The Land of Terror / Kenneth Robeson

• The Land of Terror by Kenneth Robeson (Doc Savage #2, April 1933). 155 p.
  
  I realize that a monthly pulp magazine--especially one that's just getting established--had to reintroduce its main character every month in case it's the first time a reader has picked up the magazine. That said, I think the first two pages of this novel qualify as the clunkiest, most ham-handed info dump I've ever read. A well-respected chemist spends those two pages talking about how wonderful his friend Doc Savage is, then immediately gets murdered. Doc spends the rest of the book catching up to, and then punishing, the killers. Doc kills a lot of people in this book. Towards the end the setting shifts from NYC to a veritable lost world full of dinosaurs.
  
  First appearance of: Doc's special miniature machine guns (although they shoot regular bullets at this point). Doc "treating" bad guys instead of sending them to jail.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec / Jacques Tardi

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec. Vol. 1, Pterror over Paris and The Eiffel Tower demon by Jacques Tardi. 96 p.

Set in Paris in the 1910s, these serial Eurocomics feature bumbling policemen, convoluted criminal plots, and a cynical young adventuress named Adele. Oh, and at least one pterodactyl. Adele Blanc-Sec's adventures have been popular in Europe but barely released in the States; Fantagraphics is re-translating and re-releasing them in these handsome volumes. Tardi's style, at least in this story, is the distinctive "clear-line" style pioneered by Herge in his Tintin comics.