Tag Archives: Savage Adventures

January 3, 2025 · 4:30 pm

Free!

TYG was off work this week, which was cool. She’s way more relaxed so I’m more relaxed. Plus, to make up for how much I deal with the dogs when she’s at work, she took them all of Thursday, leaving me to do what I liked (we tried that during her last week-long vacation but then dog vet visits sucked up half the day). Much as I’d have enjoyed wandering through Barnes & Noble or one of our local comic book stores, I decided to make it a writing day. Rather than stick at home, however, I headed out to the Bean Trader, a nearby coffee shop. I sat and worked on rewriting Jekyll and Hyde, ran a couple of errands (we have a dog appointment Saturday morning which is my normal errand time) came home.

It was really fun. Hot chocolate to keep me going (it’s been freezing cold which is perfect chocolate weather), no pets to distract me. It was much more fun than back in Florida when I’d occasionally write at a Starbucks. The difference, I think, is that I had no real reason to be there and this time I did.

In the afternoon I worked up in my room on more Jekyll/Hyde, and then some on The Savage Year. The opening chapters are in better shape than I thought; next week we’ll see how the book-by-book breakdown looks.

And as I mentioned Tuesday, I finished editing Southern Discomfort. I’ll feel better once it’s published but I’m way pleased to have it done. And glad it’s not on my to-do list for this month.

The Local Reporter took a week off so I didn’t have any articles published. I did have two posts up on the Atomic Junk Shop blog. One was about yet another noteworthy issue of Captain Marvel — as I say in the piece, the Silver Age Mar-Vell’s adventures aren’t terribly good but they keep being worth writing about. #18, for example, plants the seed that would eventually turn Carol Danvers into the next Captain Marvel.

I also posted about Marvel’s ongoing efforts to find the next big thing in comics. Spoiler: knocking off Casper the Friendly Ghost was not the answer.

With Wednesday a day off and Tuesday devoted to planning 2025, there wasn’t much time to do anything else. It was a good week though.

Captain Marvel art by Gil Kane; Homer cover by Dan DeCarlo (presumably the same DeCarlo who created Josie and the Pussycats at Archie Comics). Doc Savage cover by Emery Clarke. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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January 1, 2025 · 5:30 am

What new surprises lie in store? 2025 begins

When I looked back to 2024’s New Year’s Day post, I discovered my big goal for last year was to restore order to my day that I’d lost from Wisp becoming an indoor cat. While I didn’t mention that in yesterday’s 2024-review post (I’d forgotten about it), I think I pretty much pulled that off. I’ve adjusted to having Wisp in my lap most mornings and I’ve become good at taking exercise during the week in five-minute bursts.

As I noted yesterday, organization didn’t translate into getting lots of writing finished. I will have to do better this year. I have no particular insights on doing so other than 1)allowing more time than I anticipate to get things done, and 2)budgeting time for the little shit that falls through the cracks. I’ve had my short story Obolus ready to self-publish except I’ve never gotten around to finding a cover. I think it’s time to do that. I’ve also gotten out of the habit of checking for potential markets for my few unpublished stories.

The big project, of course, is completing Jekyll and Hyde. It’s the one with a deadline. Part of “allowing more time,” as noted above, is budgeting much more time each month to watching the movies and writing them up. I’ve done enough not to worry about meeting deadline but I can’t slack up.

Next up, I want to publish Southern Discomfort. It’s finished but I still need cover art (and I’ll probably have to edit the manuscript to account for Draft2Digital’s formatting process). Having failed to publish Savage Adventures last year, I want that done, plus some work on new projects.

I also want to make material contributions to the side of good. I have no idea what kind of mess our new president is going to make but I want to help clean it up. I haven’t figured out how, other than donating money, but I’ll let you know when my ideas become better formed. Last year I did GOTV postcards; I’ll do those again, but I don’t think it’s enough any more. I’ll be contacting our elected officials more frequently though I’m not sure how effective it is — while I give Thom Tillis credit for responding to my missives (not everyone does), I’ve yet to see him depart from the Republican Party line.

On the personal side, I want to enjoy myself (well, duuuuh): reading, movies, more time with TYG and the pets. Keeping myself healthy. Spending more time with friends.

I’d also like to make more money, which is tough in my line of work. I’ll give it a shot, though.

Happy New Year everyone. Looking back, I can see I really was happier by the end of 2024 than I’d been at the start. May it be so again, for all y’all too.

Film still from 1920 Jekyll and Hyde; all rights remain with current holder.

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December 31, 2024 · 5:15 am

2024 takes its final bow

Ever hear of the recency effect? It’s the tendency to make annual evaluations based on recent behavior—”Oh, Cliff has been so helpful this past week, I should give him Exceeds Expectations” rather than the year as a hole. I get it: this has been a good month and a good holiday season so I feel like saying “Hey, this was a great year!”

And certainly it wasn’t a bad year. TYG’s and my policy of having regular dates and doing fun stuff continues to make us a happier couple. Wisp has adjusted to life indoors and both dogs still have a great quality of life. TYG’s in good health, I’m in good health, and we’re currently financially secure. So yay.

However it’s been a lot more effort to care for Plushie since his glaucoma diagnosis back in March. Drops in the morning, early afternoon and evening. Plus more drugs for Trixie for various conditions. We’ve ruled out traveling anywhere together for more than a few hours because TYG doesn’t trust anyone else to administer everything properly (I can’t say she’s wrong). However if that keeps Plushie around and happy for another year or two years, yay again. But it does take more time and energy to get stuff done (on top of dog exercises and other treatments we were already doing).

Now as to writing … I didn’t come even remotely close to my goals for the year. Time for short stories dried up; I’m so close to finishing Oh the Places You’ll Go and yet it didn’t get done. Didn’t complete a second draft of either The Impossible Takes a Little Longer or Let No Man Put Asunder. Didn’t sell anything besides the two stories in The Ceaseless Way.

I meant to finish and publish both Southern Discomfort and Savage Adventures; the former is done but not published, the second still needs work.

I’m not beating myself up over this. Some of my plans were over ambitious. Some of it was starting the Jekyll and Hyde book and having to devote time to that. Some of it was putting in more work than anticipated on The Local Reporter. Which brings in money but isn’t as satisfying as finishing a novel or publishing a short story.

Still, I did finish Southern Discomfort and I think it’s good, as are the two stories in Ceaseless Way. And my reporting. I shall take pride in all of that. And squeezing my work into four days a week with blogging and stuff on the Friday has worked well.

Back tomorrow with plans for 2025.

Cover image by GetCovers based on design by Arden Brooks.

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October 2, 2024 · 5:15 am

2024 is now three-quarters over

Which has me reflecting on my writing goals and how well I’ve done meeting them.

Nowhere near as well as I hoped, which isn’t unusual — my reach typically exceeds my grasp. I didn’t finish the second draft of Let No Man Put Asunder. Haven’t finished any short stories. Haven’t sold any. Only attended one con. While I should be able to bring out Southern Discomfort this year I know I won’t finish Savage Adventures, my Doc Savage history. My exercise regimen has also fallen way, way off. And plans to spend time on marketing don’t come to pass.

Part of the problem was our pets’ various health problems — the added time for Plushie’s eye drops, unplanned vet appointments, etc. Having three pets has made it a lot harder to find time by myself to exercise or stretch out, especially as TYG’s schedule requires me to handle the dogs for more of the day (which is fine — her work pays 90 percent of our bills, after all). That adds up to a loss of time and also of mental energy.

Another factor is that everything takes more time than anticipated. I thought I’d factored that into my goals for the year, but I didn’t. My Local Reporter work in particular keeping sucking up bigger chunks of my week than I think it will. I try to minimize that by concentrating all the work in one day each week, but interviewees aren’t always able to do that.

Ceaseless Way turned out to be a much bigger time drain than I expected. Working on a collaborative anthology sounds fun but it’s a lot more work than submitting a story to an editor and letting them handle the rest. Though my collaborators really appreciate the extra work I put in.

Then there’s my decision to starts writing Jekyll and Hyde; I’d considered waiting until Southern Discomfort and Savage Adventures were done, but the itch proved too strong. That also sucks up more time than expected, as I’m determined not to lag behind and end up massively rushed as I approached the deadline.

On the plus side I’m starting to get the hang of budgeting my exercise time around our pets. And I am getting a lot of work done, even if it’s not on the projects I thought I’d be handling. And switching to four seven-hour days a week has done wonders for improving my productivity.

While a little disappointed, I see no reason to beat myself up.

#SFWApro. Cover art by James Steranko, painting by Salvador Dali, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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August 16, 2024 · 4:15 pm

Doc Savage and teeth: my week in review

Last week due to Hurricane Debby, my dentist postponed putting in my permanent crown. That meant I had two dental appointments this week, my regular checkup Thursday and my crown implant Tuesday. I called and got them merged into one Thursday appointment. Efficient!

However a variety of personal stuff intruded on my work days and ate into my time. I also wound up spending more time working on Savage Adventures than I’d planned. I’d wanted to finish this editing go-round this week and I did. It took me way more time than I’d anticipated though, so I didn’t get much done on anything else.

I did get a Local Reporter article in on Carrboro City Council candidate Cristóbal Palmer, and two Atomic Junk shop stories. One on DC’s teen humor books—

— including redrawing DC’s adaptation of TV’s Dobie Gillis as Windy and Willy.

— and one on Marvel Comics in early 1969.

Stan, Stan, Stan, you don’t think the Invisible Girl even has the brain cells to pick a baby name without a man? Jeez.

As for my teeth, the good news is, they’re in good shape. The bad news is, the new crown was slightly off and so they’ve ordered another — I go back in a couple of weeks. I can see why, too — while it’s not bad enough to cause major discomfort or an inability to sleep (as happened with my first crown many, many years ago) it does feel “off” somehow.

#SFWApro. Art by Emery Clarke, Bob Oksner (x2) and Jack Kirby. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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July 30, 2024 · 5:08 am

Terror and genius: the other Lester Dent

Late last year I read a couple of books collecting Lester Dent’s early pulp series heroes, Lynn Lash, Lee Nace and Foster Fade. As I found that useful for working on Savage Adventures I thought I’d read some more …

TERROR, INC.: The Weird Mysteries of Lester Dent is a collection of “menace” thrillers featuring various one-shot PIs tackling bizarre deaths — men turning into to skeletons, men bleeding to death through their pores, beheaded by a ray weapon and attacks by “The Invisible Horde” which uses an X-ray like beam to turn things and people transparent. Entertaining in their own right, and it’s easy to see elements Dent may have recycled into the Doc Savage series — invisibility in The Spook Legion, the skeleton death in Land of Fear, the beheading ray in The Headless Men (ghost-written by Alan Hathway).

In 1936, Dent stopped submitting (and presumably writing) Doc Savage stories for several months. Doc Savage expert Will Murray says there’s no clue to whether Dent wanted to take a break, hoped to walk away for good or what. During the sabbatical he submitted several detective stories to the critically acclaimed Black Mask magazine and also wrote GENIUS JONES. a screwball comedy that imagines Doc Savage a little differently.

The protagonist (who may have inspired a similar DC comics character a few years later) is the son of “Polar” Jones, an explorer who died in the Arctic leaving his son behind. With the help of the one surviving explorer and a ton of books, Jones educated himself in just about everything. However his lack of human contact gives him an almost Vulcan level of cluelessness about human behavior — and why does he get these strange feelings when he meets attractive women?

The plot involves a hardnosed millionaire who realizes Jones is that rarity, an honest man, and sets him a challenge: if he can find worthy recipients for a million dollars within one month, Jones will take charge of distributing the millionaire’s entire fortune. That’s very bad news for Lyman Lee, a scheming business associate (“Lyman Lee had gotten waiters fired for spilling soup on his jacket.”) who has his own plans for the money.

While the handsome, brawny, brilliant Jones has a lot in common with Doc Savage, the screwball take is completely different in tone. This one was thoroughly engaging; while the book includes the outline for a sequel, regrettably we never got one. It works better for me than the similarly humorous Gadget Man stories do.

#SFWApro. Top cover artist unknown; Genius Jones cover by Rudolph Belarski, all rights remain with current holder.

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July 19, 2024 · 4:33 pm

I fought the week and the week won

This was definitely the least productive week since I switched to the four-day week. Sooner or later, a bad week was going to happen.

It started early Sunday morning when Plushie threw up on the bed. I took them downstairs so TYG could wash the bedclothes then we decided the simplest thing was to keep them downstairs with me. I thought I could drift off to sleep but every time I tried, Wisp got in my grill. I think she’d have been willing to curl up next to me on the couch but Trixie was there, so …

I slept well Sunday night but I was still tired Monday, when I worked on a Local Reporter article. Oh, and took Trixie back for another appointment for her butt (doing great, thank goodness). Plus I spent more time than I’d thought I’d need formatting the draft of the Ceaseless Way anthology, making sure that all the contributed stories use the same typeface, paragraph layout, etc. That took longer than I thought — it’s been a long time since I had any sort of editorial role on a group project.

Then I had another bad night of sleep. Tuesday all I could manage was to read The Essential Jekyll and Hyde and jot down some thoughts about the book. Wednesday I had Plushie’s eye appointment (he’s also doing much better) and a contractor in the morning. I figured I wouldn’t get a chance to build up creative steam so I made it a day to do errands, paperwork, tasks. Then the contractor postponed so I could probably have done some good work after all.

Yesterday I was zonked so I worked on Savage Adventures. On the plus side, it’s the first time I think my prose is coming together. That feels good.

And I have two blog posts up at Atomic Junk Shop. One about the strange ideas DC came up with at the end of the Silver Age, such as Dolphin, advertised above. Another is about love comics, which were successful on the spinner racks longer than I realized.

And I did get a first draft of my chapter on the Stevenson novel. That’s good too. And yes, all the bills and other tasks I got done Wednesday instead of writing were necessary. Still, not getting anything done on Southern Discomfort or Let No Man Put Asunder frustrates the crap out of me.

#SFWApro. Cover by Modest Stein, all rights to image remain with current holder.

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July 10, 2024 · 5:15 am

The fake McGuffin

Alfred Hitchcock coined the term McGuffin to refer to whatever object put the plot of his films in motion (though not all of his films have a McGuffin). The mysterious bottles in Claude Rain’s cellar in Notorious. The microfilm in North by Northwest. The corpse in The Trouble With Harry. The tech secrets Paul Newman hunts in the Eastern bloc in Torn Curtain.

Hitchcock’s view was that the McGuffin didn’t matter, what matters is what you do with it. A bank robbery, for example, can give us Dog Day Afternoon or Cash on Demand.

Lester Dent used a fair number of McGuffins writing the Doc Savage books. In the first book, The Man of Bronze, it’s the golden treasure hidden in the Valley of the Vanished. In Spook Hole it’s a treatment that causes whales to mass-produce ambergris (whale snot) which at the time was an essential ingredient in perfumes, worth a fortune. In Repel it’s an anti-gravity element.

One of the things I’ve realized working on Savage Adventures is that one of Dent’s tricks is to make the McGuffin worthless: the villain has lost everything fighting for a useless prize. Dent first uses this ploy in The Phantom City: the Arab crimelord Mohallet is convinced the lost city’s gates are made of solid platinum but it was an error in translation: they’re solid lead. His dreams of wealth were a mirage.

The McGuffin in Colors for Murder is another ambergris-making process but this time it’s a scam — the treatment doesn’t work. In The Mental Wizard the McGuffin is the real deal — a drug that gives you invincible psi-powers — but it’s degraded through centuries in storage and doesn’t work.

I agree with Hitchcock, what Dent does with the McGuffin is more important than what it is. Even so, having a fake McGuffin can add an extra touch of irony.

I’ve seen this work outside Doc Savage stories. In Batman #81, “The Boy Wonder Confesses,” (David Reed, Sheldon Moldoff) Dick admits to being Robin as part of an elaborate ruse to prove he and Bruce aren’t the Dynamic Duo. Behind it is film footage that shows them changing into their costumes; disproving the connection before the film goes public will ensure nobody believes it. At the end of the story it turns out there film was underdeveloped to the point it doesn’t show anything.

It’s an effective trick for adding a little twist at the finish of the tale.

#SFWApro. Covers by Fred Pfeiffer Emery Clarke and Sheldon Moldoff; all rights remain with current holders.

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July 5, 2024 · 4:05 pm

A short but productive work week

Despite some distracting doomscrolling over the Supreme Court’s bring back the monarchy decision I had a good work week. Short, as my four-day week got chopped down to three for Independence Day, but I made up for that by not having any Local Reporter work (though they did publish an article I finished last week, on a local veterans memorial).

(For visuals, here’s Wisp and Snowdrop greeting each other from a few days ago.)

I reread Southern Discomfort and I think my beta-readers were right, the conversations in some sections do drag on a little too long. However it’s not a massive trim-all-scenes problem, just a problem for a few scenes, so it’ll be relatively simple to fix. I also went over the street references, making sure that I identify locations consistently — and wouldn’t you know, a magical trap at the Peachtree/Blake intersection is later identified as King Street. Next week I clean it up (I spotted a couple of other details that need fixing along the way), then I get it into paperback for a final proof. Phew — much less work than I thought.

I resumed work on my second draft of Let No Man Put Asunder. That one did suffer from the doom-scrolling and I didn’t get anywhere near as much as I’d hoped done. However I am working on it again after missing all last month, so that’s a (small) win. I continued proofing Savage Adventures and began some reference reading for my new Jekyll and Hyde film book.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I looked at Gardner Fox’s last story for DC Comics, introducing the tragically lonely Red Tornado, a favorite of mine. Fox defined the Silver Age and the Justice League for me. While his replacement on the book, Denny O’Neil, tried to add more characterization, it’s very bad characterization.

Superman doesn’t shrug off things that way, neither do WW or Green Lantern. And every Leaguer knows “someone steals scientist’s machine” is a prelude to trouble.

I also look at Arnold Drake leaving DC and the Doom Patrol dying. Plus several other books that went under, such as Plastic Man and Hawkman.

#SFWApro. JLA art by Dick Dillin, whose style embodied the Bronze Age JLA much as Mike Sekowsky embodied the Silver.

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June 28, 2024 · 4:30 pm

Though I’m working efficiently I didn’t get enough done

My first month of my new four-day work week gets a thumbs up. I’m more focused, more productive, and I seem able to work longer hours — Monday I put in a 10-hour day due to waking up way early.

Unfortunately I got nowhere near what I wanted accomplished. The huge town council meetings Carrboro had to wrap up for the summer consumed a lot of time, as did writing about them; Monday was entirely devoted to Local Reporter stuff. That includes Carrboro’s plans to charge for public parking, a local development controversy, and a local charity facing loss of its two business locations (or as I put it in the alliterative title “Carrboro philanthropy faces Fidelity foreclosure“).

Good stuff, my editor loves me and that’ll be a good-sized paycheck for the week’s work (I also got in next week’s story). However I’d planned to focus on fiction Tuesday and the long hours Monday left me too wiped. It was Savage Adventures the rest of the week.

That’s the other reason this month was unproductive. As I said last week, my book on the Doc Savage series simply isn’t polished enough, ergo it takes more editing. I’m officially pushing it back to October (hopefully early October) before I release it through Behold the Book. That will allow me to proof less of it next month and devote time to other stuff.

Nothing on Let No Man Put Asunder. Nothing on Southern Discomfort. I do not want to repeat that next month, and I will not.

Other stuff just ran into bad luck: my cover artist was traveling overseas this month so asking for updates didn’t seem appropriate. And I would almost certainly have gotten some fiction done yesterday but the housecleaners arrived early in the morning which made our schedule nuts in various ways.

My exercise schedule is once again shot, simply because I had a lot of extra dog care. Which, as I hope I’ve said before, is fair — it’s a lot easier than TYG having to handle all the IT stuff on her job — but our pets insist exercise is some kind of signal for them to come snuggle. Hard to do vigorous exercise at the same time.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop, I blogged about the outside influences shaping comics in 1968, the beginning of Wonder Woman’s Diana Prince years, and Stan Lee’s insufferably preachy Silver Surfer series. Quite aside from being heavy-handed in the writing, a guy who found planets for Galactus to destroy is hardly the pure soul Mephisto claims he is.

Though John Buscema sure makes it look purty.

To leave on an up note, someone checked out one of my books via Hoopla and I had some sort of sale on Amazon. I haven’t got the data yet (Amazon’s very unhelpful with that) but whoever you were, thank you! I hoped you liked whatever of mine you read.

#SFWApro. Art by James Bama, Mike Sekowsky and Buscema, all rights remain with current holders.

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