Doc Savage - Mr. Calamity/Valley Of Eternity

Repel Without A Cause

Doc Savage - 
Mr. Calamity/Valley Of Eternity
by Will Murray writing as Kenneth Robeson
Altus Press ISBN: 978-1618273185

So in the latest, quite hefty, volume of The Wild Adventures Of Doc Savage, with Will Murray once again writing as ‘the new Kenneth Robeson’, we have not one but two new tales of the bronze giant and his companions. I was kinda puzzled as to why the company did not just put this out as two separate novels of, roughly, 400 pages and 200 pages apiece as people would surely have paid for these as separate novels. 

I can only assume the answer to that is that this book must be, in some ways, an homage to the old Bantam reprints of the original Doc Savage pulps, when they were printing some of the stories from when the magazine started cutting down the cost and going with tales which were slightly shorter than what might qualify as a ‘full length’ novel. What they used to do was to put two issues into one novel to make up an impressive and highly collectable range of two-in-one stories (although they’re quite expensive now, I think... I have only one or two of the original ‘double reprints’). What was so interesting about these was that the original cover art on those old reprints was a straight vertical split between two entirely different paintings, each illustrating a different story. Now, since it’s apparent from a black and white illustration opening the second novel in this tome that cover paintings were produced for both titles, I kinda wish the publishers had made good on this analogy (if, indeed, that was their idea) and gone for an old style, two-in-one, split painting to give it a feel for those. This avid reader would certainly have appreciated the nod. 

The other way this volume differs from those old reprints is that, like pretty much most of Murray’s tales of Clark Savage Jr, it’s quite a huge page count compared to those old stories. Indeed, this one runs to around 600 pages and, in the first story featured here, Mr. Calamity, Doc doesn’t even enter the story until around 100 pages into it. Also, both the stories in this volume are, in some ways, sequels to some of the original Doc Savage stories. Mr. Calamity is a sequel in terms of the strange force which is causing people to fly into the air to their deaths, which turns out to be the element Repel, first discovered by the man of bronze and his team in the 1937 novel Repel (sometimes known as The Deadly Dwarf). This is not Murray’s first sequel to Repel, as others of his novels have featured a specific character from that story too. The second novel here, Valley Of Eternity, is in some ways, a sequel of sorts to both the first Doc Savage adventure, The Man Of Bronze and also two others, if memory serves, where Doc Savage returned to the Ancient Mayan civilisation which affords him his wealth to do his life’s work and which features Princess Monja (played in the 1975 movie by Pamela Hensley, who would go on to play Buck Rogers' nemesis Princess Ardala a few years later). Valley Of Eternity is also a partial sequel to Murray’s own Doc Savage adventure The Secret Of Satan’s Spine (which I reviewed here) as well as mentioning a huge cast of one off characters from various Doc Savage adventures over the decades... which he thankfully verifies and clarifies in footnotes at the bottom of the appropriate pages. 

Mr. Calamity is set in the hills of Wyoming and is expertly written by Murray, as the majority of his Robeson tomes are. I especially like the way he no longer tries to fool his readers when his characters are in disguise in this one... at least I don’t think he’s trying to do that. For instance, in Mr. Calamity, you know straight away when a woman travelling through Wyoming sees a man swimming for his life in the sky that she’s none other than Doc’s cousin Patricia Savage in disguise, even though Murray doesn’t actually reveal that for a few chapters... I’m pretty sure he’s not trying to hide the fact from his readers. Ditto when Doc Savage is ‘killed’ later in the book and a new 'giant sized' character turns up without mentioning that he’s really Doc for a good many chapters. I’m glad he’s not trying to pull the wool over his readers eyes like he does with his other characters in this as it can sometimes be irritating when you think he’s deliberately holding back on you. 

There’s a nice moment in Mr. Calamity when Doc survives an experience which nearly does take his life and finds himself stranded on top of the summit of The Devils Tower in Wyoming, where Murray goes into the history of the monument and reveals, among other things, its original name. Readers might remember The Devils Tower as the very prominent plot device used by Steven Spielberg in his movie Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. The book reads, in some ways, very much like an old Western serial and it’s not a globe hopping adventure, as many of the others have been. This story is refreshing in that it features Pat, Long Tom, Renny and Johnny but doesn’t, for once, include the two of Doc’s most popular companions, Monk and Ham... although they were back for the second story here (although none of the companions, aside from Pat Savage, have a prominent role in Valley Of Eternity). It’s a nice pulpy adventure yarn though and up to Murray’s usually excellent standard. 

Valley Of Eternity is an adventure of a very different sort, with a letter received from Doc’s long dead father which forces Doc to go seeking the ultimate adventure, something which he has never cared to dabble in before and which could well be his undoing... matrimony. Yes, Doc Savage is charged with producing an heir to carry on his deeds for future generations and the majority of this story is definitely played for laughs... which is fine, as it happens. Mr. Calamity ends with a sentence which actually made me laugh out loud and he manages, in Valley Of Eternity, to walk a fine line between humour and ‘the Doc Savage brand of adventure’ which few have dared and certainly never succeeded as much as Murray does here. The story is an eye opener, very funny and somehow simultaneously threatening to throw everything about Doc’s adventurous lifestyle out the window and put the future of him and his companions in jeopardy. Now I’m not going to tell you what happens here but I will say that, by the end of the story, Mr. Murray does contradict, quite significantly, the current, additional Doc Savage timeline as established in comics over the years. I can't really tell you how without ruining the ending of this one but I wonder how people feel about this milestone.

One thing I will say though... and this is something I've gotten used to in the last few years, is that Murray confidently adds to the existing mythology in a respectful and, almost as importantly, highly entertaining manner which doesn't detract from the original tales. One thing I appreciate is when he adds something into little details of a long established character to help make them more plausible while similarly pushing their particular traits to the forefront. For example, we've always known that Renny has huge hands, almost bigger than his head and that his favourite trick is to punch out oak panels from doors with his strong fists but, here this is further enhanced by showing that Renny has a specially custom built candlestick style telephone to allow for his large fingers. This is nice stuff and much appreciated by this reader, for sure.

And that's me done with the new Kenneth Robeson's latest Doc Savage adventures, Mr. Calamity and Valley Of Eternity. Both are immensely entertaining and fit right in with the spirit of the original novels. My only worry now is that, with Murray seemingly concentrating on new 'Wild Adventures' of such characters as Tarzan and The Spider, that this may be the last Doc Savage adventure we see for a while. I hope not but only time will tell. In the meantime, I think regular readers of this much loved pulp adventure hero would do well to pick this one up.