Doc Savage (magazine)

Doc Savage

Cover of the March 1933 issue
Categories	Pulp magazine
Publisher	Street & Smith
First issue	March 1933
Final issue	Fall 1949

Doc Savage was an American pulp magazine that was published from 1933 to 1949 by Street & Smith. It was launched as a follow-up to the success of The Shadow, a magazine Street & Smith had started in 1931, based around a single character. Doc Savage's lead character, Clark Savage, was a scientist and adventurer, rather than purely a detective. Lester Dent was hired to write the lead novels, almost all of which were published under the house name "Kenneth Robeson". A few dozen novels were ghost-written by other writers, hired either by Dent or by Street & Smith. The magazine was successful, but was shut down in 1949 as part of Street & Smith's decision to abandon the pulp magazine field completely.

Dent's work was full of inventive ideas, and ranged across multiple genres. Science fictional gadgets were common, but there were also detective novels, westerns, fantasies, and straightforward adventures. Dent worked with Henry Ralston and (until 1943) John Nanovic, two editors at Street & Smith, to plot the novels, though in a few cases ghost-writers were given leeway to create their own plots without Dent's involvement. Early covers were painted by Walter Baumhofer; when Baumhofer left Street & Smith in 1936 he was replaced by R. G. Harris and then by Emery Clarke.

The magazine was very successful, reaching a circulation of 300,000. After the magazine ceased publication, the franchise continued; the novels were later reprinted as paperbacks, and new novels were eventually written by pulp historian Will Murray. The prose style was action-oriented and Dent had a low opinion of his work, describing his life's output as consisting mostly of "reams of saleable crap".^[1]