Customer Reviews

The Majii/The Golden Man (Doc Savage (Nostalgia Ventures))

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Majii is one of the all time best Doc Savage adventures and a great jump on point for new readers. Though the pulp cover pales in comparison to the magnificent Bama paperback version the added historical articles make up for it and the restoration is top notch from Mike Piper. The second offering, The Golden Man, contains extra material deleted from the original pulp and paperback versions. This particular novel has been one of the hardest to get a hold of in the series and a very interesting tale. Highly recommended.

This is a reprint of the 1930's pulp. I enjoyed it when I was 13, when I was 30 and even more now that I am 50. It contains a lot insight from a past gone era. It was reprinted in a paperback format in the 60's-90's, can't wait until they make it into a movie.

I think I'm in the minority, but I prefer the earliest Doc Savage novels. They seem to be lighter in mood, and Doc seems to be more awesome. So these later stories aren't my top choice.

That said, I liked both The Majii and The Golden Man.

Both stories had me thoroughly engaged with the mysterious plots. But in both cases, I think the endings were less spectacular than I would have hoped for, given all of the clever build-up.

I liked that The Majii took us to a foreign exotic culture for part of the story. I always like travel elements in an adventure story. The Golden Man didn't deliver in this area. There was a little bit of travel, but the story mostly stayed around Doc's New York headquarters.

Also, for The Golden Man, I wished that I would have taken notes about each character from the beginning, because, by the end, I was a bit confused about who was who, and how each of the many character's stories tied together. I'm still not entirely sure that I understand how everything panned out...

On a positive note, the mystery of the golden man character had me eager to keep reading. "What is going on with this guy?!" Additionally, it was good to see all of Docs friends in that story, which isn't always the case in the later novels.

Overall, these stories kept me interested, and I enjoyed watching Doc and his gang in action, as always.

Nostalgia Ventures and Anthony Tollin have teamed up to do a comprehensive reprint of several Street & Smith pulp heroes. At present, they are doing double reprints of The Shadow and Doc Savage. Shortly, they will start new series reprinting The Avenger and The Whisperer. All have complete pulp texts (no edits or removals, like past reprints), tho reset so its easier to read, the original illustrations, reprinted covers (one is used as the cover of the book, but both original pulp covers are shown on the back), and several additional articles and additions.

Hopefully, they can succeed to reprinting all these characters in these new editions, they are all excellent.

While all the Doc Savage novels were reprinted by Bantam, for those (like me) who have these reprints, the reason for getting these new volumes is the chance to read the original stories (WITHOUT the editing that occured in the Bantams, including in a few rare cases a LOT of text), see the original illustrations and covers, and the great additional articles.

This volume (#9 in their series) reprints "The Majii" (Sept 35) and "The Golden Man" (April 41). We get the cover of "The Majii" as the cover of this volume, and both original pulp covers are on the back.

"The Majii" is actually a modern retelling of "aladdin and his wonderful lamp" as Doc and friends deal with a fake mystic.

"The Golden Man" has the Man of Bronze dealing with a mysterious man known as the Golden Man, who knows some secrets of Doc's birth.

Extras in this volume include:

An Intermission article by pulp historian Will Murray, which gives background on the writting of these 2 novels.
An article by Murray, on Street & Smith.
A brief bio of Lester Dent.