THE DAGGER IN THE SKY

[dochermes]

Lots more Man of Bronze goodness on the tag below and click here
http://dr-hermes.livejournal.com/tag/doc%20savage

Comments

[dozy81]

Agreed. That is one great, intriguing cover.

[dferguson]

Everything you say about the cover is absolutely on point. DAGGER IN THE SKY was probably my first Doc Savage supersaga and a large part of it is because of that cover. Once i saw it I had to have that book and nothing was going to stop me.

[dochermes]

I don't know how far the Doc reprints would have gotten with another artist doing the covers. Probably four or five novels would come out before Bantam would drop it. But it got to be a habit. You saw that big recognizable logo, the monochrome coloring and the familiar big guy with the widow's peak and torn shirt.. and you knew you were in for thrills and chills.

[zathras_ix]

The aircraft on the cover is the Lockheed Model 10 Electra, introduced in 1935 and best known as being the plane in which Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared near Howland Island on 2 July 1937. Production ended in 1941, when Lockheed switched over to full wartime mode and started building the Hudson bomber and P-38 Lightning pursuit plane instead, although they did sell a few Electras to the Army up until 1943, which designated them C-40. Lockheed only built 149 Model 10 Electras, so finding one nowadays is all but impossible.

The plane used in the 1975 film Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze was similar but not quite the same. It was a Model 12A Electra Junior, a slightly scaled-down version that could only accommodate 6 passengers instead of the 10 for which the Model 10 was rated, but the Electra Jr could hold Doc and his Fab 5 plus 2 gueasts, so that would work OK had they gone to series with it.

[dochermes]

Thanks for all the information, this is still another area I don't know enough about. And it's more proof that James Bama did his research before getting out the brushes and canvas.

[dozy81]

I think the burning plane is why this illustration so good. Doc is interesting in his own right, as is the floating dagger, but the Electra engulfed in flames is what makes this cover memorably dramatic. Take it out, and things are much less vivid and striking.

[full_metal_ox]

Among other things, the burning plane appears to be the source of the weird saffron radiance that suffuses the scene; an implicit colored light source-- justifying his signature monotone wash in story terms, as it were--was another of Bama's stock visual tricks.