The colorful covers of Doc Savage Magazine are well known with their Pulp action and sinister mystery. The interior art is less so. These images were drawn by Paul Orban, Walter Baumhofer, Emery Clarke, Modest Stein, and Robert G. Harris. The illos are not signed or given credit so it can be very difficult to know who drew what. Each issue contained at least three major one-page or two-page spread illustrations as well as the recycled portraits of Doc and his five assistants. The samples here all came from the first 24 issues of 181 issue run so this really is “The Early Illustrations of Doc Savage”.
The title illustration was usually given to the first victim and the weird killers who open the show. These could be strange cultists, evil foreigners, a false monster or just ruthless gangsters. No matter the case, Lester Dent started the story with a macguffin and an act of violence.
Some illustrations showed the colorful and exotic locales that Doc and his friends visited. Unlike other Pulps, the adventure hero wasn’t stuck in one location. Part of the fun of the Doc Savage series is that he will go to the Arctic, the Sahara Desert or a tropical jungle or an island over-run by dinosaurs. This meant the illustrators had to have a wide experience at different types of scenery.
Another group of Doc Savage illustrations suggests weird and outre happenings, that ultimately will be explained. The Doc Savage novels were not horror novels but liked to use Gothic dressing to heighten the villains’ evil plans.
There were a number of illos featuring technology such as submarines, cars, airplanes and labs. Lester Dent was not a Science Fiction writer (though Laurence Donovan, who ghosted some of the novels, wanted to be). Still Dent shared Hugo Gernsback’s love of technology, having come from the telecommunications industry. Dent would go on to create some genuine inventions such as sea dye.
A number of images were created to show Doc or his friends in the midst of deadly traps created by the villains. This tradition goes back to before Sax Rohmer and his Dr. Fu Manchu and would continue on in the comic books as Robin and Batman struggle to free themselves in a most Doc-like manner.
The best Doc Savage illustrations were the ones capturing the action of the story with Doc and his well-knuckled crew punching their way out of trouble. Sometimes these were the tense moment before the violence.
And sometimes in the thick of things.
The Doc Savage illustrations was adequate for a Pulp magazine. It wasn’t trend-setting like that found in certain Pulps like Blue Book or Adventure. It offered the reader an occasional break from text as well as showing the best scenes in the tale. In the 1960s and 70s, when the books were reprinted, the interior art, as well as the colorful covers were forgotten, to be replaced by the paintings of James Bama. The immortal words of Lester Dent and the other “Kenneth Robesons” lived on but the illustrations in particular faded from our view.
Read the interview with creator, Jack Mackenzie