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Doc Savage

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Doc Savage
File:Docsavage.jpeg
Doc Savage Magazine #1 (March, 1933)
Publication information
PublisherStreet and Smith
First appearance1933
Created byLester Dent
Henry Ralston
John Nanovic
In-story information
Alter egoClark Savage, Jr
Team affiliationsFabulous Five
Notable aliasesThe Man of Bronze
AbilitiesPeak physical abilities
scientist

Doc Savage is a fictional character, one of the pulp heroes of the 1930s and 1940s. He was created by writer Lester Dent.

Overview

The Doc Savage Magazine was printed by Street and Smith Publications from March 1933 to the summer of 1949. In all, 181 issues were published. All of the stories were reprinted by Bantam Books as paperbacks, beginning in 1964, that were not in order of original publication, except for the very first, as Bantam was unsure of how the books would be received. The company picked some of the best adventures, and did not bother about chronology. Bantam also published a heretofore-unknown story, The Red Spider, which featured an older and more subdued Doc, a man, rather than superman, which was how the stories trended during the war years and after. However, fans wanted more of the original Doc, so Bantam commissioned an additional eight novels (based on notes or outlines left by the author most identified with the series, Lester Dent). Will Murray produced seven novels from Dent's original outlines. Four more novels were announced, but not published. Bantam also published a new novel by Philip José Farmer, Escape From Loki (1991), which told the story of how Doc met the men who would become his five compatriots, in World War I.

Doc 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.

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 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 also used the Robeson pseudonym .)

Doc Savage, whose real name is Clark Savage, Jr., is a physician, surgeon, scientist, adventurer, inventor, explorer, researcher, and musician — a modern version of a renaissance man. 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, 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 described Doc Savage as manifesting "Christliness." Doc's character and world-view is displayed in his oath, which goes as follows[1]:

Let me strive every moment of my life to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it. Let me think of the right and lend all my assistance to those who need it, with no regard for anything but justice. Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say and do. Let me do right to all, and wrong no man.

His 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 nick-named 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. 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.)

Doc's greatest foe, and the only enemy 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 the company of two self-confessed demons.

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. In the 1975 film Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, Doc uses acupuncture. It is referred to in Truman Capote's book, In Cold Blood, as an older Kansan recalls Doc's "fixing" criminals he had caught.

Dent, the series' 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, so that his heroes were continually, and methodically, 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.

Appearance

In the text of the pulp novels Doc Savage is described as a giant (although his initial height is given as 6'), so well proportioned that this is not apparent unless he is standing next to an object that can be used as a reference. Doc's skin is bronzed "by tropical suns" with dark bronze, hair of bronze hue, and hypnotic gold-flecked eyes. The effect is summed up by his epithet "The Man of Bronze." In fact, in the first issue (The Man of Bronze, March 1933), a sniper observing through a window initially mistakes Doc for a bronze sculpture. His height and weight varied, with later books listing his height as 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m).

The covers of the Street and Smith Pulp magazines, initially painted by Walter M. Baumhoffer, depict Doc as an athletic man with the standard hair style of the period (a side part and wayward lock of hair on the right). Doc is usually described as wearing a normal suit but no hat. He wears a special waistcoat underneath his shirt in which he carries an assortment of gadgets. He is shown in various states of dress but a shirt and khaki trousers are common. This look was based on film actor Gary Cooper, or perhaps Clark Gable.

The covers of the Bantam Books paperback reprints, by illustrator James Bama, depict Doc as a slightly older muscular man with bronze skin and a crew cut with a very pronounced widow's peak, probably based on a metal skull cap Doc occasionally wore when expecting an attack. On the reprint covers is usually shown wearing jodhpurs and a shirt in tatters. Bama used model/actor Steve Holland, TV's Flash Gordon, for depicting his version of Doc Savage.

The real Doc Savage

While visiting John L Nanovic, the editor of the Doc Savage magazine, writer-researcher Will Murray learned that Doc Savage may have been, in part, based on a real-life person named Richard Henry Savage (1846–1903). Like his fictional namesake, Savage was a true renaissance man — a soldier, an engineer, a diplomat, a lawyer, a novelist, a civic leader, and a war hero.

Richard Henry Savage was born on June 12, 1846, in Utica, New York, the son of Richard Savage and Jane Moorhead Savage (née Ewart). His grandfather, a civil engineer, arrived in America around 1805. His ancestors were English, Scottish and Irish. ,

Savage graduated from West Point in 1868, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He joined the Egyptian army as a major in 1871. He subsequently served as U.S. vice-consul in Marseilles and Rome. On January 2, 1873, he married Anna Josephine Scheible of Berlin, Germany.

Later, Savage served on the Texas-Mexico frontier, and as a chief engineer on a railroad in California, retiring in 1884. Following his retirement, Savage traveled extensively, visiting Turkey, Japan, China, Russia, Asia Minor, Korea, and Honduras.

Returning to the United States in 1891, as a confidant of President Ulysses S. Grant Savage was given several diplomatic appointments around the world. Savage could talk of all the wild spots in the world that he had visited and had many personal mementos of his strange life.

Savage wrote his first novel, My Official Wife (1891)[citation needed], which proved to be his most popular.[citation needed] Savage eventually wrote over 40 books, including Our Mysterious Passenger and Other Stories (1899), which was published by Street and Smith a year after a 17-year-old Henry W. Ralston, the future co-creator of Doc Savage, joined the firm.

Savage became senior Captain of the 27th U.S. Volunteer Infantry, and was appointed Brigadier General and Chief Engineer of Spanish War Veterans in 1900.

After living such an adventurous life, Savage was run over by a horse-drawn wagon while crossing Sixth Avenue in New York City, on October 3, 1903, dying eight days later at the age of 57.[2]

The Fabulous Five and Pat

Doc's companions in his adventures (the "Fabulous Five") were:

  1. Industrial chemist Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett "Monk" Mayfair and his pet pig, Habeas Corpus (a jab at Ham's profession). Monk got his name from his simian appearance, notably his long arms, and was covered with red hair.
  2. Lawyer Brigadier General Theodore Marley "Ham" Brooks and his pet monkey, Chemistry (a counter-jab aimed at Monk's field of expertise). Ham (the shyster, as Monk referred to him) got his nickname after teaching Monk some French swear words to innocently use on a French general. Shortly afterwards, Brooks was framed for stealing a truckload of hams. He was never able to prove Monk was behind this, and the name stuck. Ham was considered one of the best-dressed men in the world, and as part of his attire, carried a sword cane whose blade is dipped in a fast-acting anesthetic.
  3. Construction engineer Colonel John "Renny" Renwick. Renny was a giant of a man, with fists like buckets of gristle and bone which no wooden door could withstand. He usually had a gloomy expression, which deepened as he grew more happy.
  4. Electrical engineer Major Thomas J. "Long Tom" Roberts. "Long Tom" got his nickname from using an antiquated cannon of that nick-name in the successful defense of a French village in World War I. Long Tom was a sickly-looking character, but fought like a wildcat.
  5. 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 that restored his sight in his eye, but Johnny retained the monocle for use as a magnifying glass as well as a memento.

The men were never called the "Fabulous Five" within the novels, only on the back covers of the reprints, perhaps an echo of Marvel Comics' recent hit, "The Fantastic Four."

In later stories, some of the aides might be working elsewhere, and so could not go on adventures, and finally it was just Monk and Ham who accompanied Doc. There was always banter between the two of them, particularly when they sparred over the attentions of a pretty young girl.

Doc's cousin Patricia "Pat" Savage, who has Doc's bronze skin, eyes, and hair, also was 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.

Publication history

See the List of Doc Savage novels for a complete bibliography.

James Bama's covers featuring Steve Hollandas the Man of Bronze on many of the Bantam reprints defined the character to a generation of readers.

All of the original stories were reprinted in paperback form by Bantam Books in the 1960s through 1990s. About 60 of the paperback covers 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 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. 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. Philip José Farmer wrote the book Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, which summarized the series with the idea that Doc actually existed and the novels chronicled his exploits.


The Blackmask eBook and POD website offered large numbers of Doc Savage books for download up to early 2006, when the owner was sued by Condé Nast, resulting in the site's closure (it reopened in 2008 as Munseys, without the Doc Savage novels).

There is an active market for used Doc Savage books in all formats, on eBay and elsewhere. There are also dozens of fan pages and discussion groups on the Internet.

Nostalgia Ventures began a new series of Doc reprints (starting November 2006), featuring two novels per book. Several editions came with a choice of original pulp style or more modern cover, and most include new essays as introductions and afterwords.

Radio

Two Doc Savage radio series were broadcast during the pulp era. The first, in 1934, was a 15-minute serial which ran for 26 episodes. The 1943 series was based not on the pulps but on the comic book version of the character. No audio exists from either series, although some scripts survived. In 1985, National Public Radio aired The Adventures of Doc Savage, as 13 half-hour episodes, based on the pulps and adapted by Will Murray and Roger Rittner.

See the List of Doc Savage radio episodes for a complete playlist.

Comic books

Golden Age

File:Millmob2.jpg
Doug Wildey's cover for Millennium's Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze shows a Doc that is a cross between the Bama paperback design and the pulp version.

Street & Smith published comic book stories of Doc both in the The Shadow comic and his own title. 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 through 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.

Modern Age

Post-Golden Age, there have been several Doc Savage comic books:

  • Gold Key Comics, 1966, one issue. Adapts The Thousand-Headed Man to tie-in to a proposed Doc Savage movie starring Chuck Connors of The Rifleman. The cover painting, copied from James Bama's original, resembles Connors.
  • Marvel Comics. In 1972, eight standard color comics with four adaptations of books - The Man of Bronze, Brand of the Werewolf, Death in Silver, and The Monsters - and one Giant-Size movie adaptation. In 1975, eight black-and-white magazines published by the Marvel imprint Curtis Magazines as a movie tie-in. All are original stories by Doug Moench and Tony DeZuniga with a mature, realistic bent. Villains have motives, Monk and Ham get their sexual comeuppance from canny women, and Renny falls in love.
  • DC Comics, 1987–90, a four-issue miniseries tryout, then 24 issues and one Annual, most written by Mike W. Barr. Original adventures, including a reunion with Doc's Mayan sweetheart/wife Monya and John Sunlight, adventures with Doc's grandson "Chip" Savage, and back story on Doc's parents and youth. Included a four-issue crossover with DC's current run of The Shadow. Sidenote: As evidenced by a DC house ad, the original DC plan had Doc's preserved brain implanted in the body of a Native American detective, but Conde Nast rejected the idea.
  • Millennium Publications, 1990s, published several mini-series and one-shots, including Doc Savage: The Monarch of Armageddon, a four-part limited series from 1991 to 1992. 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." Also a one-shot spin-off Pat Savage: Woman of Bronze, and a Manual of Bronze.
  • Dark Horse Comics, 1995, a two-issue mini starring Doc and The Shadow.

Motion picture

File:Moviegroup.jpg
The cast of Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975)
Ron Ely as Doc Savage (foreground), with (background, left to right) Eldon Quick as Johnny, Darrell Zwerling as Ham, William Lucking as Renny, Michael Miller as Monk, and Paul Gleason as Long Tom

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. It is unfortunate that the movie was made during the then-standard trend to minimalize or ridicule heroes, a result of the post-Vietnam miasma that affected the nation. After "Star Wars," it was fashionable again to admire heroes, and while Philip Jose' Farmer has tried mightily to get another movie made (supposedly the sequel, a more serious take on Doc, penned by Farmer, was already in the works and featured as a preview at the end of the movie, but canned with the failure of the original).

In 2007, a fan edit called "Doc SaLvageD: The Fan-Edit of Bronze" was created to minimize the campiness of the original film.

In 1999, there was an announcement that another Doc Savage movie, to feature Arnold Schwarzenegger, was in the works, but it never materialised.[3]

According to long-time Batman producer Michael E. Uslan, a new Doc Savage film is set to be produced, hopefully for 2009/2010 release. Uslan delivered the news at Comic-Con '08.

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 are 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). "Ham" Brooks (called "Porky" Rivers) and "Monk" Mayfair (called "Jocko" Simmons) also appear in the story, which continues in the novels 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 from popular and classical literature. Farmer theorizes Doc is the grandson of Wolf Larson, master of the Sea Wolf, in the novel of the same name, by Jack London.
  • 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 case for a Doc-Superman connection are well-chronicled: Man of Bronze/Man of Steel; Clark Savage/Clark Kent; and Superman's Arctic Fortress of Solitude is a direct steal from Doc's original hideaway, invented years earlier.
  • Doc has teamed up with The Thing and shared an adventure with Spider-Man in a couple of issues of Marvel Comics, during the time Marvel was publishing a Doc comic.
  • 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. However in the Rocketeer movie, the inventor was changed from Doc to Howard Hughes.
  • 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 world, containing humans, elves, dwarves, et al., 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 (real name Elena Hunter) and Doc, most likely she being his daughter.
  • Ted White, later assisted by Marv Wolfman, wrote two adventures of a character clearly meant as an homage to Doc Savage. This character was named Doc Phoenix, The Man Who Enters the Mind. He appeared in several volumes of the Byron Priess-produced series, Weird Heroes.
  • The song "Dial a Hitman" from the Big Audio Dynamite album "No. 10 Upping St." contains the line: "At the Continental, Doc Savage pays the bill."
  • In issue #10 of Paul the Samurai, The Tick demonstrates his allegiance to Crime Cannibal by saying, "We're good guys! If you don't believe it, check out this Doc Savage-shirt ripping action!" while tearing off his T-shirt.
  • In the first issue of Warren Ellis' Wildstorm comic Planetary, a character in jodhpurs and safari shirt named Doc Brass (formerly mentioned) and his five aides, who suspiciously resemble Tarzan, The Shadow, and Fu Manchu, fight off an invasion from an alternative reality. In this story Doc Brass goes up against an alternative universes' Justice League, destroying them to save the earth, with Doc as the only survivor, who has been guarding the rift until he is found almost 70 years later. In later issues, an alternative book history is given in pulp form. The main characters all relating with certain abilities due to their birth date, January 1, 1900.
  • Lester Dent, the writer of Doc Savage, is a protagonist in The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, a 2007 novel by Paul Malmont.
  • Grant Morrison creates a possible Doc analogue in The Filth under the name Max Thunderstone. The tanned giant hopes to use his amazing wealth and team of crack therapists and lawyers to free all humanity from oppression through a better understanding of applied neurology.

Footnotes

  1. ^ "How I met Doc Savage". Micah Wright. Retrieved 2007-05-22.
  2. ^ "Richard Henry Savage Death: Utica Native Run Over by Wagon in New York", The Dallas Morning News, October 12, 1903, via TheOldenTimes.com
  3. ^ "Doc Savage". Mania's Development Hell. Retrieved 2007-05-22. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

References

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