When you think of Doc Savage Comics, you probably think of the Jim Steranko color comic or the black & white magazine by Marvel. Maybe you are a bit younger than me and it is the Millennium Comics of the 1990s, the DC comic of the 2000s or even the most recent bunch from Dynamite. But the truth is Doc Savage comics began in 1940 and the company that put them out was the same one that published the Pulp, Street & Smith.
Paul Orban
These old comics are so hard to find you may never have seen one. There is also very little information about who wrote them or drew them. I used to believe that Paul Orban, who drew the illustrations for many years, was the artist. This appears to not be true.
Comic books had a slow evolution in the 1930s. They began as reprint collections from newspaper comic strips. Popular characters like Prince Valiant and Tarzan, along with all the humorous ones, branded these comics “Funnies”. With the introduction of new characters like Superman in 1938, by 1940 everybody wanted in. The Pulps chains were the logical choice to sell these. Not wanting to produce the comics themselves, they hired “studios” like the one Will Eisner and Jerry Iger ran. These pumped out a variety of strips that got packaged into (by today’s standards) very large comics that sold for the price of a Pulp magazine.
Doc Savage Comics (1940-1943)
Doc’s first appearance wasn’t in his own comic. He was a back-up feature in The Shadow Comics #1-3 (January-March 1940) before getting his own book. Doc Savage Comics #1 appeared April 1940. It contained the first eight pages of the second Doc novel, The Land of Terror (April 1933) adaptation. The cover bore an adapted version of a Walter M. Baumhofer Pulp cover for “Pirate of the Pacific” (July 1933).
The writer is not known but the artist was Harry Keifer, who may have drawn The Shadow Comics strips earlier. Doc is portrayed often in fighting positions. Johnny, Renny and Long Tom are never shown. When Doc goes to the land of dinosaurs, he only takes Monk with him. (In the novel, all six of them go.) From the very beginning, the artists and writers reduced the number of characters either because it was hard to draw so many characters, but more likely because they wanted the spotlight on Doc. Even in the novels, Lester Dent would sometimes side-line an aid or two because it was too cumbersome to have six people do all those amazing things.
A New Direction
With Issue #4 “The Angry Ghost”, a strange change came over Doc. He acquires a hood with a mystic jewel. This issue was written by Carl Formes. Perhaps the editors thought it was too hard to distinguish Doc from his pals, so the hood may have been meant to do that. He would keep it until Issue #20, when the comic was discontinued.
During the 20 issue run, one artist appears among the mostly anonymous drawers. This is Jack Binder, who ran his own studio. He signs his name to the opening Splash page in Issue #8 (June 1942). Jack was older brother to Earl and Otto Binder who wrote Science Fiction as Eando Binder. Jack and Otto would eventually work for Fawcett and DC, creating Mary Marvel and Supergirl. Jack gained first fame as the artist of the reviled “Zarnak” from Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1936. (It is amazing to see how much Jack improved from those days.) The weirdness of Doc Savage was no challenge for Jack Binder. Binder’s version of Doc and especially the bald Monk would become the established look for years. Eventually Monk would get his hair back (October 1946). Al Bare would draw most of the remaining issues.
Back Up the Shadow (1944-49)
Poor sales must have signed the comic’s death warrant. Issue #20 doesn’t even begin with the usual Doc Adventure but seems to be a Huckleberry Finn comic. The Doc Savage adventure “The Pharaoh’s Wisdom” is last in the book. But you can’t keep a Bronze Man down. Doc and the gang returned to the back pages of The Shadow Comics #34 (January 1944) with “Murder Is a Business”, written by Ed Griskin and drawn by Charles Boland. While Monk went on being bald, Doc no longer had his hood, just really nice dark blonde hair.
Other artists would come and go. Finally with Issue #76, Bob Powell would take over the strip until its end with Issue #100 and “Limbo of the Lost”. Bob is famous for his jungle girl strips like Cave Girl. Bob saw the comic to its end.
Later Comics
This was the last appearance of the amazing Man of Bronze until 1966, and a Gold Key one-shot in November 1966 called The Thousand-Headed Man. That Doc would be based on the James Bama paperback with the widow’s peak hair-cut. The Gary Cooper style Doc of the original Pulps was no longer. A new generation were discovering Lester Dent and the other Kenneth Robesons anew in paperback form.
Conclusion
Some takeaways here. First, if Paul Orban ever drew the comic, he went uncredited.
Second, the comic began in the last nine years of the Pulps. The best years were pretty much behind the Pulp character as he transitioned into the wartime Doc. Street & Smith never had any qualms about exploiting a product. They were in the publishing business, not the “keep true to Doc” business. If the comics had sold better with the hood, Doc would have worn it to the end. As it was, the idea proved as dumb as it looked.
Third, these comics were the first adaptations of the novels including The Land of Terror and The Polar Treasure. Gold Key would do The Thousand-Headed Man. Marvel would do The Man of Bronze, Death in Silver, The Monsters and Brand of the Werewolf in 1972-1974. When they went to the b&w magazine, they wrote new stories. The majority of Doc Savage comics by all companies were not adaptations but the work of others. These can go in some pretty strange directions from the hooded ruby dude to updating the time frame to 2020. Usually, it turns out badly, though the Doug Moench adventures weren’t bad.
Finally, Street & Smith began by wanting to adapt the books, found it too hard to compress the plots into two issues (unwilling to go longer) and ultimately, cheaped out and wrote garbage instead. It was a sad opener that many fans simply ignored or forgot. Despite this fact, it is fun to see these first Doc Savage images and think of those 1940s kids plunking down a dime for them.
Jack Mackenzie continues telling stories in the tradition of Doc Savage with his team of super agents, Wild Inc.