true.

Premise #2:  All stories exist primarily to sell Superman and/or Batman in some way.  Wonder Woman can maybe be included, too, if they can ever actually make her seem important.  Oh, and all of them must be represented as people who don't understand humanity.

Premise #3:  If it's not Superman or Batman, then the universe at large is far more important than the characters in it.  It's better to spend thirty pages explaining why Green Lantern's origin is different THIS time or why Wildcat is still around than to simply dive into action and leave the historical details vague, or just explain as you go.  In particular, DC has a severe aversion to "show, don't tell."

On the other hand, there's still a chance that Doc could work.  If Batman is the gritty noir character and Savage busts him on it, it would definitely fit both needs and play true to everybody.  But I doubt that's the approach they'll take.

[DOC]

I worked with Brian for a bit when I worked at the 2nd incarnation of Comico in the mid 90's. His Bruce (Banner) mini was ok, only cause corben did the art. Wasn't thrilled with his Superman with Jim Lee. He's kinda on the arrogant side and not sure if I'd want him to do Savage.

[OtherEric]

Now that I think about it, didn't he do the Doctor 13 story a couple of years ago?  While I don't think that was flawless, there are far worse starting points for bringing back older characters than that.  Then again, everything I've read about that says it was very atypical for Azz.

[DOC]

Here is the lastes low down from the man himself..you decide:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=22498

[misappear]

Wow, Azz sounds like a huge (no, I can't do it, but you know what it would have been) a#&hole.

[Yoc]

Ok, I'm one of the few who have never read a Doc Savage pulp and only glanced at the comic.
I know 'of' him and his past but perhaps because I'm in the dark on this the Azz interview didn't bother me that much.
I loved the timeless feel of Batman TAS and the lack of a definitive time setting.  I also like the idea on a non-superpowers separate universe for these mystery men characters.
I'm not sure sure on his desire to revamp the Blackhawks but what the heck, I'll give it a chance before I shoot it down.
Again not expecting much from DC is usually the safe assumption.
I'm doing the same thing for their 'Red Circle' revamp of MLJ though the new Hangman has a sexy start and the civil war back story is fun.

-Yoc

[misappear]

Doc Savage, the Spider, the Shadow...they all have very defined and stylized characters.  Taking those characters in another direction is analogous to re-imagining Superman as, perhaps, a woman.  It's all well and good to speculate, but what is the point?  Making a few bucks? (fewer and fewer it seems these days.)  Superman is not a woman and how about just writing a better Superman yarn?  Same thing applies to the Conde Nast characters.

There have been playful stories done as period pieces (Sherlock Homes and Jack the Ripper; Doctor Who and any notable person)  Azz is creating a world of non-superpowered heroes, and using charcters he admits to knowing very little about.  Lester Dent created a mythos which I would appreciate Azzarello (and DC for that matter) keeping his hands off.  Let him create his own characters. 

Contrary to Azzarello's opinion, I wouldn't support, buy, or read his work on this.  DC has a vast amount of its own characters which evidently cannot be woven into creative and memorable stories?  I believe that Yoc's statement that he expects little from DC is an extreme understatement.  DC has either screwed up or ruined over 70 years of their own popular culture mythos.  I recently appreciated their attempts at Wednesday Comics because of the throwback style and tone, but it still doesn't excuse the Titans and Wonder Woman features from being incomprehensible gibberish.

God, there I go again with the crochety old man thing.  Sorry. 

[OtherEric]

OK, that interview is annoying.  It definitely doesn't help that they don't seem to realize almost a third of the Doc Savage novels are CURRENTLY in print, and ALL of them have been reprinted.  There's a lot bigger group who know about Doc than they think.  Doc, while perhaps not as regularly in comics as we might like, has shown up EVERY decade from the 60's to the 90's.  And yet...

I like the idea of a timeless world like the Batman cartoon; if they can pull it off that works.  I like the idea of a "Pulp" world, with no superpowers.  I'm glad they're making sure Doc is the top of the food chain.  I may dislike the attitude towards long-time fans, but even if it's a lot more than 10 men in their 70's (I'm in my 30's and have read almost all the novels; the few I haven't finished reading are all on my shelf) I'm happy to admit that we're not that huge a group, either.  And the character changed quite a bit in the pulps; I'm not sure the best approach to the character is to exactly recreate what was in the pulps.  You need to start there; but not everything should be written in stone.  Lester Dent never let himself be hampered by continuity that I recalled, either.  So, I'll wait for preview pages.  But I'm willing to at least look at those at this point.

[JVJ]

God, there I go again with the crochety old man thing.  Sorry. 

Hey, m,
If you're going to perfect the COM thing, you gotta practice. You're among friends, so go for it...

(|:{>

[LastQuestion]

I've read a smattering of the Doc Savage pulps, and while I liked 'em okay, I did feel some were stilted, and depending on who was doing the ghost writing, the characterization can be pretty iffy.

Anyway, I don't mind some updating, but one thing I am curious about is the [seemingly] strict rule they're putting in about powered characters.  If this is a broad pulp world, then at some point the Doc must've come up against a "demonic asian wizard" or something--its one of the stock pulp villains.

Do like the idea that they're going to fold in a lot of different "properties" to give this universe some diversity.
I don't know how they'll make The Spirit work alongside Doc Savage, but I imagine it'll be a hoot.

Also hoping to see the return of 2 of my fav DC goldenagers, The Sandman, and Crimson Avenger!

[Ed Love]

He has about the same if not more characterization as most comic book superheroes though.

He never really faced any "true" magical threats until the last issue which was left in the air. However, he faced numerous invisible men, giant monster men, men with a superspeed formula, a race with mental powers, beings that lived underwater. And certain issues had Monk & Ham playing around with telepathy just so that they needle each other. Certain limited superpowers like the GA Hourman or Sargon whose magic only affected what he could touch wouldn't really be that far out of the question. Likewise on the Shadow whose main adversary Shiwan Khan had some mental abilities and at least one villain, the Blur, seemed to have superspeed (I've not read the whole novel, always possible it was a trick).

What strikes me as stupid is that the artists are obviously trying to capture the feel of the characters and get them right. Yet, the writer takes obvious enjoyment that he's not. I'm hoping that it's mostly hyperbole on his part, that what he means is that he's not trying specifically to reproduce the pulp in comicbook form, it's a comic with Doc Savage in it, not an adaptation. And, that's ok. But, I'm always leery and disgusted a little bit when a writer gives an interview and talks about how happy he is that fans of a character that he's working on will hate what he's doing. Seems to me that's a sign right off the bat that you have the wrong writer for that character. The goal should be to be true to the character and find what is interesting and compelling and communicate that to new readers. Whatever you do, you're going to have to work to get the new readers on board, why alienate the ones that you have pretty much built in and even advertise the fact?

I can give some leeway and I think Doc works fine in a super-hero universe. One of my favorite all-time comics is the Marvel Two-In-One with Doc teaming up with the Thing AND it works.

[John C]

Y'know, I see the same major problem here that I had with, say, the Archie license.

I mean, DC claims that they don't see a really large fanbase for the Doc Savage character.  Meanwhile, don't really want to write about Doc Savage, they want something entirely different.

So why license the trademark at all?

It seems like they'd be far better served by doing, well, anything else.  I mean, why not name the two-fisted hero, say, Superman?  They already own the name, and it was an occasional superlative used for Doc.  Bigger name recognition and (after decades of alternate Supermen) fewer expectations.

Added:

Unlike Yoc, I'm also less impressed by the "just like the Batman animated series" bit.  I love German Expressionism and Art Deco as much as the next guy (maybe a tiny bit more), but c'mon.  The show's over.  Let's go do something new instead of canonizing Mr. Dini yet again.

Besides, aren't all superhero cartoons pretty much timeless?  When does "The Brave and the Bold" (which, by the way, is lots of fun, somethiing that's been missing for a long time) take place?  The Super-Friends?  Courageous Cat?  Unless there's a Japanese spy skulking about or someone goes to a disco, that's just how animation works.

[Yoc]

Now don't be 'dissing the Dini Meister John!
He's almost single handedly breathed new life into superheroes on tv. 
We'd still be stuck wistfully remembering Spider-man and Friends if it weren't for Dini.

I've been enjoying the Brave and Bold myself but still feel things  peaked with Justice League Unlimited and cry to think they dumped a Capt. Marvel series to do Legion of Superheroes which never did much for me.

-Yoc
'Totally off topic and loving it!'

[narfstar]

That is what I say. If there is no fan base then why bother. If there is a fan base use it do not alienate it.

[OtherEric]

I've been enjoying the Brave and Bold myself but still feel things  peaked with Justice League Unlimited and cry to think they dumped a Capt. Marvel series to do Legion of Superheroes which never did much for me.
'Totally off topic and loving it!'

No, I thin this actually follows the topic quite reasonably.

I liked the LSH cartoon quite a lot; but then again I think I've established just how hardcore a LSH fan I am.  There's a LARGE part of me ready to uncritically enjoy that show, as long as they didn't blatantly screw up.  Which they didn't.

[Yoc]

I admit I've only read a handful of LSH stories. I Loved the Capt. Marvel ep of JLU and thought it showed great potential for a series.  Nice to  know a true LSH fan enjoyed that series though.
As a kid I like the Ghost Tank and Unknown Soldier more but I was never a collector of any of them.
Back then if I found a book I'd read almost anything but these were the ones that stuck in my head.

[John C]

Now don't be 'dissing the Dini Meister John!
He's almost single handedly breathed new life into superheroes on tv. 
We'd still be stuck wistfully remembering Spider-man and Friends if it weren't for Dini.

I don't begrudge him his success, mind you.  He got my entire dorm together on whatever night Batman was on, and that's mighty impressive.  Granted, it was a small engineering school, but yes, it was popular because it was watchable.

But to me, it's already dated.  It's plodding and brooding and...sorry, I dozed off for a second during an internal monologue.  It was a soap opera with tights, basically.  Like dirigibles and rectangular heads, that's not a sin, but it's also not the solution to every single problem.

(I do, however, begrudge him overuse of boring characters like Harley Quinn and the reintroduction of Zatanna to the public eye...)

I've been enjoying the Brave and Bold myself but still feel things  peaked with Justice League Unlimited and cry to think they dumped a Capt. Marvel series to do Legion of Superheroes which never did much for me.

Actually, I very much disliked "Justice League Unlimited" for a variety of reasons, some of which apparently bothered the studio, as well, since they were given in-story treatment towards the end.  Actually, most of the Justice League series bugged me.

"Legion," I tried watching, but the first episode was boring AND an origin that everybody already knows (Clark Kent's childhood, I mean), and in later episodes...well, I'm not sure if I was supposed to know things from comics or if I missed an important episode or if certain things just weren't important to the story as written, but it felt muddled and directionless.  Plus, like with modern comics, they seemed enamored with the idea of introducing old concepts just to show that they're different now.

(I agree that Captain Marvel could have gone over better, but I can also see why a studio might pass on it.  The Marvel Family isn't a particularly strong brand, for one thing.  Then you have the potential for religious groups to complain about depictions of gods.  And that doesn't even get into the child endangerment issues--unless Billy gets tied up and menaced by creepy old guys, it's not a good Captain Marvel story, after all.)

But "B&B" is just, well, fun.  It moves fast, it looks slick, and doesn't spend so much darn time explaining things, because they're telling two stories.  I even like Green Arrow, and that's a really hard thing to make me do.

[misappear]

Somehow, in the back of my mind, I think this is relevant to the discussion.  DC released 133 comics in July, 2009.  At an average of $3.00, that would cost $399.00.  (Plus $49.87 in sales tax.) I started buying comics in December, 1962.  If I would have bought all the DC comics from that month, it would have cost $3.60. (Plus $0.10 sales tax) 

OK, apples to apples.  There were 30 titles in December, 1962.  To sample 1/3 of DC's wares, $1.25.  To sample 10 titles today, $33.75
(Chicago sales tax, my home town is the highest in the country)

The value of a creator's "new re-interpretation" of popular culture icons and mythos contrasted against entertainment value doesn't equate to me anymore.  Create something new.

--Crochety Old Man

[John C]

Novelty really has taken a hit over the years.  I mean, it seems like at every turn, creators (and I use the term liberally, here) are constantly bemoaning that there aren't any new stories that can be written for whatever character they plan to kill, reboot, mangle, replace, or marginalize, even though this is demonstrably wrong.  Where they're not doing that, they're instead literally copying some old story, beat for beat, maybe changing some small detail or adding new dialogue.

Incidentally--a hundred and thirty-three books in a month!?  That's insane.  In a declining market, how is that a sustainable return on investment?  How is that even profitable?  That three or four bucks can't be THAT much markup on the DC side.

[narfstar]

I think that each books sells so little now they have to overburden the buy everything crowd. Other than JLA/JSA I do not buy any DC and I buy no Marvel unless they do an Avengers Next title every once in awhile. I guess I lean more now to a new title popping up with a 4 to 6 issue run and it is done.
Do not mess up my beloved characters. Give me something new and worthwhile. Maybe that is why I like the Phantom. I do not think that anyone has taken the character and just screwed him up, other than the 2099 or whatever cartoon and Defenders of the Earth. When I read the Phantom I want the history that goes with him. I currently am enjoying the Phantom: Generations series. Two series that I wish had lasted longer were Opposite Forces and Johnny Saturn.