When Len Leone, the great Bantam Art Director, was asked about the mix up in 2007, he stated he did not remember, but commented "someone screwed up there!" Someone sure did!
The South Pole Terror was part of another mix up. As book #77, it was released prior to book #76 The Black Spot, published in April 1974!
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Also note between the two covers that there appears to be a slight color change. The Stone Man appears to have a more green shade. However, I am not sure that the appearance of different shades of color on both covers is not influenced by the color of the Doc Savage logo on each!
Also important to note that many Doc fans have mentioned that they didn't buy the Stone Man when it first came out because they did not realize it was a different title!
Regarding The South Pole Terror out of sequence publishing:
The mistake was most likely made in the numbering when it was published, not that the book was slated to be #77 and the Black Spot #76 was published later.
Why would they change the color of the Doc Savage logo? Wasn't this the last of the Pfeiffer covers for Doc. Did Boris miss his deadline? Did the person who oversaw the details of South Pole Terror go on vacation and someone else do the Stone Man? This slip up is crazy. How did this get by Len Leone?
Doc Savage #80 - The King Maker was published in February 1975. It was over a year before book #81 The Stone Man was published. And The Stone Man was published more than 2 years after The South Pole Terror. It is very hard to understand how the cover mix up happened.
I asked both Bantam Art Director Len Leone and his assistant Jerry Counihan and neither one remembered what had happened. Of course it was 35 years ago and these guys were pumping out artwork for up to 75 titles per month!
The next book #82 The Evil Gnome reused artwork from the James Bama cover Red Snow #38 (though done in a close-up), so they were definitely out of artwork. Obviously, this was in a period where Bantam was thinking about ceasing the printings. I am glad they finally stuck it out and printed all of the Doc series.
Wish Pfeiffer had done some more Doc covers than the 13 he did.
Thhanks for sharing
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