An incredible short, hand-animated by Robb Pratt, full of supery goodness. I love it, particularly his take on Lois Lane.
And if you like that, and aren’t familiar with the classic Fleischer Bros. Superman cartoons from the ’40s, check this out:
Tag Archives: pulp heroes
Doc Wilde: “A Rip-Roarin’, Action-Packed, Thrill Ride Of A Book”
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I somehow missed a review of my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, by Conan Tigard at Reading Review. Now that it has come to my attention, I’ll share it with you.
The review has a detailed plot summary of the book, therefore is loaded with spoilage. But here’s the pertinent, spoiler-free part:
Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom is a rip-roarin’, action-packed, thrill ride of a book that will leave the reader breathless. The book starts out with a bang and never slows down until the last page has been read. This book reads like an old-fashioned dime store novel from the 1940’s. It feels like a old-time thrilling radio show from the era before there was television…
I can only hope that this new author, Tim Byrd, makes an entire series with these characters. Sure, the characters are a little unbelievable with all the cool things they can do, but I loved it anyways… It’s like having multiple versions of a young Indiana Jones in this book.
Overall, Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom is an excellent story that will keep a young reader, and even an older one like me, reading this book far past their bedtime. So, grab your flashlight, boys, tell your parents you are going to bed, and stay up all night reading this adventure under your sheets, so your parents cannot see the light. You will love it.
I rated this book a 9 out of 10.
The full review is here, but remember, it’s full of spoilers…
Ken Hite on DOC WILDE: Tim Byrd has “the keen eye for the plausible impossibility shared by many of the pulp greats”
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Kenneth Hite is a smart man.
He’s a writer of various things, particularly in the roleplaying game field. He’s a true polymath, carrying vast stores of knowledge about a vast array of topics around in his brain. He’s one of the few human beings I have ever met who makes me feel kind of dumb.
He’s also a scholar of pulp fiction, particularly the works of H.P. Lovecraft. So it thrills me to share with you his review of my first book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, which is of course an homage to both the pulp heroes of the 1930s and ’40s and to H.P. Lovecraft’s unspeakable horror tales. It’s my first review by someone I’m not only sure gets everything I tried to do in the book, but who I suspect gets stuff I don’t even realize is in there.
Here’s a taste; the rest is here.
Despite our young heroes’ impressive abilities, the threat of the Frog God Frogon builds to a genuinely scary level by the end, with a properly Lovecraftian threat to the universe (and to one of Doc’s sidekicks, a burly Irishman named Declan mac Coul) waiting in the depths of a South American cave inhabited by the titular Frogs of Doom. Byrd plays with amphibian biology, and with plenty of other sciences from nanotech to aerodynamics, with the keen eye for the plausible impossibility shared by Dent, Lovecraft, and many of the pulp greats.
I suspect that readers out of middle school will appreciate Byrd’s tribute first and foremost as a tribute — spotting the references and shout-outs is our own little adventure mystery — but it will surprise you by engaging you with its youthful characters as well…the words themselves reel out at pulp speed, and tickle two kinds of nostalgia at once: nostalgia for reading Doc Savage, and for reading Doc Savage for the first time, when you were eleven and hadn’t yet talked yourself into being tired of heroes.
You can get the book here.
Kicking Amphibian Butt: One Of My Favorite Doc Wilde Reviews
A Great Christmas Gift! Buy Now!
One of the most thorough and thoughtful reviews of my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, came from writer/librarian Werner A. Lind, who posted it on Goodreads around the time the Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans group discussed the book.
The review is below, but first a couple of points…
First, you may note there’s a discrepancy between the 4 star rating shown above the review and Werner’s statement grading it with three stars in the initial paragraph. Werner explained in a comment during the group discussion:
I hope you noticed that I later added a comment to say that honestly, on reflection, I’d give it four stars based on my own enjoyment of it, not just that of a hypothetical younger reader. (Sometimes it gets tiring to always have to wear the mantle of a sober academic critic. :-)) And I want you to know that once Doc Wilde and the Mad Skull is published, it’s definitely going on my to-read shelf!
The other thing is that he, like quite a few others I think, found the kids’ ability to use echolocation to navigate darkness a bit too over-the-top and unrealistic. The truth is, human echolocation is real, and it’s fascinating. Look it up on Wikipedia.
And now, take it away, Werner… Continue reading
Get DOC WILDE & THE FROGS OF DOOM For Cheap!
I’m not sure why, but Amazon currently has some marked down copies of my pulp adventure novel, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, selling for just $6.23.
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This is a first edition hardback (the paperback is due out next year), and the cover price is $15.99. Amazon is also offering it at a discounted $12.47.
Considering that the hardback usually runs $11 to $16, and the paperback when it finally comes out will likely be a minimum of $8, this is a great opportunity to get the book for cheap.
For the uninitiated, Doc Wilde is my modern take on the great old adventure tales featuring characters like Indiana Jones, The Shadow, the Spider, and most importantly Doc Savage, with strong currents of H.P. Lovecraft’s eldritch horror swirled in.
It is published as a book for young teen readers, but like something like Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Incredibles, is intended for both young and old.
Frogs of Doom is the first in a series; next will be Doc Wilde and The Mad Skull.
You can check out some reviews at http://www.docwilde.com/reviews/.
Doc Savage News
I reported a while back that my old friend Shane Black (writer of Lethal Weapon among other things) was scripting a Doc Savage movie. As many of the folks who’d care most about this sort of thing likely already know, it was recently confirmed that not only is Shane writing the screenplay (along with Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry), he will be directing the film as well. Anyone who has seen Shane’s directorial debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, will know how exciting this news really is.
With Sam Raimi working on The Shadow, it’s looking very promising for pulp adventure in the near future. Now all we need is a Bruce Timm adaptation of Doc Wilde and the world will truly be on the right track.
In related news, DC Comics just released the first issue of their First Wave series, in which they establish an alternate world, outside the normal DC universe, in which pulp heroes operate, and no one has super-powers. The greatest of the heroes in this world is, of course, Doc Savage.
The First Wave series actually began last year with the one-shot Batman/Doc Savage special I reviewed in November. I was underwhelmed, but still hopeful that the actual series would be good.
Well, I just read First Wave #1, and it’s awesome pulp and awesome comics. Brian Azzarello’s writing and treatment of these classic characters honors their roots while at the same time deepening their emotional lives and rooting them realistically into the world. And artist Rags Morales brings the cast to vivid life with a style that’s both realistic and somewhat cartoony, befitting the pulp nature of the work. My only beef with the book is that Doc Savage’s hair color and complexion are still off, though not as badly as they were in the Batman team-up book.
Great stuff.
Good Memories of 2009, Day 6: The Adventurers
The Adventurers, Temple of Chac
Anyone reading my book, my blog, or probably even the bumps on my head will know that I love pulp adventure. The first three Indiana Jones movies (especially Raiders). The Depression-era novels starring Doc Savage, The Shadow, and The Spider. The modern pulp adventure novels of Matthew Reilly and James Rollins. The Rocketeer and The Phantom and Planetary in the comics.
Last year, early on, I saw news somewhere about a pulpish game that was due out in the fall, and it interested me enough that I put a note to myself on my Google calendar to look it up after it came out to see if it was as good as it looked. When I did, and read the reviews I could find, I ordered it immediately, and gave it to my son for Christmas.
That game was The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac, from AEG and Dust Games, and it rocks. Continue reading
Good Memories of 2009, Day 3: Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom
Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom
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In May, my first book finally came out to great reviews and sales good enough to get Putnam to contract me for the next two books in the series. An adventure inspired by the pulps of the 1930s, I intended it for both kids and adult readers. Gratifyingly, it has done quite well with both.
For those uninitiated in the adventures of the family Wilde, you can find loads of info (and an excerpt) at www.DocWilde.com.
Month 9, In Which Our Hero’s Book Is Finally Noticed By Publishers Weekly. Sort of.
Elizabeth Bird is one of the most respected reviewers associated with Publishers Weekly, and was one of the critics I went out of my way to try to get to review my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom. I read her blog regularly and enjoy her insights, and looked forward to seeing what she had to say about my fledgling effort.
Well, months passed, and the magazine seemed unaware of the book, and it didn’t appear on her blog. I’d pretty much given up on ever seeing anything from her, or PW, but then she posted an entry in which she gave tiny reviews of a bunch of books she’d read last year but hadn’t gotten around to reviewing.
This is what she said about my book:
Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom by Tim Byrd – I appreciated how the book just leapt headfirst into the action, catching readers up after the fact, and also how I can now hand kids something when they come asking me for books “Just like Indiana Jones” (which really does happen).
Curling Up With Doc Wilde (Review)
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A review of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom over at Curled Up With a Good Kid’s Book:
A true tale of adventure, this book takes off at break-neck speed and never slows down. Doc Wilde is a golden hero, of the type we haven’t seen since Flash Gordon (in the Buster Crabbe version) faced off with Ming the Merciless. Brian and Wren, young though they are, use their wits and their innate sense of justice to stand beside their father all the way. They’re the kind of sidekicks that comic book superheroes can only dream of finding, and they are certainly a credit to the Wilde family with its history of outlandish exploits and fair-minded pursuits.
The rest is here.
Rudolph Is In Danger!
Keith “Kez” Wilson is a master of the mashup, taking artwork and cover designs from Bantam’s Doc Savage paperbacks 0f the 1960s-80s and combining them with imagery from genre films to incredible effect.
Here’s the haunting tale of Doc’s encounter with an angry amphibious atavist…
(Hmmm…perhaps a cousin of the Frogs of Doom…?)
And here, his dread meeting with a golem fashioned from corpse parts…
The latest is a very special Christmas adventure involving the most famous supernaturally illuminating ruminant of all…
I’d read these books. Kez has a bunch of ’em, all cool. You can check them out at his site.
Author Event (& Doc Wilde 2 Sneak Peek) Saturday, 12/19/09, Decatur, GA
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The Saturday before Christmas (December 19, 2009, from 3-5 pm), I’m going to be at Eagle Eye Bookshop in Decatur, GA for a reading/discussion and book signing. Eagle Eye is a fantastic indie bookstore, well known for its author events.
It being the Yule, I figured I’d do something special. So instead of just doing the usual reading from Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, the first book in the series, I’ll be reading the opening chapters of the second book, Doc Wilde and The Mad Skull, which will see print a while down the line.
This will be a rare opportunity to get a peek at a book that’s still being written, prior to any editorial input. First draft pulp, straight from my swashbuckling brain pulp.
Afterward, there’ll be a casual discussion about the book(s) and I’ll be signing Frogs of Doom. Which is not only a fun pulp adventure tale for kids and adults, but a FANTASTIC holiday gift. ;)
Join The Doc Wilde Discussion At Goodreads
Over at Goodreads, the Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans group is discussing my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom (it was the official common read for November, but the discussion is only really just beginning).
I’d like to invite any and all of you to join in, or at least hop by and take a peek:
Pulp Magazine Authors & Literature Fans Home Page
“Common Reads” Discussion Board
If you’re a reader and you’re not taking advantage of Goodreads, you should be. It’s a great site for sharing and discovering books, and there’s a lot of dialogue between not only readers and other readers, but readers and writers.
Doc Savage FEAR CAY Radio Show Now Fully Available
Recently, I blogged about Earth2.net’s podcast of the Doc Savage radio adaptation NPR did back in the eighties. At the time of my post, only chapters 1 & 2 (of seven) had been broadcast.
They’ve now broadcast the entirety of the story, and I’ve updated the pertinent post with all the links: original post.
Doc Wilde Kicks Jonny Quest’s Dad’s Butt In Latest Review!
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The latest review of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom is from author Kevin Gerard at fantasyfan.org:
I became a kid again after reading three pages of this story. When we were young, all of us watched the biggest cartoon show on television – Johnny Quest. Johnny traveled the world with his father, Dr. Benton Quest, a guy who knew everything, could make anything, and never settled for failure.
Dr. Spartacus Wilde makes Dr. Quest look like the kid with the dunce cap in the corner of the classroom.
The full review is here.
FEAR CAY: Doc Savage On The Radio
The September 1934 issue of Doc Savage Magazine offered an action-packed tale called Fear Cay, which in addition to being a solid pulp adventure also featured the second appearance of Doc’s gorgeous and daring young cousin, Patricia. (I recently reread the tale as I got into the right mood to write the next Doc Wilde novel for Putnam).
In 1985, NPR produced serialized radio plays based on two of the Doc Savage novels, The Thousand-Headed Man and Fear Cay (which they renamed Fear Key, assuming, I guess, that people these days are too stupid to figure out what a “cay” is). These radio plays were very well done and a lot of fun, and are really tough to get hold of these days.
The web radio show Earth-2.net’s most recent podcast features the first two chapters of Fear Key. If you’re a fan of the Man of Bronze, or curious about him and his adventures, it’s worth a listen. Hopefully they’ll be running the remaining five chapters, but if they don’t, I think I have them on some hard drive somewhere and I’ll post them if anyone wants.
Hear the adventure here.
UPDATE: They have now posted the rest of the chapters of the show. The link above is to chapters 1-2, this link is to chapters 3-4, and this link is to chapters 5-7.]
Batman Meets Doc Savage (and I review the result)
So I just finished reading DC’s Batman/Doc Savage Special, which I’ve been looking forward to for a while.
Great cover by J.G. Jones. Inside…hmm.
As a prologue leading into the pulpy First Wave books DC will start publishing next year, it works fairly well in establishing the alternate universe in which these characters coexist. As a story, it kinda fails. Writer Brian Azzarello brings a noirish attitude to it, and gives an interesting take on the heroes, but narratively it just hangs limply and ends on a trite note.
It’s not helped by the artwork by Phil Noto, which lacks the visual dynamism that comic book storytelling really demands, and the book’s color palate (I assume colored by Noto himself, as no credit is given otherwise) is dreary in an obvious attempt at making it feel more noir. It just makes it seem unexciting.
And I really don’t like Noto’s take on Doc Savage, especially the coloring he’s given.
All that said, I’m still looking forward to seeing what they do with First Wave, though with more trepidation. It will feature art by Rags Morales, and the advance images that have been shown are great, a lot better than the art in the comic at hand.
Also, I have to say, in spite of the underwhelming story in this book, I’m intrigued by Azzarello’s comments and notes about the various heroes who will be operating in this pulp, non-superpowered world. He has clearly studied the original characters in depth and put a lot of thought into fleshing them out psychologically and making them somewhat more realistic than might usually be the case. I’ve seen a few comments by devoted pulp fans who detest this approach to the classic characters they love, but I like well-developed characters, and at least in principle I find Azzarello’s ideas pretty cool.
My main reservation along those lines is that, if this comic is any indication, he may have too much noir and not enough pulp adventure in his approach. This could work fine for Batman, but not for characters like Doc Savage, who really need to be somewhat over the top. More realistic I can enjoy. Mundane, not so much.
A Doc Savage Movie On The Way!!!
Art by Ruben Procopio
It’s no secret that Doc Savage, Lester Dent’s pulp hero from the 1930s and 40s, is a huge inspiration for my own character, Dr. Spartacus Wilde (who saves the Earth from Lovecraftian batrachia in Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom). I grew up on paperback reprints of the Doc Savage novels and they, along with other pulp sources I’ve written about, are strong strands of my literary DNA.
In fact, Grandpa Wilde (Spartacus’s father), the original Doc Wilde who was famous in the thirties and forties, is my intertextual acknowledgment that the original hero is parent to the current hero, but also speaks to the fact that the younger Wilde is his own man. As similar as he is to Savage, he is also very different in ways, not least of which is that he is a warm, emotionally accessible family man, unlike the stern and remote man of bronze.
Unlike The Shadow, the only character more popular during the pulp era, Doc Savage isn’t very well known these days, though his influence on characters ranging from Batman to James Bond is widespread. But there are still quite a few fans, many having grown up on the same books I did. One of them is Shane Black. Continue reading
Doc Wilde “a fast mad dash through a landscape littered with mines [of] geek-love”
I just came across the latest review of my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, and it’s from someone who knows ’em some pulp.
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Back in March, I blogged about some oddly inspiring material I found in a new roleplaying game I’d bought (Optimism, Action, and How To Be The Neighborhood Pulp Hero). The text in question “caused a synaptic hiccup and made me think about my life.” Pretty darn cool for a game manual.
The game, Spirit of the Century, is not only the best-by-far pulp game I’ve ever found (and I know most of them, all the way back to the first, 1982’s Daredevils from Fantasy Games Unlimited), it’s quite possibly the greatest face-to-face rpg. I’m reserving final judgment till after I actually have time to play the game, at which time it’ll get a full review here.
My copy of SotC had some issues, alas, but Fred Hicks, one of the game’s co-authors, exhibited some first class customer service and sent me a new copy. These are truly good guys in an industry with an often razor-thin profit margin. I was greatly appreciative at this, so I sent him a signed copy of my book.
Well, apparently Fred read the book, because on October 20th, he gave it a quick review on his blog.
While set in the modern day, this book LOVES pulp (and Lovecraft, for that matter) and makes a bunch of oblique and not so oblique references to it throughout. It’s a breezy, very fast read for an adult, but an adult will be entertained precisely because of those references. It’s like a fast mad dash through a landscape littered with mines that explode with geek-love every now and again.
To summarize the plot would be to tell the story of the whole book, so I’m going to leave that out of this. It’s a fun family romp, has good life lessons for kids, and features a boy child and a girl child who both compete with each other and value each other…And if you’re looking to get your kids primed with some excitement about high-pulp adventure…I think Doc Wilde would be a handy tool for giving that to ’em…
There’s a bit more, which can be found here.
The War of Art
In my advice to writers, there are two books I always recommend. One is On Writing by Stephen King, the other is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Immediately after I first read the latter, I plopped down and wrote my first novel, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, and I re-read it regularly (easy to do, as it’s a short book).
Pressfield’s deal is getting us to overcome the resistances within ourselves and just getting down to the friggin’ work. His book is a self-help book that’s really helpful and not full of homilies and crap like “You are the captain of your own ship.”
(Which a therapist once told me in what was, inevitably, our one and only session because I damn near laughed in her face).
I recently became aware of Pressfield’s blog for writers, Writing Wednesdays, and it should be required reading for anyone wanting to make it in the arts.
Here’s one gem I found there:
The Muse, if she’ll forgive me, is kind of like a mailman. She makes her rounds every day, cruising past our offices and studios and peeking in the window. Are we there at our easels? The Muse likes that. She likes to see us taking care of business. And if we’re there with our hearts breaking or tears streaming down our cheeks, all the better. The Muse says to herself, “This poor bastard is true to me; I’m gonna give him something in return for his loyalty.”
And into our heads pops the solution to Act Two, the bridge to that song we couldn’t lick, the breakthrough concept for our new philanthropic venture.
The lesson is, if you’re not at the place you do the work, at least trying to do the work, the work won’t happen. And if you are there, and getting down to business, you will discover wondrous things, gifts from the Muse, that will surprise you and enrich both you and the work itself.
But you’ve gotta be working for it to work.
Under An Outlaw Moon 