Saturday, January 16, 2010

Philip José Farmer's DOC SAVAGE and Dave Stevens' THE ROCKETEER and CROSSOVERS

Philip José Farmer's Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life was the starting point for my lifelong fascination with Farmer's Wold Newton Family concept of many popular characters belonging to the same, widespread genealogical family, Dave Stevens' The Rocketeer was the impetus for the idea of the Wold Newton Universe (many more characters inhabiting the same continuity, but not necessarily related to the Wold Newton Family members), and was literally the very first entry in what now is Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World.

I've picked up a lot of books from Phil's estate since his unfortunate passing last year, most of them signed by Phil and most of them related to his Wold Newton mythos. Some have been non-PJF books, inscribed to Phil, such as a copy of the British edition of Bunduki signed by J.T. Edson to Phil, and a hardback of Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker's Poodle Springs, signed by Parker to Phil and Bette.

So when Mike Croteau wrote me last night asking if I'd like a hardcover of the Eclipse Comics edition of Stevens' Rocketeer graphic novel (collecting the first storyline which features an unnamed appearance of Doc Savage and his aides), signed "For Philip José Farmer, With Great Respect, Dave Stevens"... let's just say he had me at "hello."

This one is particularly special for me.

14 comments:

Tim Knight said...

Any idea of a rough publication date for Crossovers (part 1) yet?

Win Scott Eckert said...

Roughly in late Feb or more likely March. I'm plugging away and getting close. Thanks for asking! :-)

Tim Knight said...

Really looking forward to it.

Christopher Paul Carey said...

That's priceless!

Win Scott Eckert said...

TAF: Thanks! :-)

CPC: Indeed... It's hard to express how much this means to me.

Evan Lewis said...

Among Mr. Farmer's collection, did you happen to find a junky little mimeo chapbook called Doc Simple, the Man of Aluminum? It's embarrassing to admit, but I wrote that sucker.

Win Scott Eckert said...

Evan: Not that I'm aware of... is that something you sent Phil?

Evan Lewis said...

It was done in the 70s. Can't recall if I just sent it to him, if someone else forwarded it to him or if he ordered it from my ad in the Comics Buyers Guide, but I remember getting a nice note from him.

Charles R. Rutledge said...

I read Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life over and over when I was 14 or so, The book just fascinated me for some reason. Even today if i re-read it, I can pretty much know what the next paragraph will be as I read. Doc's appearance in Rocketeer was a big deal for me as well. In fact I don't think any artist has come as close to nailing Monk and Ham as Stevens did. So yes, what a treasure, Win. I'm glad it's found a home with you.

Win Scott Eckert said...

Evan: A note from Phil! Cool. He was generous that way.

Charles: Thanks so much -- and I couldn't agree with you more about Stevens' depictions of Ham and Monk. Pure magic.

-> Ray said...

That's perfect!

Michael Brown said...

That edition of DS:HAL is the one I got as a kid. Never having seen any Doc pulp covers at the time, I didn't get the back image, being only familiar with the Bama Doc.

It, too, had an impact on me. For a while I re-arranged my collection of Bantam Docs into Farmer's ordering, till I realized that was silly, and put them back into pulp publication order. (I gave up on that when they went into the doubles and omnibuses).

Win Scott Eckert said...

emb021: That sounds freakishly similar to my experience with DS:HAL and the Bantam Docs. ;-)

Michael Brown said...

Oh. did you use white-out to cover over the bantam numbers on your covers to write in the correct number per DS:HAL??

I did.