Babysitting isn’t normally supposed to be this hard.
Creative Staff:
Story: David Walker
Art: Kewber Baal
What They Say:
Known as the cousin of world famous adventurer Doc Savage, Pat Savage wants nothing more than to prove she has what is takes to be a hero. What starts out as a thankless job as a babysitter, soon turns into an epic life-and-death struggle that finds Pat squaring off against sinister forces. It’s a double-size tale of two-fisted action starring the first lady of pulp adventure, Pat Savage, Woman of Bronze.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
One area within what Dynamite puts out that I haven’t touched before are some of their older licensed works, such as this one with Doc Savage. I’ve seen a bit of the character years ago in other comic interpretations, but it was never something that compelled me to check it out. With a movie still nebulously in the works out there, a one shot like this felt like it was an easy thing to check out and see what it’s like. Of course, this particular special, clocking in at just about fifty pages, ends up not having much in the way of Doc Savage himself. That could be a problem in some ways, but in the end it works well for this special since what we do get is a good taste of what kind of period piece the property is.
Taking place in 1939, the book centers around not Doc Savage but rather his cousin Pat. She’s pretty much the equivalent of him in many ways and wholly capable in being a part of the team that he has that goes globetrotting around the world dealing with various missions and jobs. But her cousin isn’t all that keen on her being involved and seems to do his best to keep her on the sidelines. While we see her in an action piece at the start, which the book then backtracks a few days from, we also see how her life is in general where she runs a beauty salon and is a pretty decent person as well, standing up for people of color that she employs who get grief from your average customer who wants nobody like that to touch their hair. It’s not a bad thing, but it does fall into that problem in some ways where the good guys are always – always – ahead of the curve when written in the present.
When Pat learns that Doc is about to head off into something new, she does her best to get on the team but is instead given the babysitting job of watching over a young girl named Mae Fu-Sheng, the daughter of a professor that Doc is protecting. He wants Pat to handle this side of it, which of course she rails against, but we also see that he knows how to get what he wants since she does things she’s not supposed to with some of his gear. It’s a decent little family relations moment that shifts nicely into Pam taking on the job reluctantly but doing it well. Which isn’t easy as when she meets the professor and Mae, Mae has little to say in her native tongue, one that Pam does know well. The two of them spending the day together in New York City in this period is pretty nice and well laid out though.
Naturally, those seeing the professor are also seeking Mae and they end up following them, looking for an opportunity to snatch her. This ends up leading to a fun little series of adventures that has Pat drawing on the help of her friend A’leila, one of her hairdressers, and her cousin Amos. It’s a kind of grouping that you feel could only come in the last couple of decades with a blonde woman, a young chinese girl and two black characters, when working with a property from the 1939 time period. But they do work well together, if a little outlandish at times, and it goes for the kind of classic serial radio story design of action and effects, making for heroic chases and time in both planes and ships at sea. And it also has an amusing twist that definitely doesn’t fit the time period, but was highly telegraphed when we first met the good professor before it all comes to a straightforward, if unfortunate, conclusion.
In Summary:
It’s been forever since I read anything about the Doc Savage world of characters and I actually thought I was going to get a Doc Savage story here. Instead, I got a Pat Savage story, which actually works pretty well. But it has the problem of a lot of things written in the present about characters in the past in that they always have to be ahead of the curve on certain social issues. Which isn’t bad, but it just feels unrealistic in so many ways. Doc Savage can get away with it of course because it’s dealing with people that travel the world and are exposed to a lot of people and cultures and have to have an open mind on it all. The story we get here is a bit simple, but it works the page count well with what it does, giving it a good bit of pacing and flow so that it’s not overly compressed or too light either. It’s a fun tale, one that has me interested in checking out any future standalone stories as well.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: December 24th, 2014
MSRP: $7.99
