Philip José Farmer the late great Science Fiction Grandmaster wrote biographies of the two iconic pulp characters of the 20th Century: Tarzan Alive! and Doc Savage, An Apocalyptic Life. In those biographies, he traced the ancestry of these two characters through the complexities of Burke's Peerage and demonstrated that they were not only related to each other, but also that they were descended from British Royalty. This entitled them to coats of arms based on their ancestry.
Farmer had a written description of Tarzan's coat of arms which was printed in Tarzan Alive! which was rendered as a line drawing in the book by Bjo Trimble. There was a coat of arms description in Doc Savage, An Apocalyptic Life but no actual drawing was ever made. UNTIL NOW!
In Farmerphile no. 14 (Oct. 2008) artist Keith Howell used Phil Farmer's original notes to create the first actual rendering of the coat of arms for Dr. James Clark Wildman Jr. aka Doc Savage.
This was something I have waited 37 years to see! It was well worth waiting for.
At the Farmercon in Peoria, IL held on June 6-7, 2009 I obtained a signed copy of this for my desktop and a poster that I now have framed and hanging in my library. I also purchased coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, and other quality reproductions of this image which were made available at the conference.
It is my hope that other Doc Savage fans will be as excited about this as I am and that they will send emails to mike@pjfarmer.com requesting that merchandise using this image be made available to Doc Savage fans through Cafe Press.
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