What's Up? Doc!

You gotta admit, he looks pretty good for a 75 year old guy...

Doc Savage is 75 years old today... sort of. The official release date of the first Doc Savage pulp magazine was February 17th, 1933--which means that Doc as a concept reached the three-quarters-of-a-century mark today. Of course, Doc as a character is (like Superman and Batman and James Bond and other popular culture heroes) ageless, so he'll always be in his mid-30s...

I discovered the Doc Savage novels in 1965, thanks to Bantam's reissue program. These books, with their stunning Jim Bama covers, reintroduced the intrepid adventure hero to a new generation of readers. Once I tried one of the books, I was enthralled; Doc and his assistants were a non-super-powered team of heroes reminiscent of the comic book heroes I loved, but their period-piece adventures conveyed the vital energy of a decade that I knew only through old films and comics.

One friend of mine once described Doc Savage novels (and Perry Mason novels and Shadow novels) as "literary popcorn." They're lightweight, fluffy, can be consumed quickly, and are pretty much always the same--you know what you're getting. I agree with him to a degree, but I always found Doc's adventures to be a bit more satisfying than either Perry Mason or Shadow novels. Perry Mason books were too dry and lifeless for me, and Shadow novels are great at conveying mood, but the stories themselves are usually unfocused. Doc's adventures, though, were taut, fast-paced, plot-driven, and filled with fantastic elements--thanks in large part to the deft literary craftsmanship of Lester Dent, who wrote most of the Doc Savage novels. (I'm aware they say they're by Kenneth Robeson--that's a house pseudonym, but Dent did all the really good Doc Savage novels.)

Nostalgia Press is bringing back the Doc Savage books in double-adventure collections; unfortunately, only a few of them have featured the Jim Bama covers that epitomize Doc Savage for those of us reading them in the 1960s. The remainder feature the pulp covers from the 30's and 40's, which depict a much more mundane take on Doc. Even so, I'd rather have 'em in print with the pulp covers than not in print at all...