If I may shamelessly self promote, my website has a (somewhat out of date) list of Mr. Goulart’s books.

Anyone who didn’t catch the link I put up in the column last time can find out more about those books here.

I’m talking about Superman: Last Son of Krypton and Superman: Miracle Monday by Elliot S. Maggin, which came out with Superman The Movie and Superman II respectively (and had the movie’s branding on it and photos of Christopher Reeve on the cover), but were stories set in current DC continuity, complete with Clark Kent working for WGBS and Luthor having been Superboy’s friend.

I still periodically re-read them (or re-read parts of them) and they still kick ass. Great prose, a brilliant use of the Man of Steel in the print medium and, frankly, I think (along with the first Superman movie) the best use of the character in the late ’70s / early ’80s– gillion times better than what was actually being done with the character in the comics. And in the case of Miracle Monday, it’s half-a-gillion times better than the movie it’s supposed to be tied into.

I occasionally read comic book tie-in novels (including ones written by Maggin) in the hope that they’ll be as brilliant as Last Son of Krypton or Miracle Monday, and they never are.

In my early teens I used to live for my families yearly trip up to Coolangatta (a beach town in a different state), because there was a 2nd hand book shop that had an inasne amount of comics (more than my local stores back issue bins) and they were all the same price $2.50AUS (the same as a new comic on the shelf).
They had old Marvel, DC, Image, Valiant etc.
I spent hours upon hours looking over it all and budgeting my spending money to see what would be the best buys, checking Wizard (all I had) to see which issue were rare or costly (as if anyone actually priced by their guides) and should be brought then.
And then I’d sit in my room reading and re-reading them, occasionally getting told off by my parents for not going out to the beach enough.
It was good times.

I’m so excited you’re checking it out. Confession time: while it was highly recommended to me, I ended up picking up my copy at Half Price Books.

…Amazon lists a paperback version for March if you’re interested.

Are you kidding? I’m amazed I didn’t hear of this book sooner but, oh man, I am SO THERE.

Why wait? Go to Amazon right NOW (like I just did) and you can find several dealers offering nice remaindered hardcovers, which is what I ended up getting. Probably cheaper than the paperback.

…what? I used to enjoy hunting books down on the racks, sure, but I’m not, y’know, stupid.

Loovved the pulp novels and read as many Doc Savage, etc. as I could.

Good times, good times.

Bolt the doors! The Trekkie-jihad hath been released!

Depends if you had somewhere to cycle to in the first place. In England, where I live – in a major city, no less – the only way to buy comics was in some rundown newsagents not far from my house. The selection extended to:

random collections of DC comics in bundles of 5, no guarantee as to what you’d get in the bundle, no refunds on duplicates.

You can imagine how tricky this made trying to get even 3 issues of something in a row, much less a full story. One of the main reasons I probably ended up drifting away from comics was because there was nowhere to get the damn things. Believe me, given the choice I’d have taken EBay trawling over having to sit round wishing for some comic I could never hope to buy anyway.

And this is why I don’t feel any great need to watch Sci-Fi’s The Dresden Files movie, even though I love the books. The movie I made when I read them will probably surpass anything I could see on the screen.

Not that I don’t appreciate a good adaptation (I love you, Peter Jackson!). It’s just that I’ve found my brain does pulp better than anybody.

God bless the internet…

I was just thinking the other day how the paperback book racks in drugstores and whatnot are a far cry from what they used to be back in the day, and here you write a whole post on it. Great article!

And I’ve never even HEARD of the story “The Savage Shadow” — sounds intriguing. What’s the premise?

Maxwell Grant writes the story of how Kenneth Robeson meets the real guys that inspire him to write the Doc Savage novels. There was supposed to be a companion piece, where Robeson writes about Grant, but Farmer never got around to it.

I loved it. I do remember the “old days”, when you actually had to physically search for stuff. And you are right, there was something special about it. I got back into comics as a young adult, BEFORE the Internet came along, so I had some of the same experiences hunting down back issues of comics I HAD to have.

Things are easier and, for the most part, better. But there is something to be said for the old ways.

Thanks for writing this.

And I’ve never even HEARD of the story “The Savage Shadow” — sounds intriguing. What’s the premise?