Doc Savage



After the commercial success of The Shadow, the Street & Smith publishing company decided to try putting out another single-character Pulp Magazine in the same vein, but not too similar. Lester Dent was chosen as the primary author on the strength of a Shadow fill-in novel he'd been asked to write (much later adapted by that series' author as "The Golden Vulture.") Writing under the name "Kenneth Robeson", Dent created one of the classic pulp characters, who ran in his own magazine from 1933 to 1949. A total of 181 issues appeared.

Doc Savage was Clark Savage, Jr., raised from birth to be the pinnacle of human physical and mental achievement, and to use his gifts for the good of all mankind. (This being the pulps, pursuing that goal largely meant smashing criminals and warlords.) Doc was often called the Man of Bronze because of his well-tanned skin, coppery hair and gold-flecked eyes. He was a near-giant in stature, yet so perfectly formed that people only noticed his size when comparing him to nearby objects.

But despite Doc's amazing prowess in science and athletics, he was still only one man. So he gathered a team of five companions, each expert in their own field and totally dedicated to Doc's cause.

These men were:


 * Brigadier General Theodore Marley "Ham" Brooks, Harvard-trained lawyer.
 * Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett "Monk" Mayfair, one of the world's foremost chemists.
 * Colonel John "Renny" Renwick, leading engineer known for his oversized fists.
 * William Harper "Johnny" Littlejohn, geologist and archaeologist.
 * Major Thomas J. "Long Tom" Roberts, electrical wizard.

Doc's lovely cousin Patricia Savage sometimes joined their adventures, but was never considered a core member of the group.

Doc Savage also had a Radio Drama, more than one Comic Book series, and The Movie. He was a big influence on later pulp and comic book superheroes, including Superman (who borrowed, among other things, Doc's Arctic Fortress of Solitude), and Batman (who took on the renaissance man traits).

Tropes found in the Doc Savage series include

 * Action Girl: Pat Savage
 * Affectionate Parody: Doc Wilde is this to the Doc Savage series.
 * Doc and his team are an obvious inspiration for Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers.
 * Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The Lord of Lightning's base in the 2010 DC Comics series.
 * Animal Assassin: Venomous centipedes are used in The Fantastic Island.
 * Awesome but Impractical: He had a freaking pneumatic tube to get from his HQ to his hangar on the river.
 * Awesome Yet Practical: Doc invented answering machines, night vision goggles, hand held fully automatic pistols, and much more, all in the thirties.
 * Banana Republic: Hidalgo and British Hidalgo.
 * Beneath the Earth: Subterranea in Murder Melody.
 * Big Applesauce: The primary headquarters of Doc Savage were in the Empire State Building, and the stories often had a large section set in New York City before going off to remote corners of the world.
 * Black Shirt: In the Doc Savage: Man of Bronze mini-series from Millenium Comics, Doc and his aides stop Silver Shirt bundists from dropping a bomb on New York from a zeppelin.
 * Bodyguard Babes: John Sunlight's Amazonian bodyguards, Giantia and Titania.
 * Brainwashing for the Greater Good: captured criminals were sent to "the College" in upstate NY, where they got treatment (the specifics of which were carefully omitted) and were returned to society.
 * Break Out the Museum Piece: 'Long Tom' Roberts got his nickname when he used an ancient cannon - known as a Long Tom - that had been on display in the town square to successfully defend a town during World War One.
 * Canon Foreigner: Doc's grandson and the new team of aides from the 1980s DC Comics series.
 * Captain Ersatz: Almost too many to list.
 * Doc Ardan: Not necessarily in that he seems to haveoriginally come BEFORE Doc Savage, a sort of French Proto-Doc Savage.
 * Doc Brass: A Doc Savage pastiche who lives in the "Planetary" universe.
 * Doc Wilde: The aforementioned tribute and affectionate parody of Doc Savage. This version has even sired two children.
 * Mr Braunze: A Doc Savage pastiche who lives in the world of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics.
 * Doc Samson: Seemed to start out as Marvel's take on Doc Savage, except gamma-irradiated.
 * Lord Kraven: A British version made for a pulp-tribute story set in an alternate 19th Century called "The League of Heroes", who leads a group of pulp characters against a villainous cabal of familiar faces.
 * Sun-Koh: The aforementioned Nazi knock-off of Doc Savage.
 * Doc Sidhe: An alternate universe counterpart on a world where there are elves. And magic.
 * Cargo Cult
 * Charles Atlas Superpower: All of Doc's abilities were the result of intensive training since infancy. Well, that and some very fortunate genes (according to Philip Jose Farmer). The recent DC comic-series plays this up somewhat—witness a scene in issue 10 where Doc catches an RPG launched at some American troops by a middle-eastern insurgent, and then throws it back at him. Yes, it's as awesome as it sounds.
 * Chaste Hero: Doc
 * The Chick: Patricia Savage, who sometimes seemed to exist solely for the purpose of being the female character.
 * Clear My Name: Doc is an honorary police officer, but the NYPD will turn on him in an instant over any hint of a frame-up.
 * Clothing Damage / Shirtless Scene: As seen by our page illustration, the reprint paperback covers tended to show Doc with a severely ripped shirt, but without the bulletproof chainmail he wore underneath. Most people don't mind.
 * The Convenient Store Next Door: In one novel, criminals strike at Doc by renting the office next to his and attacking the wall.
 * Couldn't Find a Lighter: In Doc Savage #5 (the DC Comics 1980s version), a crazed military officer lights his cigar off the pilot light of a flamethrower before torching the building Doc and his aides are in.
 * Covers Always Lie: The Bantam edition of Brand of the Werewolf depicts Doc wrestling with what appears to Universal's Wolf Man. No scene like this occurs in the novel (where the 'brand of the werewolf' is a distinctive mark left behind by the killers).
 * Crazy Prepared: Doc wears a vest full of pockets, each with an amazing gadget. What do you need? He's probably got it.
 * Cultured Badass: Ham and, to a lesser extent, Doc himself.
 * Curtains Match the Window: Doc and Pat have gold-flecked eyes to match their bronze hair and skin.
 * Did Not Do the Research: None at all. Just from the first book: no, the Mayans did not "suddenly vanish". No, their language isn't extinct. No, they did not have "warrior sects". Then again, this trope is probably a given for pulp fiction. Dent even admitted that what he would do was research one or two things and use that to fool his editors into thinking he knew what the hell he was talking about.
 * Everything's Better with Dinosaurs
 * Evil Counterpart: John Sunlight
 * Also Siegfried from the Doc Savage comic published by DC Comics. He was a Nazi raised by one of Doc's former teachers using the same methods Doc's father devised.
 * Doc ironically had a Captain Ersatz style evil counterpart in reality—Sun Koh, a Doc knock-off who appeared in magazines published in Nazi Germany prior to World War 2. His backstory was mysteriously falling from the sky in London, with no memory, superior physical and mental abilities, and a tattoo on his back identifying him as the last king of Atlantis, who was destined to weed out the lower races in order to prepare mankind for a second ice age. The scary thing is, apart from being more up front with the racism, he's hardly that different from Doc.
 * Exit, Pursued by a Bear: Jon Sunlight in Fortress of Solitude.
 * Eyes of Gold: Doc's startling gold-flecked pupils. Patricia has them too.
 * Fake in the Hole: In The Red Skull, Doc deters pursuit by throwing his watch at his pursuers. The crooks, thinking it is one of Doc's gas bombs, break off the chase.
 * Genius Bruiser: Doc, and to a lesser extent Monk and Renny.
 * Actually, all of Doc's men could be said to qualify; Johnny was supposed to be much stronger than he looked and trained to fight. Even Long Tom, the guy who constantly looked to be maybe three steps from the grave, was said to be able to beat "nine out of ten men you'd meet on the street." And since each of Doc's men was the best in his chosen field (except for Doc himself, of course), they all seem to qualify as a Genius Bruiser.
 * The Great Politics Mess-Up: Inverted: Doc once works with an agent of the Soviet OGPU. Since the book predate both the cold war and the revelations of the true horrors of Stalinism he's treated as just another Ruritanian police officer.
 * Gullible Lemmings
 * A Handful for An Eye: Happens to monk in Repel.
 * Harbinger of Impending Doom
 * High Altitude Interrogation - In "The Green Eagle" Doc captures a group of mooks. To make one talk he hangs him outside a window. When the mook refuses, he drops him. Being a Technical Pacifist, he had Renny and Longjohn catch the mook in a net, but the other mooks don't know that.
 * Hoist by His Own Petard: invariably--invariably—the Big Bad gets caught in his own doomsday weapon.
 * I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Fear Cay
 * Improbable Aiming Skills: The primary reason (or so he says) Doc allows Pat to tag along.
 * Instant Sedation: Doc's quick-acting anaesthetic gas and "mercy bullets".
 * Ham's sword cane is treated with one of Doc's quick-acting anaesthetics as well.
 * Instant Waking Skills: Doc had been specifically trained in the ability by an aged Ubangi tribesman.
 * Is It Always Like This: Oh yes. And they like it that way. Any of the aides will drop what they're doing to chase after "adventure."
 * Which ironically might be (as pointed out by Philip Jose Farmer in his "autobiography" of Doc) the reason why some of them seem to have financial problems at times. Especially Monk, whose money situation seemed to slowly get worse as the series goes on.
 * Kavorka Man: The homely Monk has at least as much success with the ladies as the dapper Ham.
 * Knight in Shining Armor: Doc and the Fabulous Five wear bullet-proof chain-mesh longjohns that end up being the only clothing worn after cloth-tearing fights.
 * Knight Templar: John Sunlight
 * Knockout Gas: Doc used anesthetic gas grenades. Somewhat justified in that Doc was supposed to have specifically invented these.
 * In Fear Cay, one of the novels, the bad guys try to capture Doc with Knockout Gas dispensed from a rigged wallet left on the sidewalk where he would find it. It doesn't work, because of his superior ability to smell (he somehow smelled it before he breathed it) and (as with The Hulk) his ability to hold his breath for much longer than normal. In this case it was not visible.
 * Landmarking the Hidden Base: The Trylon and Perisphere are used this way in World's Fair Goblin.
 * Lawyer-Friendly Cameo:
 * Doc Brass in Planetary.
 * Doc Caliban in the Philip Jose Farmer novel "A Feast Unknown".
 * Both Doc and John Sunlight make appearances in Roger Zelazny's Roadmarks.
 * Though his pedigree is less obvious, the DC Comics villain Bane was conceived of as the evil Doc Savage.
 * Doc, Monk and Ham all appear, un-named, in the original The Rocketeer mini-series. Doc, in fact, turns out to be the creator of the rocket-pack.
 * Long Running Book Series
 * Lost World: Several, including the lost Mayan kingdom that provides Doc with the gold he needs to carry on his crusade.
 * Mad Scientist: Many of Doc's foes fall into this category.
 * Master of Disguise: Despite his size and unusual appearance!
 * Mighty Whitey
 * The Movie: Its page is here.
 * Murder by Cremation: In The Mountain Monster, gangsters attempt to feed Doc, Monk and Ham into a crematorium furnace. They fail due to Doc being Crazy Prepared.
 * Mushroom Samba
 * Musical Assassin: The 'death flutes' of the Zoromen in Murder Melody can induce either unconsciousness or death in the listener depending on the tune played.
 * The Napoleon: Cadwiller Olden, the Big Bad in "Repel"
 * No Fourth Wall: Monk and Pat help write the magazine stories and Doc reads them when he's bored.
 * Not That Kind of Doctor: averted. Doc is that kind of doctor, and several other kinds as well.
 * The Nudifier: In the DC Comics series, Monk came up with a gas to dissolve the enemy mooks' gasmasks. It also dissolved his polyester suit much to Ham's amusement.
 * Odd Couple: Ham and Monk. Ham's tall, elegant and upperclass. Monk is squat, simian in appearance and lowbrow. They fight constantly, yet are always together.
 * Omnidisciplinary Scientist - possibly the Trope Maker
 * Omniglot: Doc can speak an anstonishing number of languages: most of them well enough to pass as a native speaker.
 * Outlaw Town: One appears in The Mountain Monster.
 * Overranked Soldier: Four of Doc's aides had high military rank during World War One: Major, Lt-Colonel, Colonel and Brigader General. Given how late the US entered the war, it seems unlikely that they could have achieved these ranks if they enlisted when the US entered the war. Fanon, as used by Philip Jose Farmer in his "biography" of Doc Savage, has them enlisting in other nations armies at the start of the war and transferring to the US Army when the US joined. Even then, Ham's brigadier generalship is stretching credibility.
 * President Evil: Senor Steel, the president-dictator of Blanca Grande in The Freckled Shark.
 * Print Long Runners: 181 novels over 16 years, plus modern continuations of the series.
 * Raised by Dudes: Doc was raised in an all-male environment, which is why his understanding of women is weak.
 * Hand Cannon: Pat's signature weapon is an old six-shooter handed down from her grandfather—a Colt Frontier Single Action .44 with the trigger filed off and a fanning spur welded on the hammer, which she carries in her purse
 * The Reveal: Doc makes a point of not telling his men about the deductions he's made during the action. All the more drama when he unmasks the villain.
 * Running on All Fours: Monk Mayfair.
 * Science Hero: Doc, and to a lesser extent most of his men.
 * Science Marches On: The "Crime College", where captured crooks are given brain surgery to wipe out criminal impulses and retrained into productive law-abiding citizens. It's pretty much agreed now that brain surgery doesn't work that way.
 * Scooby-Doo Hoax: No matter how supernatural the story's villain seems to be, it almost always turns out to be one of these.
 * A major exception: Up from Earth's Center, the last story, involving a trek through strange caverns. Their guide may be some sort of demon, but in the end they make a strategic retreat. Though the group tries to rationally explain it all, (some shared hallucination/exposure to the gases) even they don't seem to be 100% convinced.
 * Skepticism Failure
 * Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Johnny, who likes big words.
 * Shaming the Mob
 * Shoe Phone: Doc and his companions are loaded with escape gadgets. On one occasion when the villains took the trouble to tie Doc up and search him thoroughly (even washing his hair to remove hidden chemicals) Doc simply hypnotised his way out.
 * Shown Their Work: In a relatively recent novel, Doc and his companions are chasing the villain through a plantation Doc owns, and the villain sets the crops alight so Doc will have to let him get away. Doc has his men keep going, and stays with them. It's a sugar plantation; sugar cane has no specific "ripe" period, and burning the cane is the first step in harvesting.
 * Somewhere a Palaeontologist Is Crying: Most of the physical science at least seems plausible... while the novels' biology includes kangaroo t-rexes.
 * Actually, early paleontologists did believe T-rexes hopped, because a kangaroo is the only living biped with a long tail. Kangaroo T-Rexes also show up in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.
 * Inverted in The Other World, which has T-rexes walking around with upraised tails as per modern understanding, but which went against the knowledge of the time. May also be an inversion of Science Marches On (Science marches back?)
 * Stun Guns: Doc's "mercy bullets".
 * Stylish Protection Gear: Ham
 * Submarine Pirates: Five Fathoms Dead
 * Superhero Trophy Shelf: the Fortress of Solitude
 * Super Villain: It could be said that concept of the modern supervillain was introduced by Doc Savage.
 * Sword Cane: Ham's preferred weapon
 * Technical Pacifist:
 * Doc doesn't like killing, goes to great lengths to avoid it. His companions don't like lethal force either, but being less impressively-skilled than Doc, they sometimes do kill accidentally. Most often it's that Monk hit someone too hard, or Ham had to resort to his swordcane.
 * Renny is by far the most bloodthirsty of Doc's aides. His acts include chasing after a fleeing henchman (who was no further threat) and machine gunning him down, and slashing the parachute of a bad guy who was bailing out of a damaged aircraft.
 * Partially deconstructed in the recent DC series. A flashback shows Doc fighting alongside American soldiers in the middle-east, where his efforts to avoid killing any enemy combatants frequently endanger (and in once case, lead to the deaths of) his comrades.
 * Torture Technician: Senor Steel in The Freckled Shark.
 * True Companions: Doc and his companions are closer than brothers, even if Monk and Ham do fight constantly.
 * Two-Headed Coin: In one novel, Monk uses one to swindle Ham because he habitually calls heads during a coin toss.
 * Undisclosed Funds: Clark Savage, Sr. had found an unlimited supply of South American gold which allowed Doc and his companions to pursue good works without worrying about their budget.
 * Universal Driver's License: Doc could operate any vehicle that existed in the 1930s (and in The Movie one or two that didn't.)
 * Unreliable Narrator
 * Doc: "That fellow sure writes some far-out stuff." But only in the Wold Newton biography to make Doc's exploits fit in with those of characters like Sherlock Holmes.
 * One of the novels is told from the point of view of an Upper Class Twit who repeatedly misunderstands what's going on.
 * Vitriolic Best Buds: Monk and Ham
 * We Help the Helpless: "Doc Savage? Why, he rights wrongs and vanquishes evildoers."
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: John Sunlight, or at least as he claims in his second meeting with Doc. He wants to take over the world with the intention of abolishing war (by erasing international boundaries, making English the official language of the world, and outlawing gun ownership). He even tries to get Doc to join him as a technical advisor. While Doc finds the dream of ending war an admirable one, he knows it can't be achieved (as Sunlight intends to) without slaughtering millions of people in the process. So no dice.
 * The World Is Not Ready
 * World War One: Part of the backstory. Doc first assembled his team to escape a German prison camp.
 * Worst News Judgement Ever: There was an unsold Doc Savage newspaper strip that was shopped around to newspapers in 1936. (The first week's worth of strips were eventually published in Doc Savage: Manual of Bronze from Millennium Comics.) The first strip had a villain reading a newspaper that proclaimed as its lead story 'SAVAGE TO SAIL ON THE CAMERONIC', with a subheading 'Famous Adventurer Refuses Interview - Will Not Make Statement'. So the lead story is that someone is sailing on an ocean liner and refusing to talk about it. The mind boggles as to what the rest of the article must have contained.
 * Worthless Yellow Rocks: In Murder Melody, the Beneath the Earth kingdom of Subterranea uses gold for a huge variety of uses as it is the most abdundant and ductile metal avilable.
 * X Meets Y: Lester Dent described Doc as a mix of Sherlock Holmes' deductive abilities, Tarzan's outstanding physical abilities, Craig Kennedy's scientific education, and Abraham Lincoln's goodness. Dent also described Doc Savage as manifesting "Christliness."