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| Art by James Bama |
This Bantam books cover gracing the reprint of a novel originally published in the Doc Savage pulp magazine was my first introduction to the Man of Bronze. I was probably thinking Amazing Colossal Man when I saw it, but the guys who grow to giant size and terrorize a town aren't quite as big as all that. In one scene a giant grabs Doc by the shoulder and sort off tugs him to a nearby island where the monsters are headquartered, but I don't think our hero could fit so neatly in his fist.
Besides Doc and his gang, the other characters in the story include Griswold Rock, head of a railroad and apparently the captive of one Pere Teston, a former employee and scientist who created the outsized monstrosities, which from descriptions seem to grow from 12 to 18 feet tall (in any case they can fit inside an airplane). Then there's circus performer Jean Morris, whose hair is the color of steel and who was hired because she speaks the language of two African pinheads who have also been turned into giants (and who get their terrible revenge on a trapper, a man named Bruno Hen, who tormented them in a creepy early sequence when his cabin in the woods is torn apart and Hen along with it).
The Monsters has always been considered one of the most memorable Doc Savage books and it is fast-paced and entertaining with some colorful descriptions, a good scary and suspenseful plot (the nature of the menace is only hinted at in the earlier chapters) and Dent's use of unusual and amusing character names. James Bama's striking cover for the Bantam paperback of the sixties was based on the Walter M. Baumhofer cover for the original pulp magazine. The Monsters was one of the stories adapted by Marvel Comics for its own Doc Savage comic book.
Verdict: No intellectual feast but fun. The cover alone is worth the price of admission. ***.
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