The Doc Savage Magazine

With the pulp magazines era, there were so many recurring figures that an ordinary reader could not keep track of them all. Still, favorites were developed and those with a large enough fan base usually turned into a separate magazine to feature their stories. Of these, there is no doubt that Doc Savage was one of the most famous. With the nickname of The Man of Bronze, the character of Savage appeared in many stories. The Street and Smith publishing house gave the hero his own pulp magazine, one that ran for an astounding 181 issues over the course of 16 years.

The character of Doc Savage has become a representation of the golden era of pulp magazines and a symbol of the nostalgia that some people have for this short lived period of interesting adventure and science fiction stories. The Man of Bronze was different from many of the other heroes of the pulps as he had no special powers. The premise was that he was the best combination of a human, from physical strength to mental acuity. In the magazines, Doc Savage had the purpose of fighting evil and was obviously the inspiration for many comic books that would appear in later years.

Doc Savage enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in the 1960s, due to the adaption of the magazine stories to the paperback novel format. Starting with 1964, Bantam Books published one book per month with a Doc Savage story, a practice that continued until the year 1990. The man behind the stories was Lester Dent, a writer that composed nearly all of the original versions that appeared in the pulp magazines. Since this time, the character of Doc Savage has been used in multiple ways, from appearances in comic books to radio theater and even motion picture films.