Doc Savage
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Doc Savage is a fictional character, one of the most enduring pulp heroes of the 1930s and 1940s, created by Lester Dent.
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[edit] Overview
Doc Savage is one of the archetypal hero figures of the twentieth century, and his popularity and influence has extended far beyond his initial pulp origins. Doc Savage Magazine ran for 181 issues, 1933 to 1949, and then all the stories were reprinted in paperback form, beginning in the early 1960s. An additional eight novels were then commissioned, based on notes or outlines left by series author Lester Dent. Doc has appeared in comics and movies, on radio, and as a character in numerous other works, and continues to inspire authors and artists in the adventure and fantasy realms.
The basic concept of a man trained from birth to fight evil was created by Street and Smith Publications executive Henry Ralston and editor John Nanovic, to further capitalize on the success of their other pulp hero magazine success, The Shadow. Ralston and Nanovic wrote a short premise establishing the broad outlines of the character they envisioned, but Doc Savage was only fully realized by the author chosen to write the series, Lester Dent. Dent wrote most of the 181 original novels, hidden behind the "house name" of Kenneth Robeson. (Will Murray wrote seven of the Savage novels published after Dent's death, also using the Robeson pseudonym.)
Doc Savage, whose real name is "Clark Savage, Jr.", also known as "the Man of Bronze", is a physician, surgeon, scientist, adventurer, inventor, explorer, researcher and musician — a renaissance man. A team of scientists (assembled by his father) trained his mind and body to near-superhuman abilities almost from birth, giving him great strength and endurance, a photographic memory, mastery of the martial arts, and vast knowledge of the sciences. Doc is also a master of disguise and an excellent imitator of voices, though he admits to having trouble with women's voices. "He rights wrongs and punishes evildoers." Dent described the hero as a mix of Sherlock Holmes' deductive abilities, Tarzan's outstanding physical abilities, Craig Kennedy's scientific education, and Abraham Lincoln's goodness. Dent actually described Doc Savage as manifesting "Christliness."
Doc made everything look easy. In one story, "his hand drifted out at lightning speed." It sounds like an oxymoron, but Doc's fans knew what it meant.
He resides on the top (86th) floor of a New York City skyscraper, implicitly the Empire State Building, reached by Doc's private high-speed elevator. Doc owns a fleet of cars, trucks, aircraft, and boats which he stores at a secret hangar on the Hudson River, under the name The Hidalgo Trading Company, reached from his home by a a pneumatic-tube system called the 'flea run'. He sometimes retreats to his Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic--which predates Superman's similar hideout of the same name. All of this is paid for with gold from a Central American mine given to him by the local Mayans in the first Doc Savage story. (Doc and his assistants learned the little-known Mayan dialect of this people, allowing them to communicate privately when others might be listening.)
Dent based the look of Doc Savage on the film actor Clark Gable. His height and weight varied, with most of the books listing his height as 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m). Reprint book covers by illustrator James Bama depict Doc as a muscular man with bronze skin and a crew cut with a pronounced widow's peak, usually wearing a partially ripped shirt. Bama based his version of Doc on model/actor Steve Holland. Doc's strangest quality is his hypnotic eyes, which seem to be stirring flake-gold.
Doc's greatest foe, and the only one to appear in two of the original pulp stories, was the Russian-born John Sunlight. Early villains were bent on ruling the world, but a late change in format had Savage operating more as a private investigator breaking up smaller crime rings. In the last Doc Savage story written by Dent, Up from Earth's Center, Doc Savage fights a character who is believed to be the Devil.
In early stories some of the criminals captured by Doc received "a delicate brain operation" to cure their criminal tendencies. The criminals returned to society fully productive and unaware of their criminal past. A non-canonical comic book series published in the 1980s states these were actually lobotomies.
Dent, the series' creator and principal author, had a mixed regard for his own creations. Though usually protective of his creations, he could be derisive of his pulp output. In interviews, he stated that he harbored no illusions of being a high-quality author of literature; for him, the Doc Savage series was simply a job, a way to earn a living by "churning out reams and reams of sellable crap." In Jim Steranko's History of Comics, it was revealed that Dent used a formula to write his Doc Savage stories that had his heroes continually getting in and out of trouble.
Some of the gadgets described in the series became reality, including telephone answering machines, the automatic transmission, night vision goggles, and hand-held automatic weapons.
[edit] The Fabulous Five and Pat
Doc's companions in his adventures (the "Fabulous Five") are:
- Industrial chemist Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett "Monk" Mayfair and his pet pig, Habeas Corpus. Monk got his name from his simian appearance, notably his long arms, and was covered with red hair.
- Lawyer Brigadier General Theodore Marley "Ham" Brooks and his pet monkey, Chemistry. Ham (the shyster, as Monk referred to him) got his name after teaching Monk some French swear words to innocently use on a French general. Shortly afterwards, a large joint of ham went missing and turned up among Brooks' things, so he was blamed and got that nickname.
- Construction engineer Colonel John "Renny" Renwick. Renny had fists like buckets of gristle and bone and no wooden door could withstand them.
- Electrical engineer Major Thomas J. "Long Tom" Roberts. "Long Tom" got his nickname from an incident with a World War I cannon of that nick-name. Long Tom was a sickly-looking character, but fought like a wildcat.
- Archaeologist and geologist William Harper "Johnny" Littlejohn. Johnny used long words ("I'll be superamalgamated!" was a favourite saying). Johnny wore a monocle in early adventures (one eye having been blinded in World War I). Doc later performed corrective surgery.
In later stories, a number of the aides were working elsewhere so could not go on adventures, and finally it was just Monk and Ham. There was always banter between the two of them, particularly when a pretty young girl was present and Ham talked of Monk's (fictitious) thirteen half-wit children.
Doc's cousin Patricia "Pat" Savage, who has Doc's bronze skin, eyes and hair, also joins Savage for many of his adventures, despite Doc's best efforts to keep her away from danger. Pat chafes under these restrictions, or indeed any effort to protect her simply because she is female.
[edit] Publication History
See the List of Doc Savage novels for a complete bibliography.
All of the original stories were reprinted in paperback form by Bantam Books in the 1960s through 1990s. The first 96 paperbacks reprinted one of the original novels per book. The next 15 paperbacks were "doubles", reprinting two novels each. The last of the original novels were reprinted in a numbered series of 13 "omnibus" volumes of four to five stories each. It was one of the few pulp series to be completely reprinted in paperback form.
The Red Spider was a Doc Savage novel written by Dent in April 1948 about the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The story was killed in 1948 by new editor Daisy Bacon, though previous editor William de Grouchy had commissioned it. It was forgotten until 1975, when Doc Savage scholar Will Murray found hints of its existence. After a two-year search, the manuscript was located among Dent's papers. It finally saw print in July 1979 as Number 95 in Bantam's Doc Savage series (July 1979).
After the full series was reprinted, Bantam published a new novel from Phillip Jose Farmer, Escape From Loki (1991), and Murray produced seven novels from Dent's original outlines. Four more novels were announced, but not published.
There is an active market for used Doc Savage reprints in all formats, on eBay and elsewhere. There are also dozens of fan pages and discussion groups on the Internet. A new series of reprints is scheduled to begin in November 2006, reprinting two novels per book, and with a choice of pulp style or more modern cover.
[edit] Other media
See the List of Doc Savage radio episodes for a complete playlist.
Street & Smith published comic book stories of Doc both in the The Shadow comic and his own. These started with Shadow Comics v1 #1-3 (1940), then moved to Doc Savage Comics. Originally, these stories were based on the pulp version, but with Doc Savage Comics v1 #5 (1941), he was turned into a genuine superhero when he crashed in Tibet and found a mystical gem in a hood. These stories had a Doc who bore little resemblance to the character in the pulps. This lasted thru the end of Doc Savage Comics in 1943 after 20 issues, and briefly with his return to Shadow Comics in v3 #10 (Jan 44). It was apparently dropped by his second story. He would last until the end of the Shadow Comic, v9 #5 (1948), but did not appear in every issue. He also appeared in at least one issue of Supersnipe Comics.
At least two radio series were done with Doc during the pulp era. One in 1943 was based on the mystical gem wearing version from the comics. More recently, National Public Radio did two serials based on Doc pulps adapted by Will Murray.
Post-Golden Age, there have been Doc Savage comic books from Gold Key Comics (1966, one issue), Marvel Comics (1970s, both standard comic books and larger, black-and-white magazines), DC Comics (1987-90), Millennium Comics (1991-92), and Dark Horse Comics (1995, including a two-issue pairing with the Shadow).
Doc Savage: The Monarch of Armageddon, a four-part limited series released by Millennium Publications in 1991-92, is generally considered to be the most faithful of the many comic adaptations of the character. Written by novelist Mark Ellis and penciled by Green Lantern artist Darryl Banks, the Comics Buyer's Guide Catalog of Comic Books refers to their treatment as the one "to come closest to the original, capturing all the action, humanity, and humor of the original novels."
A campy Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze movie was made in 1975, starring Ron Ely as Doc who confronts smuggler Captain Seas. It was the last film produced by George Pál. A sequel, Doc Savage: The Arch-Nemesis of Evil, was announced but never filmed. During the 90's there was speculation that another Doc Savage movie, to feature Arnold Schwarzenegger, was in the works.
[edit] Cultural references
- Lin Carter wrote a series of books featuring Zarkon-Lord of the Unknown, a thinly disguised version of Doc and his companions.
- Doc Savage and his brain modification technique is suggested as a possible outcome to the trial in Truman Capote's book In Cold Blood.
- In Philip José Farmer's sexually explicit A Feast Unknown (1969), the "Ultimate Nature Man" (Tarzan, called Lord Grandrith) confronts his urban counterpart and younger half-brother (Doc Savage, called Doc Caliban), which continues in The Mad Goblin and Lord of the Trees. The concluding story in the series has yet to appear. In his book Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Farmer lays out Savage's key role in the fictional Wold Newton family, linking Doc to Tarzan and numerous other fictional heroes and villains.
- Doc Savage has influenced the creation and development of other fictional heroes, including Superman, Batman and Buckaroo Banzai. Both Alan Moore's Tom Strong and Warren Ellis's Doc Brass are closely modeled on Doc Savage.
- The animated series The Venture Bros. references Doc in the recurring hallucination/flashbacks that Doctor Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture has about his father, Jonas, who is obviously based on Doc.
- The good doctor makes a cameo appearance as a character in the Roger Zelazny novel Roadmarks
- Doc has teamed up with The Thing and co-shared an adventure with Spider-Man in a couple of issues of Marvel Comics, during the time Marvel was publishing a Doc comic.
- In Deus Ex (a first-person shooter/role-playing computer game), Dr. Gary Savage leads the group X-51.
- In the original Rocketeer comic book mini-series, a tall, handsome scientist who bears an uncanny resemblance to Doc is the inventor of Cliff Secord's rocket pack. In the novelization of the "Rocketeer" movie by Peter David, the characters speculate that perhaps Doc Savage invented the rocketpack and his boys ("probably Ham and Monk") are due to come any moment.
- A character resembling a young Doc Savage named Doctor Francis Ardan (or Hardant) was created by writer Guy d'Armen for his novel La Cité de l'Or et de la Lèpre serialized in the French magazine Science et Voyages Nos. 453 (May 1928) to 479 (November 1928). This novel was translated in 2004 under the title Doc Ardan: City of Gold and Lepers by Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier and published by Black Coat Press. Doc Ardan has also appeared in several stories written for the anthology Tales of the Shadowmen.
- A pair of fantasy novels by Aaron Allston, titled Doc Sidhe (1995) and Sidhe-Devil (2001), focus on the exploits of a "Doc Sidhe" and his "Sidhe Foundation" in a parallel world which links to our own current world, containing humans, elves, dwarves, etc. in a 1930-ish technological setting. The title character, his surroundings, environment, and exploits, and the writing style of the novels are all modeled after and pay homage to the original Doc Savage series.
- A now aged "Senator Ted Brooks" appears in the comic book Liberty Girl, about a World War II-era superheroine who reappears in the current times. A unidentified picture is shown of Doc and his associates, and there may be a connection between the bronze Liberty Girl and Doc.
- The Bernice Summerfield novel Down by Lawrence Miles features a 24th century "pulpzine" character named Mr Misnomer, whose tagline is "The Man of Chrome".
