Comics, Movies, 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 & 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.
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.
Doc Savage may have also been influenced by Philip Wylie's 1932 novel, The Savage Gentleman, in which a man spirits his son off to a secret island where he raises him as the perfect gentleman and trains him as an ideal physical specimen, but with no understanding of women, much like Doc Savage.
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Famous quotes containing the words pulp and/or magazines:
“Tell me, how many hands have palpated the pulp that has grown so generously around your hard, bitter little soul?”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Most magazines have that look of being predestined to be left which one sees on the faces of the women whose troubles bring them to the Law Courts.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)