A Day With Doc

FedEx just delivered a Doc Savage portfolio, Lost Savage, along with a Bob Larkin art book that I had ordered from Terry Allen (who can be reached at docsavagefan at yahoo dot com for those of you who might be interested), who is helping ot raise money for artist Bob Larkin and his wife.. As Terry explained in a post, "The purpose of the set is to try to help out Bob in his time of need. His wife Fran is recovering from multiple bouts of cancer and Bob is her caregiver 24/7. Everything from the sale of these sets as well as the bookplate editions of his art book go to Bob."

When Jim Bama quit doing Doc Savage cover paintings for Bantam, Bob Larkin was brought in to continue the Bama-esque imagery... and he did a great job of it. Larkin's paintings evoked the same dynamic energy and sense of drama as Bama's had, but many of his paintings were reproduced in a smaller, cropped format due to a trade dress change at Bantam as Doc Savage moved from standalone books to double-book volumes and then to four-novel omnibus editions. Lost Savage offers 11" x 17" recreation prints depicting the Doc Savage covers as they should have appeared, with the original trade dress and logo design and with full-sized cover art. I opted to go with the of the lettered sets, which also includes a full-sized original Doc Savage cover sketch by Larkin; mine depicts Doc confronting a Terminator, as is shown here.

The portfolio itself is stunning; it's not just a cardboard portfolio, but an expensive, elegant, hinged multifold textured black embossed portfolio with velcro closures. Each of the 14 covers is individually signed by Larkin, who also signed the certificate of authenticity. If you're interested, contact Terry for more info--but don't wait long, because there are only 40 of the signed and numbered sets and 26 of the lettered sets that include an original cover drawing, and I believe that almost all of the lettered sets are sold out at this point.

(Below are small images of the cover mockups included in the portfolio, for those of you who might be interested in this peek at what should have been...)