20 Facts About Doc Savage

Doc Savage is a fictional character of the competent man hero type, who first appeared in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s.

Doc Savage stories were published under the Kenneth Robeson name.

Into the 21st century, Doc Savage has remained a nostalgic icon in the U S, referenced in novels and popular culture.

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".

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.

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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.

Doc Savage is a master of disguise and an excellent imitator of voices.

Doc Savage is a physician, scientist, adventurer, detective, inventor, explorer, researcher, and, as revealed in The Polar Treasure, a musician.

Doc Savage is accompanied on his adventures by up to five other regular characters, all highly accomplished individuals in their own right.

In later stories, Doc Savage's companions become less important to the plot as the stories focus more on Doc Savage.

At least one critic questioned their necessity since Doc Savage's talents were superior to theirs and he often had to rescue them.

Doc Savage's is able to fluster Doc, even as she completely charms Monk and Ham.

Doc Savage 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".

Doc Savage'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.

Key characteristic of the Doc Savage stories is that the threats, no matter how fantastic, usually have a rational explanation.

In earlier stories, some of the criminals captured by Doc Savage receive "a delicate brain operation" to cure their criminal tendencies.

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.

Red Spider was a Doc Savage novel written by Dent in April 1948, about the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Sanctum Books, in association with Nostalgia Ventures, began a new series of Doc Savage reprints, featuring two novels per book, in magazine-sized paperbacks.

Doc Savage: The Arch Enemy of Evil would feature a deformed, German-speaking supervillain, whose pet man-eating octopus was a nod to a similar plot element in the September 1937 pulp novel The Feathered Octopus.