Doc Savage Batman First Wave Begins

The one shot comic combining the worlds of Doc Savage and Batman has arrived. Titled First Wave Begins, the comic has the pair meet and come to, let’s say, an understanding.
Set just after Doc’s father dies, and early in the career of the Bat-Man, the comic lets the reader see what Brian Azzarello plans to do with the characters. Based on his notes (presented after the comic), Azzarello shows a good understanding of Doc* and his crew. Not to mention a few other pulp characters you might know.

This is it. Doc Savage makes his return to DC Comics, and crashes right into Gotham’s protector, The Batman. Noir mastermind Brian Azzarello teams with artist Phil Noto to present a gritty and shadowy version of the DCU, where thugs are at every corner, corruption runs deep and even the heroes reside in a gray area of morality.
Doc Savage has heard only bad things about The Batman, Gotham’s violent new vigilante, but what can he do to stop him? Check out some more pages from this issue, a vital prologue to the upcoming FIRST WAVE mini-series from Azzarello and artist Rags Morales. — Alex Segura, The Source


* – Even to his understanding that Doc must be “mixed race.” What? You didn’t know?

The one shot comic combining the worlds of Doc Savage and Batman has arrived. Titled First Wave Begins, the comic has the pair meet and come to, let’s say, an understanding.
Set just after Doc’s father dies, and early in the career of the Bat-Man, the comic lets the reader see what Brian Azzarello plans to do with the characters. Based on his notes (presented after the comic), Azzarello shows a good understanding of Doc* and his crew. Not to mention a few other pulp characters you might know.

This is it. Doc Savage makes his return to DC Comics, and crashes right into Gotham’s protector, The Batman. Noir mastermind Brian Azzarello teams with artist Phil Noto to present a gritty and shadowy version of the DCU, where thugs are at every corner, corruption runs deep and even the heroes reside in a gray area of morality.
Doc Savage has heard only bad things about The Batman, Gotham’s violent new vigilante, but what can he do to stop him? Check out some more pages from this issue, a vital prologue to the upcoming FIRST WAVE mini-series from Azzarello and artist Rags Morales. — Alex Segura, The Source


* – Even to his understanding that Doc must be “mixed race.” What? You didn’t know?

10 thoughts on “Doc Savage Batman First Wave Begins

  1. Thank you for the note here –
    Well, I’m intrigued. I’m not certain that the comic will prove a bang-up awesome series, but I don’t think it will be a bust as perhaps some of us had speculated. I read my set of other Doc comics, and the DC related, and Marvel run, and the Black-and-white mag and I’m not pleased with any of those!
    Stephen

  2. I have read every Doc Savage adventure published in paperback and comics. This one did not look or feel right. As intriging as this new universe sounds I fear the worst.

  3. I guess the best way to approach is Doc in comics is not the same Doc we know – it’s a variation on a theme?

  4. Screw Brian Asserahole, I quote it “I don’t want to just please the 10 fans in their 70’s” Yes, he has a lot to learn and writing is one of them. My friend used to collect 100 Bullets and said it was great at first but worsened towardsthe later issues. And he wants to write Doc Savage as an action hero?
    If you replace pulp heroes (The Black Bat, The Avenger, The g-8’s, etc) with DC heroes, why stop at Doc Savage, replace him with Clark Kent Jr. and write it as Doc Kent, the Man of Steel????

  5. For years I’ve been hoping for a Batman-Doc Savage team-up, especially after the well-done Batman-Tarzan crossover several years ago. I had high hopes when I heard that this series was being produced.
    How it pains me to report that these hopes have been dashed. I’ve always preferred DC to Marvel, but every time they get their hands on Doc Savage they screw it up. Having read every Doc novel written (many of them more than once), I’m not at all convinced of the veracity of “Azzarello shows a good understanding of Doc.” The black and white Marvels were SO much closer to the real Doc than this…
    Needless to say, I am highly disappointed. Younger fans not as familiar with Doc will no doubt eat it up. But having read the charcater since the early 70s (and having done a fair deal of research into the character’s history and origins) I must say this isn’t the Doc I’ve known and loved for so many years.
    Or as my granddad used to say, “Nice try, but you blew it…”

  6. I thought this comic was terrible. One panel has Doc looking like an old Swedish hippy with a ponytail, and he does nothing particularly Doc-ish. Over their run the pulps changed Doc from heroic to neurotic, and his height and weight changed all the time too. The Bama covers made Doc look like a middle-age mummy with Eddie Munster hair. I guess there’s room for any writer to say they can make Doc as they see him, but it would be great if an authoritative group of hardcore fans come up with parameters of the Doc that best represents the books and the character. That also goes for the aides, who in the pulps are ugly and unpleasant.
    Based on this book I think he’s seen as a generic adventurer with riding pants, a ripped shirt and a deformed widow’s peak.

  7. This world is more like the world of Batman the Animated series a combination of 1930s and 2010 motifs and Batman using guns OMG but if any of you fan boys remember Batman packed a piece back in the thirties and used it to. I read the first Doc Savage comic and it for me as a fan of Doc since I was 13 and I am 51 now enjoy how they have made him in some ways more human less God like and at times as vunerable as we untrained folks are but always keeping his head at the time when the rest of us would be lossing ours and defecating on our selves I like this version of Doc and Im sticking by it.

  8. I agree. I read it and hated it. One of the worst, if not the worst adaption of Doc in any format.

  9. This would of worked better as an elseworld featuring “DOC SUPERMAN” and THE “BLACK BAT”. But not Doc Savage. I feel sorry for Rags Morales wasting his fantastic art skills on this pathetic story!

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