I was too old by the 1960s to be much of a pulp magazine reader. The pulps folded in the 1950s. And outside of collectors, the pulps found that digest magazines and paperbacks replaced them.
Many of the Doc Savage stories were written by Lester Dent although other writers also used the house name of “Kenneth Robeson.”
“The Doc Savage Magazine was printed by Street & Smith from March 1933 to the summer of 1949 to capitalize on the success of the Shadow magazine and followed by the original Avenger in September 1939. In all, 181 issues were published in various entries and alternative titles. 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”.
“The stories were not reprinted in chronological order as originally published, though they did begin with the first adventure, The Man of Bronze. By 1967, Bantam was publishing one a month until 1990, when all 181 original stories (plus an unpublished novel, The Red Spider) had run their course.
“Author Will Murray produced seven more Doc Savage novels for Bantam Books from Lester Dent’s original outlines. Bantam also published a novel by Philip José Farmer, Escape From Loki (1991), which told the story of how in World War I Doc met the men who would become his five comrades.”
Doc Savage (real name Clark Savage Jr.) is a doctor, scientist, adventurer, detective, and polymath who “rights wrongs and punishes evildoers.” He also seems to have an inexhaustible pile of money to fund his adventures. If you’re in the mood for some old fashioned High Adventure, follow Doc Savage and his crew to South America where a strange, mysterious villain known as the Inca in Gray promotes war between two countries and uses a “dust of death” to kill his adversaries. Are you a fan of pulp fiction? GRADE: B