Thanks for the heads-up, Chris. This is intriguing indeed.

And darnit for finding me more things to spend my sadly-dwindling greenbacks on.... ;)

Steven
http://www.steveneschend.com
 

Sorry, Steven! And you're welcome!
 

Yeah, they look like fun. Note that like Hard Case, they appear to stick a chapterish excerpt up if you click through to titles, so you can have a squizz at that if you want.
 

I'm looking forward to this.

I read some of the Shadow and Doc Savage after reading "Chinatown death peril" and, although The Shadow books were fun, the Doc Savage book didn't seem all that well written and the "give criminals lobotomies" was really creepy.

I know that Farmer was a big fan, are you as well?

Anyway, I'm looking forward to that idea done with a modern point of view.
 

It's been years since I read any Doc Savage novels, but I'll admit to having a soft spot for them. You're probably right that they haven't stood up as well as the Shadow novels, in the long run. And the whole idea of Doc's "Crime College" *is* really creepy if you spend any amount of time thinking about it.

It may be, though, that Doc Savage is one of those characters who are better in concept than in execution. That is, characters that haven't yet appeared in stories that realize their full potential. I'd argue, for example, that with a few notable exceptions (All Star Superman, Secret Identity, any Superman story written by Alan Moore, and a few others) Superman is a better character in concept than in execution, as was Doctor Who in the years before the RTD relaunch (on television, at least, unlike novels which realized his full potential years before). I'd have to reread the Doc Savage novels to say for certain, but that certainly seems a possibility.
 

[opens wallet] Sweet!

I'm going to skip right past 'intrigued' and go to 'enthused.'
 

I agree that the concept of Doc Savage is very strong. It may have even been ok for it's time but it seems that these high concepts need to be constantly reinvented to stay relevant for a modern audience.

I love the Superman stories you referenced too, but I'm sure 20 years down the line someone will have written the new "perfect" Superman story and those will be looked at as quaint relics of a bygone era of comics.

Perhaps Doc suffers the most because no one has done anything with him lately.

On a completely different topic, I finished reading End of the Century a week or so ago and really enjoyed it. I was a bit skeptical about rotating between three narratives but they flowed together quite nicely. I appreciated all the cameo appearances from previous books.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T READ END OF THE CENTURY





Will we see our new crew in future outings? Having read Cybermancy Inc. I'd love to see them go up against that group when JBC tries to refashion society in his own image.

I remember reading awhile back that you were looking to focus more on projects that interest you rather than others. Does that mean more or less books set in that universe or less?

Ok, one last thing, I know you were throwing out some sort of all encompassing names for your overlapping stories, but personally I think of them as your Sophia-verse, that is the one thing that can cross all the boundries right?

Whoops, all the sudden this post got very long!
 

Jeff, thanks for the kind words! You can rest assured that we've not seen the last of the gang from End of the Century. And it's funny that you should mention them in connection with the folks at the Carmody Institute... (To be somewhat less cryptic, the answer is "Yes, we'll see them again, along with JB Carmody and friends, in Broken Symmetry, whenever I get around to writing that one.")

As for the kinds of writing projects I'll be focusing on, in a perfect world I'd be writing nothing *but* Bonaventure-Carmody stories, so far as I'm concerned.