Stuff

Our favorite deputy sheriff Mark gives us one more reason NOT to live in China.
http://mauricebroaddus.proboards24.com/index.cgi?board=discussion&action=display&thread=1203181624&page=1
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One more reason Lawrence Block is such a cool dude--this kind of control and mastery has always fascinated me. Block really is a mastermind. From Mystery*File blog and Steve Lewis:

One more thing. I’m going to quote Curt Purcell as to something he said on the rara-avis Yahoo group about three of Lawrence Block’s early books, Grifter’s Game, The Girl with the Long Green Heart and Lucky with Cards, all available under these titles from Hard Case Crime: “… in each of these three stories, the grifter debates how best to part the rich guy from his money and put him out of the way, and each time he arrives at a solution he rejects in the other two.”

Now that’s pretty neat, isn’t it?

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The Doctor is in

Mark Evanier at News From Me notes that today is Doc Savage's 75th birthday:

"My pal Anthony Tollin reminds me that today is the 75th "birthday" of Doc Savage, it being that many years since the publication of the character's first issue. It was on February 17, 1933 that the great pulp hero debuted, the creation of writer Lester Dent. Hiding under the pen name of Kenneth Robeson, Dent wrote most of the 181 Doc Savage novels that appeared in the original run.

"I recognize the importance of the character in the development of the "super hero" (some call him the first) and I also note that a lot of my friends love to read and re-read Doc Savage novels. That's a nice way of easing into the fact that I somehow never managed to warm to the Good Doctor. I tried...lord, how I tried. I read a Doc Savage novel and didn't like it, and when I told a friend who loved the books, he told me, "You picked the wrong one. That's the one nobody likes" and he recommended another of the books."

For the rest of the piece go here http://www.newsfromme.com/

Ed here: I'd split the difference with Mark. I've read some Docs that I thought were entertaining enough but the majority of them ranked a solid ten on my famous Snore-o-Meter. Maybe it was the dorkiness of all his pals. Frederic C. Davis was my favorite hero pulp writer. Loopy as a guy with a fishbowl on his head was (yes, I mean YOU Moonman), Davis managed to bring a real darkness to the tales. The atmosphere of the Depression was present in a lot of his early work. Same with his material during the war. He managed to bring some reality to even the most flambouyant of his work.