The Pulp Pit™ – I Am Not Doc Savage

In my introductory column, “I Am Doc Savage,” I explained how I was like the esteemed pulp hero, the fictional ubermensch who inspired the creation of Superman, Batman, and countless other characters over the past eight decades or so. Which is to say, not much, except that reading his adventures as a kid made me aspire to be a better man, a smarter man, a more accomplished man.

A heroic man.

That column was way back on March 22, and to explain why this second column took so long to appear, I now get to explain to you exactly how unlike the great Man of Bronze I truly am.

We’re about to get personal. If you don’t want to, feel free to skip down a ways, where you’ll find me discussing pulp like I’m supposed to.

Doc Savage was the perfect human being, trained from birth to be a Jack of all trades, master of all. If a person could conceivably do it, Doc could already do it or figure it out quickly.

Though it may shatter some illusions, I have to admit that I’m not a perfect human being. While I’m dashing and smart and capable, there are a great many things I cannot do. Unfortunately, sometimes that includes things I really should be able to do, and really want to do.

This is because for most, if not all, my life, I’ve suffered from chronic, major depression.

Depression’s not just a matter of mood. Being sad is part of it, but it goes much deeper than that, soul-deep, brain deep. It’s a malfunction in the actual biochemical processes that govern emotion and motivation and the actual ability to act. It sucks.

I’ve struggled for years with it, been through lengthy periods of talk therapy with two shrinks, gone through frustrating trial and error experimentation with antidepressant cocktails of various combinations, and last fall underwent a new treatment called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which did nothing but make me more depressed because I wasted a couple of months and $9,000 and it did fuck-all.

Nothing really helped in any significant way, and I was getting worse. That’s not unusual; chronic depression tends to get more debilitating over the years. And I became more desperate, more afraid that I’d only become more unable to achieve my goals, unable to find happiness. Then, the woman I loved left me and, on the verge of collapsing into the deepest despair I’d ever felt, I opted to undergo ECT, electroconvulsive therapy. Shock treatment.

I did three sessions a week for several weeks, and you know what? Right now it seems like the smartest thing I’ve done in years. The only apparent complications I’ve had stem from an apparently elevated emotional state, which I’ve come to think is actually a return to the intensity of feeling I used to have but lost over the decades of struggle. And I am now functioning on a daily basis far better than I have in years.

So. That’s what I’ve been up to. How you been doing?

If you’re curious about my experiences with depression in general, or about my ECT adventures, I’ve written about all of it extensively on my blog “Under An Outlaw Moon.” I write about other stuff over there too, so feel free to visit.

The Sting of the Scorpion by Warren Stockholm was originally published in 2006, allegedly the first issue of Scorpion Magazine, though a second issue wasn’t forthcoming. I noticed it at some point on Amazon, and it looked interesting, but I was leery of dropping cash on it. Ultimately I gave in to my curiosity and bought it, subsequently reviewing it on my blog. I’m repurposing that review for you now because the book has been rereleased as an ebook, and I’ve been in touch with the author, who tells me the long-delayed second book is in the works.

The Scorpion is a pulp hero in the tradition of The Shadow, but even more in the tradition of The Spider. He’s dark and deadly and armed and dangerous, clad in a black-veiled fedora and a black leather trench coat, brutally taking the fight to the criminals that plague his city, Steeltown.

While the hero is fashioned from a very readily recognizable pulp archetype, Stockholm does some interesting things with The Scorpion and the world he inhabits.

For one thing, the tale takes place in an alternate history in which Germany won the second world war and occupied America for sixty years. America has only recently booted their wretched asses out and is rebuilding itself. The milieu is an intriguing amalgam of the thirties and the late twentieth century, as if the culture sort of froze in place under Nazi rule, but technology moved forward.

As for the hero, in classic pulp fashion, The Scorpion by day is a wealthy paragon, living in the tallest building in the city, assisted by a mysterious Asian woman, dedicated to his mission against evil…but he’s not just a hero with a dark past, he’s a hero with a really dark past. And he’s not really human, in some very interesting and dangerous ways. Richard Wentworth dressed as The Spider to scare criminals into thinking he was a monster; Kurt Reinhardt becomes The Scorpion because he is a monster.

Reinhardt is a compelling protagonist, the action frequent and brutal, the city a violent and noirish place, and the plot interesting. Not only that, but Stockholm can actually write very well (though this was possibly the worst copy-edited book I’ve ever read all the way through; hopefully the newer version has been cleaned up). I do have to warn readers of delicate tastes away, however, because this is a very grim and blood-splashed work.

I enjoyed the hell out of this story. I’m excited there’s another adventure on the way, and will review it for you when it arrives. Unlike some other attempts at modern pulp I’ve read (or tried to read), the Scorpion earned a permanent place on my shelves with Doc Savage, The Shadow, and, of course, that other arachnid, The Spider.

Finally, if you’ll forgive me, a moment of self promotion. My story “Dead Folks” is now available as an ebook at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It tells the tale of a small southern town suddenly inundated with pesky corpses from numerous historical eras, including famous dead people like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who the young protagonist finds floating drowned in the lake.

It’s just 99¢, and if you don’t have a Kindle or a Nook, you can download apps from Amazon and B&N that allow you to read their ebooks on a variety of devices from PCs and Macs to iPhones and Blackberries.

If you read it and like it, please consider reviewing it at whichever site you bought it from. You’ll help me in my battle with deep dark depression.

Tim can be found on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/TimByrd
His Blog Under an Outlaw Moon at: http://www.tim-byrd.com
The Official Doc Wilde Website at: http://www.docwilde.com