Title:
Into the Silver Pyramid: The Heritage of Doc Savage, Part 1
Date of Publication
November 1987
Cover Price
Our Rating:
Credits:
Adam Kubert
Cover Penciler
Comic Book Synopsis / Plot
On the day of the Japanese surrender ending World War II, Doc Savage’s aides have arranged to meet him at a Times Square restaurant. Hired killers make an attempt on their lives but they are saved by the sudden appearance of Doc Savage, who questions the maitre d’ and finds they were acting on the orders of Nazi mad scientist Heinz Wessel, who has long harbored a grudge against Doc. Doc has recently married F’teena, from Central America, and she is expecting their child; Doc plans for this mission to be his last, after which he will retire from adventuring. Doc traces Wessel to Hidalgo, where he is conducting bizarre experiments in a strange silver pyramid. Doc and his men battle Nazi guards and enter the pyramid. Doc confronts the madman but with the sudden press of a button Doc Savage is disintegrated. Sometime later, F’teena gives birth to a son.
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Reviews
By Peter Silvestro
DC’s inaugural miniseries, designed to bring Doc Savage into the present day, gets off to a fine start with a “final Doc Savage story,” despite the fact that this issue merely serves as a “Who is Doc Savage?” intro and builds up to his disappearance by way of prologue to the main, modern story. The most disconcerting aspect is that the aides are all wrong: Monk is a fat man with specs and a droopy mustache; Ham, with a Salvador Dali mustache, resembles an 1890s dandy; Renny is a small cheerful man with wavy red hair and long sideburns, Long Tom the tallest (though he still looks sickly in the one close-up), and a bearded Johnny looks like a 1970s college professor (and he never uses the word “superamalgamated”). It’s not clear why O’Neil disdained faithfulness to the source material, though the altered aides are not as distracting as they age later in the miniseries. And, as usual, the aides, apart from Monk and Ham, have little to do. The Kuberts’ art is good, though a more solid substantial style would seem a better fit for Doc. The visual portrayal of Doc is good, based on the pulp description: hair combed back flat, normal clothing, no attempts to make him fit a superhero mold; Doc’s prudishness is played up, to delineate him as a man of his time. The issue gets the story moving so serves its purpose.
Score: 2 (out of 5)