Off the Mark Comic Strip, December 18, 2015 on GoComics.com
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Doc Savage: The Secret of Satan's Spine -- Kenneth Robeson (Will Murray)
The one thing I'd like to see more of in Will Murray's new series of "the All-New Wild Adventures of Doc Savage" is a page or two in which Murray explains exactly how much of the book comes from Dent's original ideas or outlines or fragments. All we get this time is the book's dedication: "For Charles Moran, the Doc Savage editor who killed this idea back in 1943 . . . ." From this I infer that the idea was proposed by Dent or one of the other Kenneth Robesons but rejected. It's a good idea, no matter whose it was, and I wonder why it was deep-sixed.The seeting this time is 1943, when the world is involved in WWII, the Big One. The story begins when an attractive young blonde woman attempts with some success to sidetrack Monk, who's supposed sail to England on the Northern Star for a consulting job. Shenanigans ensue, and the woman is kidnapped. Eventually Doc is brought into things, and he, Ham, and Monk wind up on the ship. Many of the crew are members of a gang headed by a man called Diamond, but others of the crew turn out to be old friends of Doc. Fans of the series will know them when they appear.
There's a lot going on, including a mysterious and deadly sculpture, invisibility cloaking (Doc had it before Harry Potter), disguise, time spent in the brig, a takeover of the ship by Diamond and the gang, and plenty of fisticuffs and shooting. Not to mention the Secret of Satan's Spine, which is a good one, for sure and which I of course will not reveal.
All of this is leading up to climax when the monster hurricane that's been threatened through the story finally appears and wreaks mucho havoc.
As you've probably gathered by now, Will Murray's done it again, with a fast-paced story that's true to the spirit and style of the original adventures and is not to be missed by fans of the series.
Once Again Texas Leads the Way
This Fossil Found in Texas Suggests Pterosaurs Could Fly Really Far: Paleontologists have dug up a 94-million-year-old pterosaur fossil in Texas—the first of its kind discovered in North America. A paper recently published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology reports that the species' closest relative is a pterosaur that was native to what would have been England today, indicating that the creatures were capable of flying extreme distances.
Friday, December 18, 2015
No word on whether he filled his mouth with cannon balls and powdered his behind
Man arrested, alligator in custody after SWAT standoff in Cleveland: The man used the alligator "as a weapon"
Frank Roderus, R. I. P.
It's been announced on the Western Fictioneers list that Frank Roderus has died. I first became acquainted with his work back in the middle 1980s, starting with his series about a man named Heller, a sort of Travis McGee type. There were, I believe, six books in the series. Here's my review of one of them, done for an FFB feature a couple of years ago. His western novels are all very good, and I recommend them.
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