# Doc Savage **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 15, 2013, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521 "2013-07-15T01:14:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Nightfall1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@Nightfall1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightfall1)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/1 "2013-07-15T01:14:30Z")
My wife and I were at a used book store in the Quad Cities and I saw some Doc Savage paperbacks. They were a series of stories reprinted from the 1930’s in my teenage years as paperbacks. I was REALLY into them back in the 60’s. I saw the very first one I ever read and thought “What the heck” and got it to relive my school years. Oh boy, wrong thing to do. lol. It was a rip roaring story that really moves along but my oh my is it badly written. Doc Savage came out monthly so they were written VERY quickly with no revision. The author made pennies a word so he had to work fast to make a living. I guess it’s true…you can never go back to the old days. ---
**Author:** ![urban1a](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47c2d/32.png) [@urban1a](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/urban1a)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/2 "2013-07-15T02:10:51Z")
According to [this site](http://screenrant.com/doc-savage-movie-director-shane-black/), Doc and crew are coming back sometime in the future. Not much more information. Bob ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/3 "2013-07-15T04:16:14Z")
Even in the pulps, Lester Dent was known as a fast writer. Before he did Doc Savage, he had been the sole writer for two monthly pulp magazines. He generally wrote a book in about ten or twelve days but he bragged he once wrote eight books in a seven week stretch. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/4 "2013-07-15T09:29:17Z")
Dear god, isn’t producer Neal Moritz the idiot who hired Seth Rogen for Green Hornet? ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/5 "2013-07-15T12:12:22Z")
I loved Doc Savage, and yes there were some that had some bad writing, but in general you do the suspension from disbelief thing and roll with it. I was seriously disappointed with the Ron Ely movie ☹ I think if you treated it like the Lara Croft movies you could come up with a decent flick with the CGI ability now. [as long as you didn’t modernize and update. Leave it set in a slightly steampunky 1930s. I love well done costume pieces!] ---
**Author:** ![Nightfall1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@Nightfall1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightfall1)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/6 "2013-07-15T13:47:39Z")
I saw the movie when it first came out. I really wanted it to be good. Within two minutes I KNEW it was bad when Doc’s teeth sparkled. It was sad to sit through it. Just horrible. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/7 "2013-07-15T13:50:25Z")
That prose made me want to pound my piano wire chest. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/8 "2013-07-16T00:37:17Z")
I’ve never read any, so maybe someone can help me here… My sense of Doc Savage is that there isn’t really very much drama, because he is simply so vastly more powerful – smarter, faster, stronger – than his opponents. It isn’t like Sherlock Holmes vs. James Moriarty; it’s like Sherlock Holmes vs. Old Doug the High Street Pickpocket. Old Doug doesn’t have a chance. I’m also thinking of Mack Bolan, as the Executioner, as compared to Remo Williams, as The Destroyer. Mack was a top-level special-forces quality soldier…but Remo was a comic-book superhero level action figure. I could read (a few) of the Executioner books, because there was a sense that mafia finks with guns could hurt him, but I couldn’t read the Destroyer books, because it was established that Remo could dodge bullets. Uninteresting! Am I misjudging Doc Savage? Is there really some sense of fair play in the drama? Or is it like (as Mad Magazine said of an entirely different fist-fight) like Marhsall Dillon beating up Miss Kitty? Is Doc Savage “too good to be interesting?” I’m more familiar with The Shadow, and, to me, he so much outclasses his opposition as to be less interesting. He’s shooting ducks from a blind. No drama. The same problem strikes me in The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician. Tarzan and The Lone Ranger and Zorro always strike me as much more “fair and balanced.” (Sigh… I’m a Modesty Blaise fan…and she completely outclasses her opponents…) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/9 "2013-07-16T00:57:42Z")
The best description I could give of Doc Savage is he had Batman’s skills and Superman’s personality. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/10 "2013-07-16T01:20:34Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The best description I could give of Doc Savage is he had Batman’s skills and Superman’s personality. LOL not a bad description. And possibly Wolverine’s sense of morality. He didn’t enjoy killing the bad guys the way the Punisher does—he’d rather do brain surgery on them to correct their villainy. But he had no problem killing someone if the situation called for it. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/11 "2013-07-16T01:27:53Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The best description I could give of Doc Savage is he had Batman’s skills and Superman’s personality. Or, as the writer put it, the brain of Sherlock Holmes in the body of Tarzan – with the goodness of Abraham Lincoln. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/12 "2013-07-16T04:47:13Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > he’d rather do brain surgery on them to correct their villainy. That’s the thing that creeps me out the most about him. Anyone who tries pulling that sort of thing off today is by definition a supervillain, not a hero. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/13 "2013-07-16T06:32:04Z")
[Tales of Future Past:](http://davidszondy.com/future/man/doc_savage.htm) > [@](#): > > In the 1930s and '40s, any red-blooded American boy with a taste for power fantasies was bound to have run across the adventures of righter of wrongs Doctor Clark Savage, Junior; AKA Doc Savage: the Man of Bronze. > > A mainstay of the his own pulp magazine in the '30s and '40s, Doc Savage was also one of the main inspirations for Superman (Man of Bronze, Man of Steel; you get the idea), though Doc Savage was a fantasy hero with at least a nodding acquaintance with reality. Where Superman started out as a super-evolved being by accident of birth, Doc Savage was a pulp fiction ideal of what man could become through hard work, scientific training, and owning a secret gold mine in Central America. > > Able to outdo anyone anywhere at anything, he was the epitome of the idea that the way to become the man of the future was by willpower and exercise. And to prove it, many issues of Doc Savage carried accounts of the daily exercises that Doc carried out in order to hone his mind and body to the peak of human perfection. As this invariably involved Swedish exercises, reciting poetry or multiplication tables, and testing one’s senses using suspiciously ordinary household items, it is obvious that the editors expected their readers to emulate their hero. Good job most didn’t. Doc Savage apparently did so many exercises on a daily basis that one wonders how he ever found the time to combat evil. > > Even morality was a question of application and practice rather than doctrine, philosophy, or ideology. Doc Savage apparently carried out all sorts of rather twee moral exercise as part of his daily routine, but readers were invited to join the Doc Savage Club, where they received a membership card and a copy of the code of Doc Savage, which they were encouraged to follow as best they could. > > > [@](#): > > > > \*The Code of Doc Savage: > > > > 1. > > > > Let me strive, every moment of my life, to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it. > > > > 1. > > > > Let me think of the right, and lend all my assistance to those who need it, with no regard for anything but justice. > > > > 1. > > > > Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. > > > > 1. > > > > Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say and do. > > > > 1. > > > > Let me do right to all, and wrong no man.\* > > It’s pretty easy to sneer and giggle at this, but I’m not going to. I’m too busy trying to live up to it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/14 "2013-07-16T06:34:17Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > That’s the thing that creeps me out the most about him. Anyone who tries pulling that sort of thing off today is by definition a supervillain, not a hero. Well, that’s all right, you will find that attitude adjusted when you regain consciousness. Count backwards from 100 . . . ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/15 "2013-07-16T07:09:16Z")
I do not hold to that. I aim to misbehave. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/16 "2013-07-16T17:07:42Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I do not hold to that. I aim to misbehave. Ha! Do you know, you really sounded quite convincing for a moment – but of course it’s all talk; you’re hardly the type to _ **do** _ anything remarkable, Mister Cranston. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/17 "2013-07-16T18:01:23Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > But he had no problem killing someone if the situation called for it. When did Doc and his minions begin using “mercy bullets”? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/18 "2013-07-16T20:38:48Z")
By sometime in 1934, carnivorousplant. It’s been years since I’ve read any of my Docs. Trinopus: It’s true that Doc Savage was the strongest and smartest man in the world. However, he did face considerable opposition, especially in the best stories. Many of his foes were scientific geniuses. Others were criminal geniuses with legions of crooks at their disposal. He often had to battle at least half a dozen thugs in combats. He also battled the German and Japanese militaries in some of the WW2 Docs, and encountered a few Soviet operatives in the post-War period. He could dodge bullets, but he could also be shot, as he was in \*The Annihilist \*(12/1934) and others. He was knocked unconscious many times and taken captive when he was outwitted – \*The Feathered Octopus \*(9/1937) for example. He had grave troubles with \*The Spook Legion \*(4/1935), an army of invisible crooks, and its lieutenant cold-cocked him when he tried to infiltrate the gang. (This is a pretty good thriller. It has some excellent scenes of Doc trying to get around the streets of Manhattan while invisible.) I won’t deny that many of the Docs are badly written, but I think Dent wrote some rip-roaring thrillers. However, there are some writers today (David Baldacci, I’m lookin’ at you) whose novels don’t make any more sense than a bad Doc and it takes far more time to read them. At least, you only have to invest a couple of hours in a Doc. The writing did improve in the final six or seven years of the series. \*The Time Terror \*(1/1943), \*The Lost Giant \*(12/1944), \*Violent Night \*(1/1945), and \*Cargo Unknown \*(4/1945) are all decent WW2 thrillers. \*Death in Little Houses \*(10/1946) and _The Disappearing Lady_ (12/1946) are pretty good noir novels. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/19 "2013-07-16T21:36:20Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > . . . he’d rather do brain surgery on them to correct their villainy. . . . > [@Alessan](#): > > That’s the thing that creeps me out the most about him. Anyone who tries pulling that sort of thing off today is by definition a supervillain, not a hero. Didn’t he give them the choice? Jail, or corrective surgery? Marvel’s “Squadron Supreme” comics limited series explored the morality of corrective psychic surgery: it was one of the more thoughtful stories ever written. Hell, I’d sign up for Doc Savage’s corrective surgery, just to help me with anger issues. If he could do something about my depression, I’d be a fan for life! Villain? If it’s voluntary, and if it really works properly, he gets to be a saint! ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521/20 "2013-07-16T21:53:16Z")
I’m of the opinion that in many cases, if you fix a criminal’s mind, all you’ll do is make him a better criminal. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doc-savage/663521.md?page=2)