Fictional character in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s
Doc Savage is a fictional character of the competent man hero type, who first appeared in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. Real name Clark Savage Jr., he is a polymathic scientist, explorer, detective, and warrior who "rights wrongs and punishes evildoers." He was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L. Nanovic at Street &amp; Smith Publications, with additional material contributed by the series' main writer, Lester Dent. Doc Savage stories were published under the Kenneth Robeson name. The illustrations were by Walter Baumhofer, Paul Orban, Emery Clarke, Modest Stein, and Robert G. Harris.
The heroic-adventure character would go on to appear in other media, including radio, film, and comic books, with his adventures reprinted for modern-day audiences in a series of paperback books, which had sold over 20 million copies by 1979. Into the 21st century, Doc Savage has remained a nostalgic icon in the U.S., referenced in novels and popular culture. Longtime Marvel Comics editor Stan Lee credited Doc Savage as being the forerunner to modern superheroes.
Publication history.
"Doc Savage Magazine" was printed by Street &amp; Smith from March 1933 to the summer of 1949 to capitalize on the success of "The Shadow" magazine and followed by the original "Avenger" in September 1939. In all, 181 issues were published in various entries and alternative titles.
Doc Savage became known to more contemporary readers when Bantam Books began reprinting the individual magazine novels in 1964, this time with covers by artist James Bama that featured a bronze-haired, bronze-skinned Doc Savage with an exaggerated widows' peak, usually wearing a torn khaki shirt and under the by-line "Kenneth Robeson". The stories were not reprinted in chronological order as originally published, though they did begin with the first adventure, "The Man of Bronze". By 1967, Bantam was publishing once a month until 1990, when all 181 original stories (plus an unpublished novel, "The Red Spider") had run their course. Author Will Murray produced seven more Doc Savage novels for Bantam Books from Lester Dent's original outlines. Bantam also published a novel by Philip José Farmer, "Escape From Loki" (1991), which told the story of how in World War I Doc met the men who would become his five comrades.
Clark Savage Jr. first appeared in March 1933 in the first issue of "Doc Savage Magazine". Because of the success of the Shadow, who had his own pulp magazine, the publishers Street &amp; Smith quickly launched this pulp title. Unlike the Shadow, Clark Savage, "Doc" to his friends, had no special powers but was raised from birth by his father and other scientists to become one of the most perfect human beings in terms of strength, intelligence, and physical abilities.
Doc Savage set up base on the 86th floor of a world-famous New York skyscraper (implied, but never outright stated, as the Empire State Building; Phillip José Farmer, in his "", gives good evidence that this is likely the case). Doc Savage fights against evil with the assistance of the "Fabulous Five".
Comics, films, pulp magazines.
Doc Savage has appeared in comics and a movie, on radio, and as a character in numerous other works, and continues to inspire authors and artists in the realm of fantastic adventure.
"Doc Savage Magazine" was created by Street &amp; Smith Publications executive Henry Ralston and editor John Nanovic to capitalize on the success of Street and Smith's pulp character, 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. (See List of Doc Savage novels for a complete list of the titles in the original pulp magazine series.) 
One Lester Dent biographer hypothesizes that one inspiration for Doc Savage may have been the American military officer and author Richard Henry Savage, who wrote more than 40 books of adventure and mystery stories and lived a dashing and daring life.
The character first appeared on screen in a 1975 film, "".
It was announced on May 30, 2016, that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson would be playing Clark "Doc" Savage, billed as the "World's First Superhero", and the film would be directed by Shane Black with a script by Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry. In 2020, the concept was changed from a film to a television show.
Fictional character biography.
A team of scientists assembled by his father deliberately trained his mind and body to near-superhuman abilities almost from birth, giving him great strength and endurance, a photographic memory, a mastery of the martial arts, and vast knowledge of the sciences. Doc is also a master of disguise and an excellent imitator of voices. He is a physician, scientist, adventurer, detective, inventor, explorer, researcher, and, as revealed in "The Polar Treasure", a musician. 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. He also described Doc Savage as manifesting "Christliness." Doc's character and world-view is displayed in his oath, which goes as follows:
By the third story, Doc already has a reputation as a "superman".
Doc Savage's aides.
Savage is accompanied on his adventures by up to five other regular characters (referred to in the 1975 movie and in marketing materials from the Bantam Books republication as "The Fabulous Five"), all highly accomplished individuals in their own right.
In later stories, Doc's companions become less important to the plot as the stories focus more on Doc. The "missing" characters are explained as working elsewhere, too busy with their own accomplishments to help. Toward the end of the series, usually only Monk and Ham appear with Doc.
Doc's cousin Patricia "Pat" Savage, who has Doc's bronze skin, golden eyes, and bronze hair, also is along for many of the 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. She is also able to fluster Doc, even as she completely charms Monk and Ham.
The 86th Floor.
Doc's office is on the 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", which is linked to his office by a pneumatic-tube system nicknamed the "flea run". He sometimes retreats to his Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic, which pre-dates Superman's similar hideout of the same name. The entire operation is funded with gold from a Central American mine given to him by the local descendants of the Maya people in the first "Doc Savage" story. (Doc and his assistants learned the little-known Mayan language of this people at the same time, allowing them to communicate privately when others might be listening.)
Technology.
Lester Dent kept current with the scientific developments of his era. While some of Doc's gadgets were simply science fiction many of his 'futuristic' devices were actual inventions, or ideas engineers were attempting to produce. Futuristic devices described in the series include the flying wing, the answering machine, television, automatic transmission, night vision goggles, electromagnetic rail guns, and a hand-held automatic weapon, known variously as the machine pistol, the supermachine pistol, or the rapid-firer. A wide range of ammunition types were used for the machine pistols, including incendiary bullets that smash on contact, coating the target with a high-temperature paste-fed fire, high explosive bullets able to uproot trees, ordinary lead bullets, and the sleep-inducing "mercy bullets". Doc also developed an automated typewriter.
Villains.
Doc's greatest foe, and the only enemy to appear in two of the original pulp stories, was the Russian-born John Sunlight, introduced in October 1938 in the "Fortress of Solitude". Early villains in the "super-sagas" were fantastic schemers bent on ruling the world. Later, the magazine was retitled "Doc Savage, Science Detective", and Doc dealt with more conventional criminal organizations. The super-saga was revived in 1948 by new editor Daisy Bacon shortly before the final cancellation of the magazine. In a September 20, 1948, letter to Lester Dent, Bacon wrote "As long as we are dropping the science detective and returning to just Doc Savage, I think we should return to a real adventure story..."
A key characteristic of the Doc Savage stories is that the threats, no matter how fantastic, usually have a rational explanation. For example, a giant mountain-walking spider is revealed as a blimp, a scorching death comes from super-charged electric batteries, a "sea angel" is a mechanical construct towed by a submarine, Navy ships sunk by a mysterious force are actually sabotaged, and so on. But Doc Savage also battles invisible killers, a murderous teleporter, and superscientific foes from the center of the Earth.
In earlier stories, some of the criminals captured by Doc receive "a delicate brain operation" to cure their criminal tendencies. These criminals return to society, unaware of their past, to lead productive lives. The operation is mentioned in Truman Capote's novel "In Cold Blood", as an older Kansan recalls Doc's "fixing" of the criminals he had caught.
Lester Dent.
Lester Dent, the series' principal author, had a mixed regard for his own creations. Though usually protective of his own work, 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", never dreaming how his series would catch on. Comics historian Jim Steranko revealed that Dent used a formula to write his Doc Savage stories, so that his heroes were continually, and methodically, getting in and out of trouble. Dent was initially paid $500 per story and this was later increased to $750 during the Great Depression, enabling him to buy a yacht and vacation in the Caribbean.
Bibliography.
Novels.
All of the original stories were reprinted in paperback form by Bantam Books in the 1960s through 1990s. Of the first 67 paperback covers, 62 were painted in extraordinary monochromatic tones and super-realistic detail by James Bama, whose updated vision of Doc Savage with the exaggerated widow's peak captured, at least symbolically, the essence of the Doc Savage novels. The first 96 paperbacks reprinted one of the original novels per book. Actor and model Steve Holland, who had played "Flash Gordon" in a 1953 television series, was the model for Doc on all the covers. The next 15 paperbacks (consisting of stories 97 through 126 in the Bantam reissue series) were "doubles", reprinting two novels each (these were actually shorter novellas written during paper shortages of World War II). 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 in the Street &amp; Smith archives. After a two-year search, the carbon manuscript was located among Dent's papers. It finally saw print in July 1979 as Number 95 in Bantam's Doc Savage series.
When the original pulp stories were exhausted, Bantam Books hired Philip José Farmer to pen the tale of how Doc and his men met in World War I. "Escape from Loki" was published in 1991. It was followed by seven traditional Doc Savage stories written by novelist Will Murray, working from unpublished Lester Dent outlines, beginning with "Python Isle." Philip José Farmer had earlier written the book "" in 1973, which described the characters and the stories on the entertaining premise that Doc actually existed and the novels chronicled his exploits in "fictionized" form.
In 2011, Altus Press revived the series with another Murray-Dent posthumous collaboration, "The Desert Demons." Nine new novels are planned for the