Dr Hermes Retro-Scans - Doc Savage in THE Phantom CITY

From December 1933, this is a word that many Doc Savage fans would take as their favorite, and with right reason. It is a classic Lost Race story, one which H Rider Haggard or Arthur Conan Doyle could have written and Lester Dent obviously puts a big mass of energy and thought into the details and plot twists. THE Phantom CITY has a lot to commend it, and but a few weaknesses to nit-pick.

This is your vintage Doc two-segment tale, the 1st part dealing with mystery and mayhem in New York City, leading to a long journey which ends in a colorful, exotic location. The Phantom City with its little universe of white-haired people is rich in the lethal desert of Arabia's Rub Al Khali desert, reachable by a nerve-wracking journey down an underground river. There's a beautiful white-haired girl named Ja who can but speak English using the deaf-mute hand gestures, an Arab bandit named Mohallet, who has a glass eye and jewels set in his teeth (and people think navel rings are gross- it's nothing new), and the Morlock-like White Beasts. One of the most memorable threats in the serial is the threat presented by the White Beasts. Human but simian in appearance, with long arms and flat-nosed mugs, the savage Beasts are covered with dense white hair that makes them feel as if they're wrapped in cotton. They are a genuine threat, powerful brutes who are aggressive and determined. One of the most startling moments in a Doc story is when they ring the moored Helldiver sub and assault by the hundreds. For once, the bronze man is up against opponents fully as solid as he is, and Doc lets loose with the fighting power he normally holds back a bit. A list of interesting elements are introduced here. As far as I can tell, this is where the mercy bullets make their first appearance. Even so, the superfirers still have regular lead when appropriate. This is also where Monk finds Habeas Corpus; he pays four cents for the pig and tells a dubious tale about Habeas dragging dead hyenas into the old owner's home. The characterizations are even being worked on. Johnny speaks with scholastic precision but he hasn't started annoying his friends with those big words. Long Tom is described as having bachelor quarters at an exclusive club and he mentions that he has started collecting trophies from their adventures for his little 'museum'. This is the only name of his souvenir room I have found, but wouldn't you but love to pass an afternoon in Long Tom's museum of momentos from these adventures?! Doc himself is a bit looser and more easy than he later becomes (he calls his friends "you birds", has a dry sense of understatement and smiles occasionally. But he is in his prime physically and mentally. Fighting four assassins, he yanks their concealed swords away, sheaths and all. He's not infallible ("Getting careless," he says out loud at one point), but he's consistently able to beat the villains, no matter what they come up with. Oh, and add Arabic to the name of languages our boy speaks (hmm, that's fifteen so far). I've mentioned earlier the rather cruel pranks Doc sometimes plays on his prisoners, including that bit where he stages throwing one turn out the windowpane of the 86th floor to frighten another one into talking. Here he sets up an implausibly complicated and melodramatic trick to convince a captured thug that he's idle and being judged. It's to get valuable information, but with the truth serum, hpnosis and lie detectors he has available, you can't help but believe that Doc Savage has kind of a perverted sense of humour. His constant use of disguises and elaborate ruses are section of his personality; he gets a charge of doing things the devious way, whether he admits it or not. The track to the Bantam reprint is probably to be one of the best portraits of our paladin that James Bama ever did. (Although personally I wish the one on End IN SILVER most. It was victimized again for the first Omnibus edition and is a classical work. Doc's face is lean, grim and his eyes have real intensity. And find that in this story, that "his shirt, torn in the fight, was just a few soaked rags." I'll bet the cuff to his right arm was still attached, though.