Will Murray
Biography. Early life and career. Will Murray grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated North Quincy High school in June 1971, subsequently graduating summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. After becoming a fan of the pulp fiction hero Doc Savage, he began collecting pulp magazines and wrote two psychological profiles of the character in "The Doc Savage Reader". He went on to write for fanzines and edit the fanzines "Duende" and "Skullduggery" before joining the pulp-reprint publisher Odyssey Publications. He also co-authored the study, "The Duende History of The Shadow Magazine." Circa  1978, "I discovered the outline to [Doc Savage creator] Lester Dent's unwritten "Python Isle" and decided to take a shot at writing it. Bantam <nowiki>[Books]</nowiki> passed on it initially, and by the time they came back and asked for it and two more Docs, I was busily ghosting [the adventure paperback series] "The Destroyer" for [series co-creator] Warren Murphy." Novels and magazines. "The Destroyer" assignment had come about when Murray, editing "Skullduggery", sought out Murphy and "The Destroyer" co-creator Richard Sapir for an interview, and later doing freelance research for Sapir. This led to his  editing a Destroyer sourcebook, "The Assassin's Handbook" (1982) and eventually ghostwriting the series, beginning with the 56th book, "Encounter Group" (1984). He began writing the series regularly with the 69th book, "Blood Ties", altogether ghosting book #69 through book #107, "Feast or Famine". Murray has also written Cthulhu Mythos stories, including a pair of stories about Nug and Yeb, the Twin Blasphemies, and contributed single novels in "The Executioner" and "Mars Attacks" series. He wrote the retro-pulp collection "Spicy Zeppelin Stories" under various pen names. Murray, also an author of nonfiction articles about pulp magazine writers such as  Doc Savage creator Lester Dent, and the Shadow creator Walter B. Gibson; since 1979, he has been the literary executor for the estate of Dent, and has published twenty-one Doc Savage novels from Dent's outlines under Dent's pseudonym, Kenneth Robeson. His 2013 "The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage" novel, "Doc Savage: Skull Island", teams him up with King Kong. In June 2015, Altus Press inaugurated the series "The Wild Adventures of Tarzan" in the novel "", an authorized sequel to Edger Rice Burroughs' 1921 novel, "Tarzan the Terrible". Late in 2016, Altus released a follow-up novel, "King  Kong Vs. Tarzan". Early in 2020, "Tarzan, Conqueror of Mars" was released, in which John Carter oF Mars was revived. In October 2016, Altus Press released "Six Scarlet Scorpions", the first entry in a new spinoff series centering around Doc Savage's adventuress cousin, called "The Wild Adventures of Pat Savage". Murray wrote the novel from an outline written by the character's creator, Lester Dent. In August, 2018, Altus Press released "The Spider: The Doom Legion", reviving the pulp hero known as The Spider, as well as James Christopher, Operator 5, and G-8 of "G-8 and His Battles Aces  fame. A sequel, The Spider: Fury in Steel", was published in January, 2021. In June, 2020, Altus Press released "The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", collecting ten of Murray's Sherlock Holmes short stories. For Necronomicon Press, he edited "Tales of Zothique" and "The Book of Hyperborea", two collections of stories by Clark Ashton Smith. His essays have appeared in books ranging from S. T. Joshi's compedium on H. P. Lovecraft, "An Epicure in the Terrible", to Jim Beard's survey of the 1960s "Batman" TV show, "Gotham City 14 Miles." He also contributed to the encyclopedias "St. James  Crime and Mystery Writers", "St. James Science Fiction Writers", "Contemporary Authors" and "The Dictionary of Literary Biography." A collection of his Doc Savage articles was published by Altus Press under the title, Writings in Bronze, in 2011. As a contributing editor of "Starlog" magazine, Murray wrote for that publication and for Starlog Press movie tie-in publications. Murray stories have appeared in "The UFO Files, Future Crime, Miskatonic University, 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, 100 Creepy Little Creature Stories, 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories, The Cthulhu Cycle, Disciples of Cthulhu II, Cthulhu's Reign, Worlds of Cthulhu, The Yig Cycle , Dead But Dreaming II, Horror for the Holidays, The Mountains of Madness, Nightbeat: Night Stories" and other collections. For National Public Radio, he adapted Lester Dent's 1934 novel "The Thousand-Headed Man" as a six-part serial for "The Adventures of Doc Savage", which aired in 1985, and was released on CD by Radioarchives.com in October 2010. For Radio Archives, Murray produced the Will Murray Pulp Classics line of audio and ebooks, starring such pulp heroes as The Spider and G-8 and His Battle Aces. With S. T. Joshi and Jon L. Cooke, Murray organized The Friends of H.  P. Lovecraft, which raised funds to place a memorial plaque dedicated to the Providence fantasy writer on the grounds of Brown University's John Hay Library on the centennial of Lovecraft's birth in August 1990. In 2000 Murray wrote the novel "" for Marvel comics. The story, which predicted the operational details of the Year 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington a year before they transpired, identified the author as a trained remote viewer and professional psychic. Beginning in 2006, Murray has been a consulting editor for Sanctum Books' "Doc Savage", "Shadow", "Avenger" and "Whisperer" reprints. He has  also written dozens of introductions to the reprints being published by Altus Press, covering characters such as Lester Dent's Lee Nace and Frederick Nebel's Black Mask detective, Ben Donohue. With Off-Trail Publications' John Locke, he has co-edited the three-volume "The Gangland Sagas of Big Nose Serrano", which collects all 12 of Anatole Feldman's Big Nose Serrano stories. For Black Dog Books, he penned introductions to their ongoing Lester Dent Library series of pulp-magazine reprints. Murray's exhaustive survey, "Wordslingers: An Epitaph for the Western", delved into the American Western story as it evolved  in the pages of the pulp magazines of the first half of the 20th century. Stepping into the metaphysical and spiritual genre, Murray explored the nature and origin of God in his 2016 ebook, "Forever After", which he wrote under his full name of William Patrick Murray. The work is told in the form of a fable, with the narrative unfolding from God's point of view. Comic books. A contributor to numerous prose anthologies, Murray has written short stories of the characters Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, the Hulk, the Spider, The Avenger, the Gray Seal , the Green Hornet, The Secret 6, Sherlock Holmes, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Honey West, Zorro and Lee Falk's the Phantom. For Marvel Comics, Murray co-created the superhero Squirrel Girl with artist Steve Ditko. He scripted "The Destroyer" black-and-white magazine, as well as single stories starring Iron Man and the Punisher. Murray wrote the introduction to the "Marvel Comics Omnibus" volume, which celebrates the 70th anniversary of Marvel Comics, as well as introductions to Volume 2 of "Daring Mystery Comics", "Mighty Thor Masterworks" Volume 9, "Mystic Comics" Volume 1, "Young Allies" Volume 2 and  Golden Age Captain America Volume 6. Awards. In 1979, he received the Lamont Award for his contributions to the furtherance of pulp fiction research. In 1999, he earned the "Comic Book Marketplace" award for research excellence in the area of comics history. Murray received the 2011 Pulp Ark Award for Best Series Revival for his work on "The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage". His Doc Savage novel, "Doc Savage: Skull Island", won the 2014 Pulp Factory Award for Best Novel.