100-Page FAKES! presents: Giant-Size Spider-Man # 3 [with DOC SAVAGE]

100-Page FAKES! imagines mid-1970s DC 100-Page Super Spectaculars that never were...but should have been!



Continuing Marvel Comics week on the blog, in memory of Stan Lee. Doc Savage was the first pulp hero I ever read. My discovery of The Man Of Bronze commenced when I found a paperback of Doc's second adventure The Land Of Terror while (trying to) help my Dad work at the ballpark in Syracuse. When Marvel secured the license to produce a Doc Savage comic book in 1972, I was well and truly stoked for it. The series ran eight issues, then transitioned to a black and white Marvel magazine in 1975, prepping for the inevitable Savagemania expected to follow that year's major motion picture Doc Savage, Man Of Bronze starring Ron Ely. The film's box office fizzle didn't prevent the magazine from lasting until 1977.

In between the cancellation of Doc's color comics and the debut of his black and white magazine, Marvel kept its Doc Savage license active with this co-starring appearance in 1975's Giant-Size Spider-Man # 3. When you consider the fact that Doc Savage was one of the most pervasive influences on the creation of Superman in the '30s, you might consider writer Gerry Conway and penciller Ross Andru's efforts here a dry run for a very high-profile project they would produce in 1976: the DC-Marvel crossover book Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man.

Giant-Size Spider-Man # 3 also included a reprint of a classic tale by Spidey's co-creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, pitting the wall-crawler against The Man Without Fear Daredevil. Since it was already a Giant, it didn't take much more to turn this into another 100-Page FAKE! That mission was accomplished with just the addition of a 1940s Doc Savage story (presuming for our purposes that Marvel's Doc Savage license would have given them access to Doc Savage comics originally published by Street & Smith) and a Stan Lee Spider-Man story from a 1968 issue of Marvel Super-Heroes, also pencilled by Andru.

Spider-Man and Doc Savage in "The Yesterday Connection," Giant-Size Spider-Man # 3 (January 1975)
Doc Savage in "Live, Evil...Veil," Shadow Comics Vol. 6 # 1 (April 1946)
Spider-Man in "The Reprehensible Riddle Of...The Sorcerer!," Marvel Super-Heroes # 14 (May 1968)
Spider-Man and Daredevil in "Duel With Daredevil!," Amazing Spider-Man # 16 (September 1964)

Doc Savage and his friends are copyright Advance Magazine Publishers Inc./The Condé Nast Publications, and Marvel owns everything else. We can only show representative sample pages here; I share the whole thing with my patrons. It's time for the pulp hero once billed as a superman to meet your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

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