"Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life" by Philip Jose Farmer - May/1973

Doubleday edition published May 1973 and August 1973. Printed in paperback by Bantam Books, July 1975. It doesn't appear that this will be reprinted in the near future and so it has been electronically-archived. It may be read only for your personal interest and may not be otherwise duplicated or published for profit.

Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life

by Philip Jose Farmer (May/1973)

{limited editing/embellishing and electronic formatting by 'StealthSkater' - December/2010}

CONTENTS

to skip to a given chapter, <click> on it from the list below

1. The Fourfold Vision

2. Lester Dent, the Revelator from Missouri

3. Son of Storm and Child of Destiny

4. The Bronze Hero of Technopolis and Exotica

5. The Skyscraper

6. The 86th Floor

7. the Hidalgo Trading Company and Its Craft

8. the Crime College

9. the Fortress of Solitude

10. Monk, the Ape in Wolf's Clothing

11. Ham, the Eagle with a Cane

12. Habeas Corpus and Chemistry

13. Renny, Door-buster and "Holy Cow"-er

14. Neoverbalist Johnny

15. Long Tom, "Wizard of the Juice" and Misogynist

16. Patricia Savage, Lady Auxiliary and Bronze Knockout

17. Doc the Gadgeteer

18. Some of the Great Villains and Their World-Threatening Gadgets

Addendum

A. The Fabulous Family Tree of Doc Savage

B. Chronology

C. List of Doc Savage Stories

Acknowledgments

I am especially grateful to Conde Nast Publications Inc. for permission to write this biography of Dr. Clark Savage, Jr.

I thank Random House Inc. for permission to use the extract from In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Random House Inc., (c)1975); Grove Press, Inc. for permission to use the quotations from Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller (Grove Press Inc., (c)1961) and Nova Express by William Burroughs (Grove Press Inc., (c)1964); and Houghton Mifflin Company for permission to use the quotation from Raintree County by Ross Lockridge, Jr. (Houghton Mifflin Co., (c)1947,1948).

I owe Jack Cordes much. For without the loan of his complete collection of the Doc Savage magazines, this project would have been impossible.

I thank the main reference department staff of the Peoria Public Library for their cooperation and efficiency in answering my many questions on many subjects. The staff includes the Mses Jane Burch, Betty Roberson, Nona Dutton, Bernhardine Gagneron, Elizabeth Hilderbrand, Velma Gorsage, Alma Rosser, Gloria Shoup, and Mildred Ruch.

Gratitude is due Mrs. Lester Dent for her time and information during my 2 visits to her home in La Plata, Missouri.

I thank Mr. Lawrence A. Wien for permission to print his letter replying to my request for information about the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. I am grateful to Judy-Lynn del Rey for her efforts in ascertaining the identity of the true owner of the Empire State Building.

About the Author

Born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1981, Philip Jose Farmer has long been recognized as one of the foremost writers in the field of science-fiction and fantasy. He has also written 2 biographies: Doc Savage - His Apocalyptic Life and Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke.

His most famous novel -- To Your Scattered Bodies Go -- won the Hugo Award for the best science-fiction novel of 1972 and initiated his Riverworld trilogy, soon followed by the second book The Fabulous Riverboat.

Some of Mr. Farmer's other recent titles include Flesh, Timestop!, Behind the Walls of Terra, Lorg Tyger, Night of Light, The Stone God Awakens, and The Wind Whales of Ishael.

Mr. Farmer presently makes his home in Peoria, Illinois.

Call up the fiends.

-- Prometheus Unbound

But first I mean

To exercise him in the Wilderness;

There he shall first lay down the rudiments

Of his great warfare, ere I send him forth

To conquer Sin and Death, the two grand foes ...

-- Paradise Regained

Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate

I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,

And many a Knot unravell'd by the Road;

But no the Master-knot of Human Fate.

-- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

1 -- The Fourfold Vision

I could find out how the weather was back on Friday, February 15, 1933 by checking an almanac. But it doesn't matter whether it was cloudy or snowing or clear-and-sunshiny. Because that day will always be bursting with a golden light.

That was the day that the first issue of Doc Savage magazine hit the stands. That is the day when I first saw the Man of Bronze; put down a dime (which I was lucky to have in that depth-of-Depression time); and walked out of Schmidt's drugstore quivering with anticipation.

That day is indeed golden. Much like the day when the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson rowed up the Isis with 3 little girls and there composed for their pleasure a story about Alice and a white rabbit and a hole which led to Earth's center. (It was actually rainy that day. But Dodgson remembered it as "a golden afternoon".)

That is the day I accompanied Doc and his 5 eccentric aides on the first of his 181 supersagas. It was a long journey, lasting until the summer of 1949. And it ended -- sadly -- where Alice's adventures began. In the Earth's center.

I was 20 days past by 15th birthday when I first saw the Bronze Man with the strange golden eyes in his torn shirt clutching a little black idol and shadowed by 3 Mayan warriors peering from behind an ancient Mayan pillar.

I never knew Lester Dent. But 39 years after my first encounter with Doc Savage, I met the widow the man who had written most of the supersagas under the publishing house name of "Kenneth Robeson". Mrs. Lester Dent told me and my companion Jack Cordes that the Doc Savage had been written with the 15-year-old male in mind. It was presumed by the publishers that the majority of the readers (at first, anyway) would be near that age group. I chuckled and replied that Jack and I still loved Doc. So we obviously hadn't grown up yet.

This in a sense is true. There is a 15-year-old in my brain and he loves Doc Savage. There is also a 7-year-old who still loves Billy Whiskers; a 9-year-old who still loves Oz and the heroes of ancient Troy and Achaea; a 10-year-old who still loves John Carter of Mars, Tarzan, Rudolf Rassendyll, King Arthur, Og, Son of Fire, Umslopogaas and Galazi, the Ancient Mariner, Captain Nemo, Captain Gulliver, Tom Sawyer, Hiawatha, Jim Hawking, and Sherlock Holmes.

"Smitty's" drugstore was half-a-block if you cut down from alley from the little old white house (it had once been a country school) at 609 Hanssler Place, Peroria, Illinois. Smitty's stood on Sheridan Road and Loucks Avenue on a triangular boat-shaped intersection. It was truly a vessel for me. One which I boarded for many a fabulous voyage down the Mississippi of a boy's mind. It was here that I came across my first science-fiction magazine -- the glowing first issues of Air Wonder and Science Wonder published by Hugo Gernsback and illustrated by Frank Paul.

The Gernsback magazines came out in 1929. In 1931 amidst the odors of ice cream and chocolate sauce, I first saw the dark broad-brimmed slouch hat and the pale burning-eyed hawk face of the Shadow. And it was here that I dipped my line into the waters and brought up the fabulous Argosy magazine once-a-week.

In those days, it featured short stories and serials about those heroes Jimmy Cordie; Cohen the Fighting Yid; Singapore Sammy; Peter the Brazen and his archenemy the Man with the Jade Brain; old Thibaut Corday and his fellow Foreign Legionnaire; Elephant Bill; the lawyer Gillian Hazeltine and his beautiful red-haired green-eyed wife; the dark Norse witch Lur and her white wolf; and my greatest love -- the Snake mother.

Those were golden days. At least, they had their golden moments and these are what I've treasured up in my memory.

By the time I was 15 and had met Doc Savage, I had read the Revelations of St. John the Divine. Aside from Genesis and Jonah and parts of Job, I had read Revelations more times than any other book in the Bible. I had even had a number of terrifying dreams which sprang (in imagery, anyway) from Revelations.

I knew, of course, that Revelations was also called the Apocalypse. Webster's definition of this is:

"apocalypse, noun [Middle English, revelation, Revelation, from Late Latin apocalypsis, from Greek apokalypsys, from apokalyptein, to uncover, from apo+kalptein to cover -- more at HELL.] 1: one of the Jewish and Christian writings of 200 BC to AD 150 marked by pseudonymity, symbolic imagery, and the expectation of an imminent cosmic cataclysm in which God destroys the ruling powers of Evil and raises the righteous to life in a messianic kingdom; specifically, capitalized; the biblical book of Revelation. 2: something viewed as a prophetic revelation.

Apocalypse is also used in a sense not quite that of 1(above). It is sometimes applied to writings or painting in which great forces (supernatural or natural) are at work (usual evil work) and great things are occurring. Cities are toppling; the Earth is opening vast mouths and swallowing up armies; huge and hideous monsters stride the World; the Sun is turning black or expanding into a giant star; hordes of half-human/half-beast things are torturing naked people; the stars are dripping blood. In short, things on a vast scale are threatening the World.

And there is always the feeling (even in the non-Biblical writings and paintings) of Good and Evil in earthshaking conflict. Hell has broken loose and only an archangel, a hero, or God Himself can defeat it.

Nowadays, there is the feeling that the archangel or hero won't show. And it's all over with the World. But in the earlier days of apocalyptic works, the savior would appear when needed.

At no time during my childhood and youth did I think of the Doc Savage stories as "apocalyptic" literature. In my young manhood and beginning of middle-age, I rarely thought of Doc. Such childish things were behind me.

I was reading Joyce, James (both Henry and William), Dostoyevsky, Balzac, Freud, Jung, Henry Miller (in smuggled editions at first), Shakespeare, Hooton, Cummings, Chaucer, Russell, Faihinger, Wittgenstein, Camus, Sartre, and Boswell. As well as the critics Johnson, Wilson, and Fielder.

But the reprinting of the Doc Savage series by Bantam Books resurrected the buried 15-year-old. This was in 1964 when I was just beginning to turn back to the "classics" of my childhood and the poplit of my youth. And as the Bantams came out starting with The Man of Bronze (#001), I re-experienced the delights of my juvenile days.

This nostalgic joy was tempered by recognition of literary faults which I had not noticed during the original readings. However, by then I had gotten over my snobbishness. I knew that much of the "great" literature of the World had great flaws along with the great virtues that made them classics. Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Melville, and Twain are splendid examples of this. Examples in poetry are Shakespeare, Milton, and Blake.

The "ungreat" literature -- the poplit (mystery, romance, adventure, gothic) -- were put down or ignored by most of the literary critics (and hence, the intellectuals) on the grounds that they had no merit whatsoever.

This is just not so. And perception of this has begun to filter into the Academic community. The French were the first to realize it, just as they were the first to appreciate that Poe was more than a mere poplit writer.

There are elements in poplit other than just entertainment. Perhaps the first to state this was Nietzsche who said that he had learned more about the human psyche from the hack Dostoyevsky than from any living psychologist. (Yes, Dostoyevsky was a "hack" although Nietzsche did not use the pejorative. He wrote at great speed to meet deadlines; seldom rewrote; was paid near-starvation wages; was popular with the masses; and appreciated only by a few critics.) It was Jung who pointed out that there was more to be learned about the archetypes and symbols of the unconscious from H. Rider Haggard than from any hundred of self-consciously psychological artistes. And Henry Miller seconds this.

Just so, there is much to be learned from the works of past-and-present poplit writers. And the reader (even the Ph.D.) can enjoy himself if he puts himself into the proper frame of approach.

First, he has to be able to enjoy the art of telling a rattling good story. Second, on re-reading he has to be able to abstract the elements that make them psychologically valuable. This requires a somewhat schizophrenic mind (but most scholars have this). Third, he has to be able to fuse one and two if he is going to emerge with the pearl of great price from the depths.

What is it that A. Conan Doyle and Edgar Rice Burroughs (mere romance-adventure writers) are so vastly read today while hundreds of their contemporary colleagues (who are so lauded by the critics) have dropped into oblivion? Why is it that these two (along with Haggard) will continue to attract larger-and-larger audiences while so many who are so highly praised today will be forgotten? What are the ingredients of their appeal? Why is it that Burroughs, for one, had had a larger readership and far more influence on literature than has Henry James (a hyperconscious "psychological" writer)?

This latter statement will drive the literati far "up the wall" (where they should stay!). But an objective study would confirm it. This judgment, by the way, comes from Robert Block who is a mystery/horror writer, author of Psycho, and a keen literary critic. He is widely read and knows the classic psychologists well. But he brings up his stories from his personal psyche which has an umbilical attached firmly to the collective unconscious.

Whether my argument is valid or not, I am convinced that despite its massive flaws, poplit is worth a serious study. About this time, I became aware of the body of people (many of them distinguished in their widely-varied professions) who were devoted to the study of Sherlock Holmes. And I came across the biographies of so-called "fictional characters". These included the lives of Sir Percy Blakeney (The Scarlet Pimpernel), Mister Ephraim Tutt, Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Homes, and perhaps Count Dracula. (I haven't gotten my hands on the latter yet.)

I began writing a "biography" of Lord Greystoke (aka Tarzan) based on the premise that he was a living person. While I was doing this, the first of the biographies of Harry Flashman (the chief bully in Tom Brown's Schooldays) and The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower came out.

After finishing Tarzan Alive (not my choice of title), I started on this present venture -- Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life. I borrowed all 181 magazine editions, having lost my Doc Savages during my many moves around the country. Beginning with the first, I read the entire series. Usually, I read one in 2 evenings. But when I got to the later and much shorter novels of 1945-49, I read two in an evening.

After I had made this sweep, I reread each one more slowly, taking notes as I went along. The third time, I picked some here-and-there for a complete rereading. And while writing this book, I reread 20-or-so completely and an additional number partially.

This continuous traveling through a Savage land enabled me to see what I might otherwise have missed. The Savage supersagas are apocalyptic.

They shake with Cosmic nightmares. And they have strange bedfellows. One if the early and primitive (in a Grandma Moses sense) space operas of Dr. E.E. Smith. His Lensman series is the best example of his work. Another is the series by William Burroughs: The Nova Express (my favorite), The Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, and The Ticket that Exploded. The third is Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn.

William Blake (himself an apocalyptic poet) could have said of these: "I a fourfold vision see."

Smith, Dent, and Burroughs have only their apocalyptic visions and a science-fictional background in common. Miller is not a science-fiction author. He is (if anything) a combination of a verbal Dadist, an anti-Noble Savage Rousseau, and an explicitly sexual St. Augustine. But his visions have suckled the same early 20th Century nipples as the others. They are, perhaps, the most awe-inspiring and certainly the most poetic.

Smith and Dent steer wide of any explicitness about sex though even the tabus of pulp-magazine fiction did not keep them from a few hints about the sexual. (The Lensman series ends in incest between the Gray Lensman's son and daughters.) Burroughs and Miller have not only their roots in sex but also their pistils and blooms as well. Their sexual language is that of the masses. Even if the masses are offended when they see it reproduced in the works of Henry Miller and William Burroughs.

Burroughs is a bridge -- a sort of perverted Bifrost or Al Sirat -- between Miller and the two science-fiction writers Smith and Dent. Burroughs uses the cliche beings and gadgets of old-time science-fiction and some modern pseudo-sciences in his works. Though he is not technologically oriented in the same sense as are Smith and Dent, he is concerned with technology.

Miller, of course, wants nothing to do with Technopolis -- that vast many-cubed city of machines and electricity and of automatons that run like men and men that run like automatons. He is its citizen and he doesn't want to leave it for the country. But he ignores or curses technology and its sons (robots out of the womb by the piston of the television set).

He shares with the others a male chauvinism although he is able to portray 3-dimensional females in The Rosy Crucifixion. (And Patricia Savage -- after all the supersagas are read -- emerges as complete except for her sexual life. And this can be inferred from various intimations.)

Smith's epics are closest in spirit to Dent's. They are, however, in a space and time remote from here-and-now. Unlike the opera of the others, his mostly take place in the Galactic depths on planets of far-off stars or in the 4th dimension. His visions are the most "Cosmic" because they are not confined to this Earth and this age.

* The howling winds of Aldebaran I push along the bloodthirsty Wheelmen (a sentient race with hubheads and dozens of arms-and-hands radiating out like spokes.

* The personnel of an immense fort blow their minds on thionite (a psychedelic from the storm-ridden planet of Trenco). This was published in 1939.

* A superneedle-beam which enables you to traverse light-centuries in seconds (if you survive). The super-evil Boskonians using more than 200,000 such tubes to simultaneously attack Arisia (populated by the most colossal minds that ever existed and they're eons old).

* The world of Ploor and its sun going supernova when 2 planets traveling 15 times as fast as light are hurled from Nth space by the devices of Kimball Kinnison and son.

* A mind-controlling spider disconnecting a villain's thought-screen so that his mind can be read without his knowing it.

* The Hell-Hole of Space.

* The Sunbeam which uses an entire solar system as a vacuum tube and planets as its grids and plates.

* The Material Cosmic All in which every inhabited world in all of Space is to be conquered and enslaved the by the Boskonians as opposed to the Cosmic All of the ultra-good Arisians.

* An inertia neutralizer enabling spaceships (and even planets) to attain faster-than-light speeds instantly with no disturbance to the passengers.

These and many other mind-bogglers fill Smith's apocalypse. His visions, however, are too vast and far-off to concern us much here. And of the four, he is the most borlumian. His characterizations do not even deserve this comparison. They are not sculptures but paper dolls. Still, he doesn't come off badly when compared to William Burroughs.

Dent is the best of them in this respect if a consideration of Miller is confined to Tropic of Capricorn. The reader, however, has to travel through all of the Doc Savage stories before he sees the major characters as round and complex.

But this doesn't matter. An apocalyptic writer has no need to characterize people. He is out to characterize the Universe. Or if he stays on this planet, the Earth. And this is what Dent, Burroughs, and Miller do although the world of each differs considerably from the others.

Before we leave Smith, we should note certain similarities between his hero and Dent's. Doc Savage and Kimbal Kinnison are both supermen whose goal is defeating Evil. Kinnison is the result of centuries of human breeding, secretly controlled by the Arisians. Doc's superior genes are the result of accidental matings. But his ancestors -- like Kinnison's -- have been inbred to some extent. Both have been trained from infancy for the conquest of vast Evil forces.

Doc's hair is a dark bronze and his eyes are light tawny with many striking golden flakes. Clarrisa MacDougall (the superwoman who marries Kinnison) has a peculiar shade of red-bronze hair and striking gold-flecked tawny eyes.

Kinnison and MacDougall first appeared in The Galactic Patrol in the September-through-December 1937 issues and the January-through-February 1938 issues of Astounding Stories magazine. Doc first appeared in the March 1933 issue of Street-and-Smith's Doc Savage magazine. Doubtless, the similarities noted before are coincidental.

Doc's headquarters are on the 86th floor of the tallest and most impressive skyscraper in Manhattan (and hence, the World). His 3 rooms occupy the entire floor -- and area almost as large as the city block which the base of the building covers. Here are his small Reception room; the much larger technical Library; and the Laboratory. The last takes up two-thirds of the floor space.

From the windows of the 86th floor, Doc can see over 50 miles in any direction on a clear day (not much smog in those days). Sometimes the clouds cling to his windows and he can see nothing. Then (if he wishes), he can bring out his ultraviolet projector and special "blacklight" goggles. With these, he can pierce the clouds.

Never mind whether-or-not he can see the city. He is master of all that he surveys (albeit frequently challenged) and he surveys Technopolis often enough. He sees the greatest megacity I the World laid out in orderly fashion; the trains and subways running on time; the machines pumping as regularly as a cheetah's heart; the machines' products issuing in orderly and satisfying numbers; the street traffic obeying the stop-and-go lights and cops' whistles; the electric lights everywhere turning off-and-on as bidden, all highly efficient.

Then ... Chaos enters.

Chaos and her sister Evil (or perhaps Evil is the big mother). And Doc and his aides (the Fabulous Five") are busy combating Chaos and Evil. And then Law&Order are restored.

But only momentarily. After all, the Universe is entropic and everything is going downhill. And at the bottom of the hill is Hell. Down there are the bottom of the hill (and often below its surface), Chaos and Evil are breeding.

Fortunately, Doc is independently wealthy. In fact, he is the wealthiest individual in the World. So what goes on below doesn't bother him much except when Chaos and Evil come after him and he is forced to leave his experiments in the Wizard's Den.

Then the mountaintop sorcerer comes down. Bronze lighting strikes! The minions of Hell pick up the mangled body of their latest black witch and retreat into their holes. Sometimes they flee without the body. Doc has taken their leader on his trimotored magic carpet to his "College" where he disassociates them from their evil past and re-educates them. And they often go to work for him in their new careers.

Still, no matter how often the criminal disorder and sickness intrude, Technopolis maintains an outward unchanging regularity. The esthetics of civilized order keep the geometries straight and from his stone-and-aluminum eyrie, the golden-eyed Eagle sees beauty. For the time being, all is right with the World and Doc Savage is on the 86th floor.

But one of the dwellers below -- Henry Valentine Miller -- sees Technopolis as "...the highest form of madness...". He cries "... the scaffold of the city's mad logic is no support." And "The city grows like a cancer ... It is an insatiable white louse which must eventually die of inanition..." He means "... to die as a city in order to become again a man."

Doc has nothing of what he would call sick pessimism. If the World isn't right, he will set it right. He stands on the running board of his limousine (or a taxi or a stolen bakery truck) while his trollish assistant Monk Mayfair drives. The wind whips over his hair (which moves not) and his gold-flecked eyes miss nothing. The streets are cleared for him by NYPD's finest because Doc has an honorary commission and the cops respect and admire him. (At least in his early career.) Traffic gets out of the way and the drivers and pedestrians gasp with wonder at this giant mental and physical marvel, the Man of Tomorrow.

The bronze knight of the running board is on another quest. Good men can breathe easier and the knees of evil men turn to water. Nor is Doc always so intent on the battle that he no time to dispense philanthropy. Hot in pursuit, he halts to give an old blind woman a card which will get her into a hospital owned-and-operated by Doc and an operation which will cure him. (Possibly the scalpel wielder will be Doc himself). He gives a man down his luck $50 to tide him over while he is working on the job which Doc will arrange for him with one of the several hundred factories, airlines, shipping lines, and trucking lines he owns. Bob Cratchit would have loved him and Scrooge would have mended his ways sooner if Doc Savage had been in the neighborhood. Fagin would have left time.

Henry Miller, the penniless Brooklynite, sees the city's night as "incalculable barren, cold, mechanical ... in which there is no peace, no refuge, no intimacy ... to be of a great city ... is to become oneself ... a world of dead stone ... of the secret perfection off all that is minus..."

He talks of the "door which the body wears". Opened out onto the World, it can lead to nothing but annihilation. Opened inward, it reveals an infinity of trapdoors. And there are no horizons, no airlines, rivers, maps, or tickets in his world.

Doc Savage, of course, seldom opens the inward door for us and he always travels with a map unreeling from a photographic memory. If there is no map, he makes one.

Doc generates full-grown myths wherever he is. He is -- literally and figuratively -- the Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Miller (and most of his fellow dwellers on the pavemented surface) cannot take root. The moment they think they have, the Earth shudders (prelude to a dissolving of the Universe), the stars float loosely, and the self implodes. And Miller -- along with Dante -- is sitting at the lowest level of Hell. It is "a dead center from which Time itself is reckoned."

As we'll see, Doc Savage began his career with certainty. With a self that is neither implosive nor explosive but rigidly contained in the magnetic field of his unique education. But we get glimpses of a loneliness which must have equaled or surpassed Miller's or that of any other citizen of Technopolis.

However, Doc has the Great American Formula. Which is to Keep Moving. Motion, busyness (whether purposeful-and-productive or not) enables the self to avoid the self. And so Doc is busy in the laboratory or studying or lecturing or -- mainly-- in furious battle with the supervillain. But his actions are always productive. He, at least, doesn't move just for the sake of motion.

There was little time for Doc to consider Miller's question of "on what the tortoise stood". Just as well, Miller says a study of this problem only results in madness.

Doc would doubtless have thought Miller contemptible and a potential candidate for his "Crime College". He would have abominated Miller's shiftlessness, parasitism, callousness, and his incessant keenness for quim.

But would have agreed (in part) with Miller's apocalyptic observation: "The whole Country is lawless, violent, explosive, demoniacal. It's in the air, in the climate, in the ultra-grandiose landscape, in the stone forest that are lying horizontal ... in the over-lush crops, the monstrous fruits, the mixture of quixotic bloods, the fatras of cults, sects, beliefs, the opposition of laws and languages ... The Continent is full of buried violence, of the bones of the antediluvian monsters and of lost races of man, of mysteries which are wrapped in doom ... America is pacifistic and cannibalistic ... Superficially, it looks like a bold masculine world. Actually, it's a whorehouse run by women... Nobody knows what it is to sit on his ass and be content. That happens only in movies where everything is faked, even the fires of Hell. The whole Continent is asleep and in that sleep a grand nightmare is taking place."

True in 1939. And many would say that it is still true in 1975 (today).

Though agreeing with much of this, Doc would have rejected its pessimism and its whorehouse theory. The human brain at birth has the potentiality for Good or Evil. Usually, the adult psyche is permeated with both. But the largest content is Good. And as long as babies are being born, we have hope. He also knew that whorehouses are owned by men. The America of his time was patrifocal.

Doc lived in the Olympus of the skyscraper while below, the Depression did its work. When he went down into the streets, he was able to act forthrightly and vigorously to solve his problems. If he had to act outside the Law to do it (and he generally did), he got away with it.

But the people of Miller's world -- the poor, the underprivileged, the sick, the demented, the persecuted -- came to Henry Miller looking for salvation. Henry (the poor man's savior) was personnel manager of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company of North America. His stories of the woes of the unfortunates who crowded daily into his office are a minor apocalypse. And no doubt, the would-be employees sometimes looked up at Doc's skyscraper and thought of pulling it down along with the wealthy in it.

Doc must have had a controlling interest in Cosmodemonic since he seems to have had huge blocks of shares in companies all over the World. Doc would have been appalled if he had known what was going on in Cosmodemonic. But it's doubtful if even he could have straightened out that mess.

Miller must have been thinking of Doc's skyscraper and perhaps of the frequent dashes what Doc and his pals made around the Globe in their battles against Evil when he wrote: "From Apis (the great bull-father god) sprang the race of unicorns. That ridiculous beast of ancient writ whose learned brow lengthened into a gleaming phallus. And from the unicorn by gradual stages was derived the late-city man of which Oswald Spengler speaks." And Miller says that from the dead phallus "of this sad specimen arose the giant skyscraper with its express elevators and observation towers."

Certainly, the latter phrase is a description of the building which housed Doc's superspeed private express elevator and on top of which was a dirigible mooring mast-observation tower.

Miller then says: "Now for the aluminum wings with which to flay to that far-off place, the bright country where the 'father of fornication' Apis lives."

Substitute "supervillain" for "Apis" and you have a description which fits Doc's flights across the Earth to tangle with the great fathers of Crime.

Time-and-time again in the Savage stories, a cataclysmic weapon is turned on New York City by a supervillain. The city panics and thousands flee while more thousands cower in their homes. Dent shows us only the exterior of public alarm -- the newspaper headlines and the jammed bridges and tunnels out of Manhattan. Miller shows us the city suddenly caught in a Vesuvian eruption -- the deadly gases rolling in and the lava covering everything. And everybody including the great financier J.P. Morgan is caught literally and figuratively with his pants down. Though the derivation on the name of the financier is obvious, Miller may also have had Doc Savage in mind when he described "J.P. Morgan sitting on the toilet bowl" when trapped by the volcanic gas.

Which leads us to next apocalyptic -- William S. Burroughs. Like Miller, he also deals out many hands onto the auctorial poker table. But whereas Miller's sexual interest is in women only, Burroughs is compulsively interested in sodomy. The main themes in all of his books are male homosexuality, drug addiction, and a Cosmic paranoia. Like E.E. Smith, he describes many kinds of extraterrestrial creatures. But since Burroughs' stories are confined to this planet, he can be put into the same category as Miller and Dent.

He presents us with a series of horrifying images. All the more horrifying because the style is disjointed, broken as if the mind of the narrator is in the tertiary stage of syphilis, corroded with heroin, or ridden by delirium tremens. Or as if he had blacklight goggles enabling him to see past the stable appearance of things into the blooming buzzing confusion at the subatomic level.

Ignoring the language and the style, his stories do have certain similarities to Dent's. There are the supervillains, the extraterrestrial invaders, the Nova Mob. And there is the Nova Heat (who could be Doc and his aides). The visions are scary. Even listing the themes can have a spooking effect.

The Cancer Deal with the Venusians. The Orgasm Death. The Nova Ovens. The Reality Studio. "To live is to collaborate." The Intolerable Kid. A Rumble in the Crab Galaxy. Another Twilight of Your Tired Gods. "... that black nova laugh." The Venusian Gook Rot. The Caustic Enzymes of Woo. A Monster Crab with Hot Claws at Your Window. The Thing Police. K9 in Combat with the Alien Mind Screen. Magnetic Claws Feeling for Virus Punch Cards. Staked out under the White Hot Skies of Minraud Eaten Alive by Metal Ants. "Blast-Pound-Strafe-Stab-Kill." Mayan Codices and Egyptian Hieroglyphs. "This, Gentlemen, is the Death Dwarf." "I'll Cook You Down to Decorticated Canine Preparations." All the Pain and Hate Images Come Loose. His Metal Face Moved in a Low Smile as He Heard the Twittering Supersonic Threats Through Antennae Embedded in His Translucent Skull.

Comes on Honest and Straight and the smart operators all think they are conning him. How could they think otherwise until he slips on the antibiotic handcuffs?

The Nova Mob slide in-and-out of human bodies; control their hosts; such the delight of Life itself out of them; and make them do all sorts of hideous things. It's as if Dent's supervillains had anticipated Burroughs' Lifeform A invading a series of Lifeform B.

The Nova Police move in on the Nova Mob and the parasites leave their dead hosts behind as they flee. They have wild names. As wild as those of Dent's villains. "Hamburger Mary", "Uranian Willy the Heavy Metal Kid", the "Brown Artist", the "Subliminal Kid", the "Green Octopus", and "Iron Claws".

The Nova Fuzz slip on the antibiotic cuffs and haul Willy's heavy metal ass off to the rehabilitation center (reminiscent of Doc's Crime College).

Neither the work of the Nova Fuzz nor Doc is ever finished. The supply of hosts and parasites is endless.

And the judge in the Biologic Courts? Isn't he Doc Savage? "The judge, many light-years away from the possibility of corruption ..."

Lester Dent's nightmares reel through scenes of cataclysm, terror, and carnage:

* Groaning, the skyscraper leans and blocks of masonry leave it to sail across Manhattan. The dirigible mooring mast on top of it falls off while the citizens run screaming into the streets. Large ribbons of flame crash across the heavens. These are tied in with the man kidnapped in San Francisco and found dead in New York City just 3 hours later (note: this was in 1939 when air travel was much slower.) [The Secret in the Sky (#027)]

* The World is faced with the possibility of the dead being brought to life and an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh is loose on the streets [Resurrection Day (#45)].

* A terrible weapon turns men into smoke. No man is safe [The Land of Terror (#002)].

* A substance buried for eons in the Earth's bowels is being released by a volcanic eruption. Anything in its vicinity not tightly attached to the ground is hurled high into the skies. A 2-ton palm tree sails through the night. Coconuts rain. [The Deadly Dwarf (#056)]

* An island blows up and sinks, taking with it the last of the dinosaurs. [ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ]

* Mile-long tongues of flame leap into the skies. [ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ]

* In New York city, anyone who tries violence on another dies mysteriously with his eyes popping out. A mass evacuation seems imminent. Who dares to be angry?! [The Annihilist (#22)]

* Snowflakes the color of blood materialize and fall hissing on people. Then the later become dust. [Red Snow (#024)]

* Deep in the earth, an ore turns its miners into walking lightning streaks. The earth opens up and swallows a glass factory. [The Living-Fire Menace (#059)]

* Battleships are picked up and hurled far by some sinister force. [The Terror in the Navy (#050)]

* Giant invisible amoebae threaten the greatest of cities with their paralyzing stings. [The Pharaoh's Ghost (#136)]

* A statue of a man a mile long lies on its back in the jungle. Panther tracks (the toes larger than washtubs) are seen in jungle mud. [The Mental Wizard (#049)]

* People turn into blue clouds. All radio transmission the World over is turned off by an unknown genius. All powered vehicles are stopped by a push of a button. Crimson snow burns on Mount Shasta. [He Could Stop The World (#053)]

* The Gulf Stream will be diverted and Europe will freeze. [Mystery Island (#102) ]

* All over the city, men are turning into automatons (this sounds like Miller's description of the night denizens of New York City.) [The Mindless Monsters (#103)]

* The "Inca in Gray" scatters his deadly "Dust of Death". [Dust of Death (#032)]

* Huge holes are ripped in the Earth's crust. The bodies of weird men float in the air while a strange melody plays. [Murder Melody (#033)]

* A dying green man gasps that he has been a prisoner on the Moon. [Devil on the Moon (#061)]

* A dagger 200 feet high hangs in the heavens. [The Dagger in the Sky (#082)]

* A monstrous spider stalks through a valley during thunderstorms. [The Mountain Monster (#060)]

* "A rose-red city half as old as Time" rears out of the Arabian wastelands. [ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ]

* Deep in the Earth beneath Maine are strange beings. They look exactly like Homo sapiens, but they have frightening psychic powers. Either they are extraterrestrial or they are the demons of Hell itself. The first encounter between Doc and the devils is a draw. But other conflicts are inevitable with the odds heavily in favor of the "devils". Doc has met and defeated the greatest of the human hosts of evil. But now he is faced with the origin of Evil itself! [Up From Earth's Center (#181)]

... and there the tales end.

2 -- Lester Dent, the Revelator from Missouri

Lester Dent was born October 12, 1904 in La Plata, a small village in northeastern Missouri. He was the only child of Bernard Dent (a farmer and rancher) and Alice Norfolk (a schoolteacher before her marriage). His paternal grandparents came from Lancaster, Ohio in 1858. Though Lester's birthplace was in the "Show Me" state, his parents had been living for some years in Wyoming. Mrs. Dent had returned to La Plata to stay with her parents during the birth.

At the age of 2, Lester went with his parents to Wyoming. Part of the trip was in a covered wagon which took weeks to travel through country that a car can pass through in 2 hours. The elder Dent ran a ranch near Pumpkin Buttes.

Lester attended a country grade school and paid for his tuition by trapping animals and selling their furs. He had few companions and so was more often by himself than not. (His future wife Norma thinks that it was isolation and loneliness which drove him to make up fantasy companions and the adventures in which he and his imaginary pals were heroes.)

Whether the ranch failed or the parents just got tired of the emptiness of Pumpkin Buttes is not known. About the time that Lester was in the 8th grade, the family back to La Plata where his father dairy-farmed. Here, Lester completed the 8th grade in a little while schoolhouse near the farm. (Today, the building is visible from U.S. Route 63 about 12 miles south of Kirksville. But it has been converted into a farm storehouse.)

In 1923, Lester Dent went to Chillicothe, Missouri to attend business college. He had meant to be a banker. But while waiting in line to apply at the college, he got to talking to another applicant. Dent was informed that as a bank clerk, he would make a starting wage of $15 per week. A graduate of the telegraphy course, however, would begin at $35 a week. That was good enough for Dent who switched his goals then-and-there.

After finishing his courses, Dent taught at Chillicothe Business College. In the fall of 1924, he went to work as a telegrapher for Western Union in Corrollton, Missouri. (The "Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company" is Henry Miller's name for Western Union in Tropic of Capricorn. Dent, however, did not have Miller's Hieronymus Bosch-like experiences with Western Union. But then, Dent did not work for Western Union in Depression New York City. Nor was he a personnel manager.)

In May 1925, Dent became a telegrapher for Empire Oil and Gas Company in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Here he married Norma Gerling (the daughter of Louis Gerling and Dora Weber) on August 9, 1925. They went that day to a movie, the title of which Mrs. Dent does not remember. She will, however, never forget that Lester was so flustered that he tried to give their tickets to a wooden Indian in the lobby.

The Dents moved to Chickasha, Oklahoma in 1926. Here he was first a telegrapher for the Associated Press and then a teletype operator. Later, he worked for the Associated Press in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

One of his coworkers sold a story to a magazine for $450 (big money in those days and not so bad today [1975] ). This intrigued Dent who read a number of blood-and-murder pulp magazines and though he could do as well and probably better. While on the unbusy night shift, he wrote a number of stories. The first to sell was a novel for which Top Notch magazine paid $250. Titled Pirate Cay, it came out in the first of two September 1929 issues on sale August 1.

He was startled shortly thereafter by a telegram from Dell Publishing Company in New York. It offered to pay his passage to New York and give him a $500-a-month drawing account if he would write exclusively for Dell. After recovering from his astonishment, Dent asked a friend in New York to check up on Dell. Was its owner (and perhaps its editor) insane?

On finding that both seemed to be as mentally balanced as any Gothamite could be, Dent got a leave of absence from AP. He and Mrs. Dent arrived in New York City on January 1, 1931. It was one of the coldest and bleakest days in Mrs. Dent's memory.

Things soon became rosier, however. Dent quickly taught himself the craft and discipline of turning in a required number of words in a certain format on schedule. He did not remain Dell's exclusive property for long. He was soon writing for a number of pulp-magazine chains. This genre was demanding and tiring for writers and only the sturdiest could survive in it.

Dent had energy and ensured that the reservoir of his fertile and vivid imagination would not dry up from lack of pumping. He read omnivorously from poetry to the literature of the latest advances in technology and science. But he was not content to get all his knowledge from books.

He got a first-class radio operator's license and would years later build his own powerful ham radio set. He passed the rigid electricians' and plumbers' examinations. He got a pilot's license and flew his own plane. Instead of just reading about climbing mountains, he climbed them.

His inflamed inventiveness, his expertise at pulp plotting and characterization, and his technical knowledge brought him to the attention of all the pulp-magazine publishers. Among these was Henry Ralston who was a business executive at Street&Smith. Ralston had hired Walter Gibson in 1931 to write The Shadow stories. The success of this encouraged Ralston to hire Dent in 1932 to write a new series -- the Doc Savage magazine.

Ralston was at that time credited with having invented the characters of "the Shadow" and "Doc Savage". Now, however, we know differently. Ralston was an influential man with many sources of information for making good contacts. He got permission from the man who was the real "Shadow" to publish his exploits in fictionalized form.

Ralston struck another coup by getting permission from "Doc Savage" to publish stories based on his adventures. Ralston approached Dent on the project. Since Doc was the greatest gadgeteer of all times and Dent had many qualities that Doc possessed and so could empathize with him, Dent eagerly accepted. Lester was himself the greatest gimmick writer in the field according to Frank Gruber in his The Pulp Jungle. What better choice than a man who knew gadgets?

In fact, Dent wrote a string of novelettes for the Street&Smith Crime Busters magazine which were known as "The Gadget Man" series. The first appeared in the November 1937 issue and were so well-received that he continued the adventures of his gimmick-minded hero for 3 years.

According to Norma, Lester did not like the name picked for the hero of the new series. He thought he had a much better name which, unfortunately, Norma can't recall. But it doesn't matter now. Doc's name has been so hallowed by long usage that anything else is unthinkable.

Dent also wanted to write under his own name and not the publishing house name of "Kenneth Robeson". He felt that he could do much better if his own name were on the masthead. As usual, however, the executives and the editors had their own way.

But Dent did get at least some revenge years later. Somebody goofed and the Marched 1944 issue contained the Derelict of Skull Shoal by not Robeson but Lester Dent. This caused some consternation and not a little hell among the editorial staff and the error never again occurred.

In the beginning, Dent got $500 for each Doc Savage story. Later, this was increased to $750. In the early years, these were about 65,000-to-70,000 words long. Often he would write 2-a-month. Which meant that he was putting out 130,000-to-140,000 words a month (2 complete novels) and getting $1,500. This was $18,000 a year in the Depression when eggs were 10 cents/dozen.

Moreover, Dent was augmenting this amount by writing at the same time and at a comparable rate for other magazines. There were times when Dent (writing under pseudonyms) could -- and did -- fill an issue of a magazine with his own stories. These often required 8 or 9 stories.

At times, he would write 18 hours a day, day-after-day. Being human, Dent -- even if a pulp writer -- had to stop to eat and go to the toilet. When this happened, he used a trick to make sure that he would continue with the same thought with which he had quit. He would stop in the middle of a sentence.

His usual hours, however, were from 9:00 pm to 3:00 am. He would then sleep until 10:30 am. He ate only2 meals a day.

His favorite drink was milk of which he could drink a quart at a sitting. Hard liquor was no problem for him as it is for many writers. When he did drink, he preferred Irish whiskey. He did not know much of music and seems to have been tone deaf. The only tune he could carry at all was "The Whistler and His Dog". His parents had a gramophone but only one record. Which accounts for his ability to half-master that one song.

Like The Shadow magazine, the Doc Savage magazine was a great success. 6 months after the first issue, it had a multitude of imitators on the market. All were short-lived.

There was good reason for Doc's popularity aside from being a writer who seemed born for the job. The Depression had put almost everybody down and millions out. But the man who picked up a Doc Savage could become for an hour-or-so the wealthiest man in the World. Doc had a never-failing supply of gold from a lost valley in Central America. (Heroes often seemed to have a secret source of precious metal and jewels which enabled them to live well without working. Tarzan, the Shadow, and Richard Benson [the Avenger] are 3 examples.)

The average citizen -- a miserable creature in those days -- was feeling frustrated, anxiety-ridden, and diminished in manhood and womanhood. But for 10 cents, he/should could be a superman/superwoman in both brain and body. The average man felt that vast evil forces beyond his control were responsible for his plight. And he was suffering while the criminals were certainly prospering. In Doc Savage, he had a hero who battled the insidious forces of Evil. And who won. Moreover, Doc could take his reader away from his grim world into the most exotic of places around the World.

Ralston himself is said to have stated that Doc was 4 great people all rolled into one. He had Sherlock Holmes' marvelous deductive genius; Tarzan's perfect physique and herculean strength; Craig Kennedy's knowledge of science; and Abraham Lincoln's messianic qualities.

Despite the incessant requests for his stories from editors, Dent and his wife managed vacations. In 1933 on the very day that Franklin Delano Roosevelt closed all the banks in the Country, the Dents left on a cruise trip to the West Indies and South America. Along with Dent's secretary, they took a trip to England and Europe in 1938. In Prague, Czechoslovakia, Dent was questioned by the Nazis for taking unauthorized photographs.

Dent purchased a 2-masted 40-foot schooner (the Albatross). He and his wife lived in this for several years. They sailed up-and-down the Atlantic coast of Florida and through the Caribbean islands, wintering in Florida. Dent became an expert deep-sea fisher and swimmer. He also did some serious treasure hunting in the Bahamas. All that time, however, he was pounding away his typewriter turning out many stories.

Finally tiring of the ship, Dent sold it in 1940. He felt that he had mastered sailing and had learned all that he could about treasure hunting and the West Indian and Caribbean seas. So he wanted no more to do with them. His nature was to learn a subject thoroughly and then drop it.

After the ship fever was over, Dent went to Death Valley to prospect for gold. He found little. But he did learn much about the desert. He also met and visited with Death Valley Scotty.

His travels and search for gold earned him a membership in the Explorers Club (of which 2 distinguished members were Admiral Byrd and Doc Savage).

The same year that he sold his ship, he decided that he would "retire" to La Plata. Perhaps he had squeezed New York dry too and now wanted to re-establish his roots in his native soil. His retirement meant no slackening of work, however. He continued to turn out fiction although he took more time at it. In between writing stints, he designed his new house and supervised its construction to make sure that it was done properly.

The Dent's home was widely known then as the "House of Gadgets" because of the many devices he installed in it. These have become standard now. But in 1940, they were 10-or-more years ahead of their time.

As a prognosticator, Dent's record beat that of Jules Verne. The list of gadgets that first appeared in print the Doc Savage stories and only came into existence years later is a long one.

Doc used radar, for instance, in 1934 although this was something that the electronic scientists were then only messing around with in the laboratory. 10 years before they were actually used in the U.S. Navy, Dent had put shark repellent and sea trace (i.e., colored dye to mark the location of pilots downed at sea) into his stories. Dent wrote of nerve gas, supersonic dog whistles, anesthetic gas grenades, and ultraviolet "black light" photography before the general public -- and many scientists -- knew of their potential existence. 12 years before wire recordings were offered to the public, Doc was using them.

In 1935, Dent designed a magnetic treasure-hunting device. He hired a man in Miami, Florida to build it for him. Some years later, the U.S. Army developed a mine detector from the data provided by the same Miamian.

Dent also went in -- successfully -- for dairy farming; was a partner in an aerial photography business; lectured; and spent much time on community projects. He especially enjoyed working with youths and was a Boy Scout leader. His lecture tours made a profit which he donated for lunches and spectacles for grade-school children.

He had been a member of the New York chapter of the American Fiction Guild. In 1946, he received from the Missouri Writers Guild the award for the most successful Missouri writer of that year.

Although he was very busy at other activities than writing, he worked at polishing his style, plots, and characterizations. The early Savages are splendid examples of pulp writing in all its potential spectrum. They have a great-but-loose epic sweep. They are shot through with red for blood; white with the purity of the heroes' motives; black with the vileness of the villains' motives; green with comedy; blue with terror; and purple with science-fictional-adventure apocalypticism. The characters are mainly caricatures, not people. Yet there is a certain thread of realism throughout, yellow and hot as sunlight.

The quality of prose and realism in the early Savage novels do vary, sometimes widely. Generally, they are at a high level for the pulps. Some -- such as the ridiculous and badly-written The Yellow Cloud (#072) -- read as if plotted and typed in one day and sent out by midnight messenger directly to a drunken printer with literary aspirations.

Jim Harmon -- a Doc Savage fan and author of The Great Radio Heroes and The Great Radio Comedians -- thinks that much of the renaissance of Doc in the Bantam editions is due in fact to their very badness. They are considered camp by the young. He reports seeing young people at airports laugh uproariously while reading them. Since he did not question them as to why they were laughing, he could be wrong. They might have amused at the clowns -- Doc's aides Ham or Monk -- or at Doc's chasteness. Admittedly, there is much "corn" among the gold in the early epics.

But if the youths and Jim Harmon were to read the Savages from 1941 on, they would have little cause for ridicule. These became progressively short; more tightly plotted; more sharply characterized; and began to explore the psychology of the main characters. The dialogue became more realistic and the style was enormously improved.

The villains were still not "run of the mill". But they were not the supervillains of the early stories. Doc seems to have cleaned out most of that breed before World War II although he is engaged in combating the minions of those Luciferians -- Tojo and Hitler. [StealthSkater note: Other research suggests that later Street&Smith editors forced Dent to make Doc more "human" and deal with political intrigue rather than diabolical science. See => doc pdf URL-doc URL-pdf ]

With the gain of better writing and more realism, however, purple romance and gusto are lost. We are not reading epics; we are now reading mystery stories. In fact, for 5 issues from late-1947 to mid-1948, the magazine is renamed Doc Savage, Science Detective. Doc is only half a superman. More Dr. Thorndykish or Craig Kennedyish than the early Man of Bronze. Beginning with the 1945 issues (if not before), the mature reader of spy/detective/mystery stories can read with satisfaction almost all of the stories. [StealthSkater note: certainly a far cry from the 15-year-old who was Dent's primary audience. In my opinion, this return to the everyday world and escape from fantasy adventure was the beginning of the end for the DS stories.]

Dent did his most "literary" work in the mystery and Western fields. Some of his mystery novels were published by the Doubleday Crime Club. One of his mysteries attracted the attention of the FBI. One of its agents came to Dent and requested that he please make the ransom notes in his stories less realistic. A Kansas City kidnapper had clipped one out of a magazine and mailed it in unchanged.

He was also an excellent Western writer. The last new story of his to be published was of this genre. This was "Savage Challenge" in the Saturday Evening Post of February 22, 1958. The story is about the conflict between a group of pioneers in a wagon train and a band of Indians. The problem is solved by a frontiersman who knows the ways of the Indians and uses humor (not violence) to settle the issue. Both the white and Amerinds are depicted as real human beings, not stereotypes.

Another Western -- "River Crossing" -- appeared in Collier's magazine and was later adapted for an episode in the Wagon Train television series.

Both "Savage Challenge" and "River Crossing" demonstrated that Lester Dent was more than "just a pulp writer". When he finally got the time to polish his tales, he became a writer who may have developed a stature equal to that of Raymond Chandlier or J.G. Guthrie.

In February 1959, Lester Dent had a heart attack. Though hospitalized for 3 weeks, he continued to write. Then the 'Ender of Tales' on March 11 wrote The End. He was buried in the family plot at La Plata cemetery.

The citizens of La Plata are considering putting up a sign of the main highway: "This Is Doc Savage Land".

Movie-goers will have their first chance to view Doc Savage and gang in action in the summer of 1975. George Pal -- producer of those visual epics "Destination Moon", "War of the Worlds", "The Time machine", et all -- has filmed Doc Savage - The Man of Bronze. This is based on the first Savage novel The Man of Bronze (#001). Parts of it were filmed in Central America, the location of the latter part of the supersaga.

After an intensive search for physical counterparts of Doc and his aides, Pal chose Ron Ely as Doc (he was the Tarzan of the TV series); Michael Miller as Monk Mayfair; Darrell Zwerling as Ham Brooks; Eldon Quick as Johnny Littlejohn; Paul Gleason as Long Tom Roberts; and Williams Lucking as Renny Renwick. Pamela Hensley -- a model who has been a covergirl for Harper's, Vogue, Paris Match et al -- plays the romantic female lead (Princess Monja). The director is Michael Anderson and the writer is Joe Morhaim.

The movie was originally scheduled for the spring of 1974. But as Pal reported to me: "We made it too good." Warner regards it as one of its major pictures and so it has rescheduled it for the summer of 1975. A world premier, however, will be held over the Easter holidays in 1975.

3 -- Son of Storm and Child of Destiny

Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks (two of Doc Savage's aides) are on the American passenger liner Virginia Dare. Loaded with World War II refugees, it is on its way from Portugal to New York. The night is cloudless. The sea is smooth.

Ham and Monk are the first to see the strange star. It's black but outlined by a blood-red light and is 5-pointed like a Christmas-tree star. Directly under it, an area of the ocean is lit with a steady fiery brilliance. In the center of this luminosity floats the golden man.

The Golden Man (#098) (April 1941) starts with this weird episode and becomes more-and-more mysterious. The golden man himself -- picked up naked and unconcerned in the middle of the ocean -- knows things about the passengers which he should not know. About himself, he knows almost nothing. He has no name as yet and doesn't need one. His mother, he says, is the sea and his father is the night.

He predicts that the Virginia Dare will sink at 11:00. It does sink although 7 minutes after 11:00.

When he finally meets Doc Savage in New York, he says: "Since that stormy night when you were born on the tiny schooner Orion in the shallow cove at the north end of Andros Island, you have done much good and many things that were great."

For one of the few times in his life, Doc is flabbergasted. As far as he is aware, he is the only one in the World who knows where he was born. His birth has never been recorded and everyone aboard the Orion is now dead. His father Clark Savage Sr., Hubert Robertson, and Ned Land were the only other survivors of the wreck of the Orion which occurred when Doc was less than a year old. They would not have talked.

This deepens an already deep mystery which Dent never explains. Why wasn't this birth registered in the ship's log? The answer must be that Doc's father had good reason to leave it unrecorded. And even if he had entered it, the log was lost when the schooner sank.

Dent never says exactly when Doc's mother died. But we know from a number of supersagas that she died shortly after his birth, though his exceptional memory has retained vague impressions of her. It is reasonable to suppose that she drowned when the Orion was driven onto a reef.

What prevented Doc's father from registering the birth again? The answer is that he did so but at a later time and with faked data. Both of Doc's parents were British citizens and Doc was born in British waters. The baby was, therefore, also a British citizen. The elder Savages, however, would have been using faked papers at this time. According to all official records, Doc was a native-born American. When Doc thinks that no record of his birth exists, he is thinking of his birth on the Orion.

Like most of the supersagas, The Golden Man has a rational explanation of its mysteries. What concerns us here is that the golden man was head of the intelligence section of an unnamed country. The evidence is that this country was Germany who was as yet not at war with the U.SA. He states that his department had a complete dossier on Doc and his men. Doc was wrong in thinking that no record of his true birthplace existed. But how German Intelligence got their information is not disclosed.

Doc's father named the schooner Orion. It was an appropriate name for the birth site of the future Man of Bronze. Orion is the most striking and brightest of the constellations (to the naked eye). It is represented on some astronomical charts as a giant who carries a shield or a lion's skin on his left shoulder and a sword in his belt.

In ancient Greek mythology, Orion was a great hunger. The Egyptians of the Fifth Dynasty called the constellation Sahu (the hunter of gods and men). One of the ancient Hebrew names for Orion was Gibbor (the Giant). In some Greek versions, he is the son of Poseidon, the greatest of the sea deities. He is large enough to walk through the deepest waters and originates the tides in the Aegean Sea.

Doc's father was thinking of the role that he had planned for his son when he christened the ship. Orion -- the hunter, the walker in deep waters. Doc was to be a great tracker of evil men and was to walk in very deep, very dangerous waters. Both in his exploits against crime and in his scientific devices and inventions.

Fortunately for the plans of the elder Savage, Doc was not a girl. And if he had been puny or had just decided not to go along with his father's project, he would have nullified everything.

But he wasn't puny in min or body. In fact, as Doc's said, even if he had not had this special training, he still would have been great. His father must have banked on the chances of his being exceptional because of his heredity. He had many extraordinary ancestors and relatives. His family ran to both brains and brawn (as will be shown).

But first, why did the elder Savage have to fake his identification papers? And why did his shape his son into a superhuman nemesis of Evil?

As I've demonstrated elsewhere [see "Addendum 2" of Tarzan Alive, Doubleday 1972), Doc's father was a fugitive from English justice. The details of the events leading up to his flight are to be found in an almost entirely true story by a Dr. John H. Watson (issued under his agent's name, A. Conan Doyle): The Adventure of the Priory School.

Watson and Sherlock Homes are called into this case by a Dr. T. Huxtable. He is the author of 2 books now considered collector's items: Huxtable's Sidelights on Horace and Sidepaths of the Midlands [see the Bibliography of Tarzan Alive for the latter].

However, he becomes Homes' client, not as an author but as owner and supervisor of his exclusive boys' educational institution -- the Priory School. He is only a temporary client because he is actually bringing Holmes into the case without authorization. His pupil -- the only son of the 6th duke of Holdernesse -- has disappeared from the school. When Homes and Watson meet the duke, they find him angry because the duke did not want a private investigator. With the duke is his secretary -- a young man whom Watson calls James Wilder. During the investigation, Heidegger (the German teacher of Arthur, the Duke's son) is found murdered.

Holmes solves the mystery. Wilder is the instigator of young Arthur's kidnapping. His mother (greatly beloved by his father) had died when he was very young. His father has raised him in Holdernesse Hall and given him "the best of educations". The duchess is so incensed by this that she has him separated from the duke. James Wilder has tried to get the duke to break the entail of the estate in his favor. (The duke can't do this even if he wanted to because the English law would prevent it.) Wilder has plotted with the local innkeeper (the brutal Reuben Hayes) to keep Arthur hidden until his father comes to terms.

Wilder is horrified when Hayes murders Heidegger. Nevertheless, he is guilty of kidnapping and being an accessory-after-the-fact of murder. Homes finds out where the boy is imprisoned and Hayes is arrested by the police during his flight on information given by Holmes. The duke tells Holmes that his repentant son James has promised to leave England forever. He is going to Australia to seek his fortune.

(I stated in Tarzan Alive what Wilder did go to Australia, struck it rich almost at once, and migrated to America. This was based on Holmes' report to the duke 3 years later when the duke had asked Holmes to find out where his son was and what he was doing. However, Holmes had not done the actual detective work but had relied on some agent whom he had hired. He regarded this task as routine and as something that lesser beings could handle. Recent evidence now shows that his agents had been bribed by the duke to turn in a false report. The duke wanted no one but himself and a single trusted agent to know where his son was. After leaving behind the false story of his intentions to go to Australia, Wilder actually went to Canada. Sexton Blake, also of Baker Street, was the detective that the duke employed.)

Holmes collects a 12,000-pound fee from the duke. 6,000 pounds of this is either an unsolicited bribe for the silence of the two or Watson's share. Apparently, Holmes says nothing to the police about James Wilder. But this is not the first time he breaks the Law in his pursuit of justice. What happened after that is unreported by Watson. Holmes says that the duke should be able to keep Hayes from exposing Wilder's part in the crimes. Just how, he doesn't explain. But Hayes is destined for the gallows and no amount of silence money from the duke is going to help him. Undoubtedly if only for revenge, Hayes would have spilled everything.

Since the duke would also have been charged with withholding information from the police and as an accessory-after-the-fact -- and since this doesn't seem to have happened -- Hayes did not squeal. He may have died of a heart attack shortly after being arrested or the duke may have added another felony to his list and arranged for the escape of Hayes. In this cause, though it's not difficult to tell the good guys from the bad ones, there is no question about the good guys also being criminals.

Sexton Blake's report should have pleased the duke. His son had discovered treasure, though in the West Indies and not Australia. He was now entered in premedical school at John Hopkins University. The duke would have been shocked to find that his son had been married while the events of The Adventure of the Primory School were taking place and that his wife was pregnant. He might have been pleased to learn that he was the grandfather of an extraordinarily handsome and strong infant. If he could have looked into the Future, he would have been thankful for him. At least one fruit of his loins was going to survive since his illegitimate son would die in his 20s in Africa.

What the duke thought about the strange career his son had designed for his grandson, we don't know. He may have had the same thoughts that Monk and Ham -- and Doc himself -- had. This was that guilt had worked a moral screw loose in the head of Doc's father. He would pay society back a thousandfold for his crimes.

In a sort of Magnificent Obsession state, he would himself become a medical doctor and surgeon and heal sick people. He would also -- and this was by far the strongest impulsion -- fight Evil. His overreaction, we may be sure, was caused by his own criminal impulses.

The duke had said that his son had a taste for "low company". The duke's son dedicated his own son "to go here-and-there from one end of the World to the other, looking for excitement and adventure, striving to help those who needed help and punishing those who deserved it." But if he were to get an education in all the professions he needed for his work, his son would have to have millions.

Though Doc's father was famous enough as a surgeon to become wealthy, he still would not have nearly enough. So he went with Hubert Robertson and others to search for the pot of gold at the end of the jungle rainbow. And he found it.

Later (undoubtedly under Doc's influence), the goal is modified. Though Doc is always the archenemy of Crime, he wants most of all to rehabilitate the criminal. He wants to keep him alive and -- if possible -- cure him and return him to society as a useful citizen.

As I've shown in Tarzan Alive, the true name of "James Wilder/Doctor Clark Savage, Sr." was actually James Clarke Wildman. Clarke Wildman was one of the many compound family names of the English landed gentry. Most of these are hyphenated (as in Smythe-Jones). But some are not. In his fictionized versions of Doc's exploits, Lester Dent was compelled by both Doc and Street&Smith Publications to use a fictional name for "Doc Savage.

Heredity dumped all her cornucopia into the cells of the infant Savage. Doc was descended on his paternal grandfather's side from a very ancient and extremely distinguished family of British nobility. This lineage and many of his extraordinary relatives are described in detail (some say too much detail) in "Addenda 2" and "Addenda 3" of Tarzan Alive. Doc's ancestry on his mother's side (and some distant relatives) is in "Addendum A" of this book.

According to a letter written by Doc himself (in No Light to Die By #170 ), his training toward supermanhood started when he was 14 months old. From then until he was 20, he was in the hands of a board of scientists. His education was so demanding and rigorous that it would have broken a less gifted and sturdy child. At that, it left psychological scars.

For one thing, his father seems to have been absent most of the time. While attending medical school and during internship, he was too busy to see much of his son. Afterwards, he was off around the Globe in his quest for more gold. Even after he found all he needed in the lost Valley of the Vanished, he seems to have devoted himself to archaeology and lion hunting. Toward the end of Doc's training, he returned to New York and there planned with his son for the Crime College. But Doc had no father (in its fullest sense) for all of his formative years.

He had a steady succession of father substitutes. And this invalidates the speculation of some Savage scholars that he was a suppressed homosexual. According to modern Psychology (admittedly a discipline that keeps changing its mind), male homosexuality is often caused by a weak or absent father. Doc's tutors, however, were strong-minded men who seemed to have loved him. Certainly, Jerome Coffern -- his chemist instructor (The Land of Terror #002) -- had great affection for Doc which was reciprocated.

Of course, the temporariness of such relationships may have caused the young Savage a certain amount of insecurity and he would have felt grief at the departure of particularly-liked tutors. On the other hand, though deserted in the particular, he was never so in general. He always had one and quite often several males as companions, mentors, and fathers.

Doc complains in the later supersagas of being lonely, ob having missed a normal boyhood. When he became old enough, he had several boys as companions. But the "play" was restricted to 1-hour a day. During this time, he was pitting his strength and hand-to-hand skills simultaneously against 2-or-3 boys his own size in a roughhouse. It was all competitive and there was no time for palling around with them, joking, bragging, telling stories and daydreams, or going fishing or to the movies.

It's lonely being a superman. But it's far more lonely to be a superboy.

Doc's education was carefully planned down to the least detail. But somehow -- probably because the board was composed of male scientists -- no provision for females was made. (Doc doesn't even seem to have had a female housekeeper or cook. He ate his meals on the run, grabbing whatever was handy. And though trained in a hundred skills, he was a bad cook.) And he never associated with little girls.

The great minds that nurtured him forgot that when Doc went out into the world, he would find that half of it was female. And a man who doesn't know women is half a man. Or half a superman.

Fortunately, Doc was too busy most of the time to suffer from loneliness. He studied intensely and his extremely high I.Q. and almost perfect recall enabled him to grasp and to remember anything he studied only once. And he enjoyed things which most boys could only fantasize.

His travels were extensive enough, long enough, and exotic enough to satisfy even Tom Sawyer. He learned diving and sea lore and the Polynesian tongues in the South Seas. He learned woodcraft from an Amazon Indian tribe and a savage African tribe. A 90-year-old Ubangi taught him to be awakened instantly from sleep if anything was amiss. In India and Tibet, he studied yoga, hypnotism, and the art of emotional control and hot to block off from his brain the most intense agony of the body. From these sages, he also learned the mysteries of the occult and how to generate a fever in his own body and to put himself in suspended animation through mental means.

It was in India that he picked up his habit of unconsciously trilling in certain situations. At the same time that the yogis, fakirs, lamas, and Zen masters were teaching him the arts of peace, he was learning the Oriental arts of personal combat.

In the Occident, he learned savate kick-boxing from the French; free-for-all tricks from longshoremen; a peculiar form of savate from a Berber tribe in North Africa; fencing from the best Italian, French, and Hungarian masters; sabership from the greatest of the Germans; and archery from the greatest of British and Americans. (Despite the latter, he was only a good -- not a great -- bowman.)

Along with his athletic and scientific studies went instruction in the arts. His voice was innately unusual ("thunder under control"). He could have become a great opera singer if he had continued his training. Like Caruso, he could shatter glass with his voice (a talent which saved the day in at least 2 sticky situations). He composed pieces for the violin which the blind violinist Victor Vail insisted had touches of genius (The Polar Treasure #004). Doc also played the violin well enough to appear the Metropolitan Opera and afterwards he was scheduled to play the clarinet in a jazz jam session. (His love for the violin was shared by Holmes and Richard Wentworth.) He could sketch and draw well. But his paintings would never hang alongside the masters.

Doc had a number of unconventional tutors in the skill which he would need in his fight against Crime. From the retired Jimmy Valentine and Arsene Lupin, he learned how to pick locks and open safes. He was a master of quick-change disguise as befits a descendant of the Scarlet Pimpernel. For this exacting field (the price of failure usually bringing death), Doc had Arsene Lupin and several months' tutoring by the retired Sherlock Holmes.

From the Great Detective and Richard Wentworth plus some gleanings from the Indian fakirs, he became able to add 6 inches to his height of lose several inches. (An excellent talent considering his conspicuous 6'8" height.) By controlling individual muscles, he could increase-or-decrease the distance between the vertebrae of the spine. At one time, such control seemed incredible. But contemporary research indicates that this is possible.

In addition to the teaching of scientific deduction by Holmes, Doc was taught by another great English detective (Dr. Thorndyke) and by the greatest of the scientific detectives still in harness (the American Craig Kennedy).

Ventriloquism and vocal imitations were necessary arts. Doc's teacher for these was the Great Lander himself. Excellent though he was in these, he could not imitate a woman's voice perfectly. In eon case, he would have to call in his cousin Patricia. This flaw was undoubtedly a result of his female-less childhood.

The best of circus acrobats were hired to instruct young Savage in tightrope walking, tumbling, knife throwing, and trapeze skills. One of these acrobats taught Doc how to tie and untie knots with only his toes. His aid Monk Mayfair could do the same. [StealthSkater note: I seem to recall that the great escape artist Houdini also had this ability.]

Doc's linguistic accomplishments were marvelous. He could speak 50 languages fluently and 100 languages and dialects passably. He was willing to bet that he could identify any spoken language after listening to a few words of it. (He would have lost his bet in The Secret of the Su #129.)

It was not only living speech that he could master. He could rattle off classical Latin and Old Norse. And he could read Chaldean and Egyptian hieroglyphs as smoothly as if he were reading Polish. The range of his semantic abilities was enormous. He used the deaf-and-dumb sign languages in many cases. And he was conversant with hobo signs and symbols.

Young Savage's training suddenly halted on April 7, 1917. The United States had declared war on Germany the day before. Savage -- who wouldn't be 16 years old until next November -- ran off to join the Army. This threw his guardians into a frenzy since they had no idea why he had dropped out of sight. They hired private detectives to search for him. But even Craig Kennedy and Sam Spade's father (a Pinkerton man) couldn't locate him. The news did not cause the elder Savage any distress because it did not reach him until the War was over. He was in the Amazon hinterland looking for the Maple White Land reported by the Challenger expedition.

Fed up with his cloistered life and the never-ending study, Young Clark had decided to test his extraordinary abilities against the greatest evil of them all -- Germany. (At this time, the U.S. public was convinced of the truth of the atrocity stories spread by the propagandists against the "Huns".)

Though Doc was only 15 years old, he was 6'1" tall and weighed 190 pounds. His mature appearance plus his faked papers got him into the Army Air service. He was already an excellent pilot, having been taught by the best pilot in the World -- A.K. Rassendy II -- who was at that time going under his "Kent Allard" pseudonym.

In March 1918 while on his 7th flight, he was shot down during a balloon-busting exploit. Though wounded by shell fragments and machinegun bullets and injured by the crash, he managed to crawl out from the wreckage of his Nieuport. He got away from the German infantry troops but was tracked down by dogs and captured. On his way to a POW camp, he escaped twice, only to be recaptured.

Because of these escape attempts, he was sent to a special POW prison of which only a few highly-placed Germans were aware. This prison received those who were considered to be too intractable even for the infamous Holzminden camp. It had no national or rank discriminations. British, French, Italian, and American (whether privates or generals) were held here. Its code name was Loki. And it was located -- appropriately enough -- near Berchtesgaden.

Loki was a series of caves inside the mountain with a small fortress built over the entrance. It was deep inside the mountain that the young Savage met and formed a lifelong friendship with 5 older men. They were Americans. The intelligence agent William Harper Littlejohn; Major Thomas J. Roberts; Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair; Colonel John Renwick; and Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks. "Johnny", "Long Tom", "Monk", "Renny", and "Ham".

Ham Brooks was the highest-ranking officer among the prisoners and so was their official leader. His sidekick -- Monk Mayfair -- was however the one who gave his guards the most trouble. This gorilloid Yank (a relative of Savage's although neither knew it then) had once ripped up several lengths of German barbed wire with his hands. When captured, he was wiping out a squad with the barrel of an empty machine-gun.

Monk could not be repressed and so the inevitable happened. Poked in the crotch with a rifle barrel by a guard, he struck the German so hard that he broke the man's spine and killed him. He was to be sentenced the next day. But Savage hurried up his escape plans and the six of them escaped with some French and British.

It is too bad that Dent never got around to writing of this highly ingenious and exciting breakout. Perhaps someday, Conde Nast will give its permission for an author (myself, I hope) to write this very first of the supersagas. [StealthSkater note: apparently that day came. See Escape from Loki (#0183) ]

In July 1918, Savage and his friends rejoined their respective outfits. In the Argonne operation of September (November of that year), Doc met another cousin -- Flight Lieutenant John Drummond Clayton, temporarily attached to the U.S. Army Air Service. They talked about Clayton's father, the 8th duke of Greystoke, the grandson of the brother of Doc's grandfather. As a result of this meeting, Doc would take some postgraduate training from Lord Greystoke. The arboreal skills learned from this visit enabled Doc on at least 4 occasions to carry a person on his back a la Tarzan through the trees and so escape the villains.

And in 1934, Greystoke sent to his cousin some silphium pills that he had obtained from the Kavuru tribe. Doc was to analyze them and then synthesize this age-delaying elixir. But he refused (for good reasons) to release them for public consumption. [More on this in Chapter 11] [StealthSkater note: actually, Doc encountered silphium in the strange case of 131-year-old Dan Thunden in Fear Cay (#019).]

In February 1919, Doc returned to Johns Hopkins Medical School. At the time he ran away, he was (though only 15) a senior there. He had passed all his examinations and so been admitted without going through the regular route. Doc got his M.D. in 1926 and went to Vienna for more study in brain surgery and neurology. While there, he attended some lectures by Sigmund Freud. It is said that although there is no record of it, he underwent a brief analysis by Freed.

In 1927, Doc made the first of his experiments designed to cure criminals. In 1928 with his father, he built the secret upstate New York "College" for criminals. (See Chapter 8 for details about this singular institution.)

4 -- the Bronze Hero of Technopolis and Exotica

Up above the World so high, Doc Savage lives.

His headquarters and home are enormous. They consist of the entire uppermost floor of the tallest building on Earth.

There is a small Reception room; a vast Library; and a Laboratory that covers two-thirds or more of the available floorage. When Doc isn't out nemesizing criminals, he's usually in the Lab ("the Wizard's Den") working his white magic of gadgets and scientific amulets. Despite the many inventions he gives to Humanity and a number of others he conceals for its good, Science (or magic) is not his main profession.

In No Light To Die By (#170), Sammy Wales asks a bellhop what Doc does. The bellhop replies: "Savage? He rights wrongs and punishes evildoers."

Sammy comments: "Then he shouldn't lack for business in this World."

Sammy -- usually wrong -- is right this time.

Pat (Doc's beautiful cousin) says that somebody tries to kill Doc at least once-a-month.

Pat underestimates. Some months, at least a dozen villains (major and minor) attempt to kill him. He is their object of murderous desire. Get him and the going will be smooth. Whether in luxurious suites of crappy tenements, they turn pale when Doc's name is mentioned. He is a "great bronze bird of vengeance"; "a metallic specter of violence"; "a golden-eyed juggernaut". Monk describes him as "a blend of ghost, magician, and bobcat". He is "... nobody to be in the same woods with if he doesn't like you."

Yet this (Doc) is the same man who says "Violence isn't going to show anyone a profit. Either in human rights or money." However, if he had refused to meet violence with violence, he would have been dead the very start of his career.

Doc also says "It's unfortunate that the moral enlightenment of the human race isn't keeping pace with its scientific discoveries."

But he makes a peculiar statement which runs counter to this. Or does it?

"Society prepares the crime and the criminal only commits it."

On reflection, this sounds very much like an indictment of the structure of his society. Doc, however, makes no effort to change that structure. Perhaps because he believes that it is the best available or because any effort to do so is foredoomed.

In any event, he is too busy defending himself from and attacking the practitioners of black magic to try to alter the bases of society.

And who and what is this "Nimrod of the Tower of Babel", the deadly "Harun-al-Rashid of Baghdad-on-the-Hudson", the "Merlin of the Fifth Avenue Camelot", the "Galahad of tubes and gadgets", the "guardian of Manhattan's Caronek?

Dr. Clark Savage Jr. at 29 years of age stands 6'8" inches high and weighs 270 pounds. At least that's what Dent's notebook says. In the first supersaga (The Man of Bronze #001), he is 6-feet tall and weighs 200 pounds. His height and weight vary throughout the tales (as do Monk's, Renny's, and Johnny's). Generally, he is almost 7-feet tall. The discrepancies can be attributed to the hastiness and forgetfulness of Dent and the other occasional writers of the supersagas. [StealthSkater note: actually, it is very rare that an exact measurement of Doc's physique is ever stated. Most of the time it is in comparison to a nearby doorframe or someone like Renny. The conversion is left to the reader's imagination.]

According to Monk, Doc is "as conspicuous in a crowd as a fig leaf on a fan dancer." Sammy Wales says that he moves as easily as if he were on oil bearings. Mr. Weed describes him as "all lion and a yard wide".

He is handsome; his forehead is unusually high. His nose is straight; his lips are mobile and not too full; his cheeks are lean. His chin is square; his jaw is strong but not massive. His hair is a beautiful bronze, straight and close to his scalp. Along with his bronze skin ("deeply tanned by many tropical suns"), it has the peculiar property of shedding water as if it were a penguin's back. Possibly Doc coats himself with a water-repellent substance although Dent never says so.

He has "weird golden eyes", "hot aureate pools" "radiating a hypnotic magnetism". They are a very light tawny brown with golden flecks that seem always to whirl like some sort of protein Goldwasser.

He is a giant but so perfectly proportioned that he doesn't look big unless he is near some object of known size or standing next to you. His muscles are not gorilloid but rather like bundles of thin piano wires covered with a bronze lacquer. When he tenses them, they coil like pythons.

These muscles are the result of a daily 2-hour set of exercises taken since he was 14 months old. Part of these workouts consist of a Charles Atlas-like contest of pitting one set of muscles against the other. (Now used in modified and restricted form by the Canadian Royal Air Force.) [SS note: typically called "isometrics", they augment (but not replace) traditional weight-lifting.] This 120-minute daily stint is never neglected by Doc (well, hardly ever). While he is working out his muscles, he simultaneously exercises his brain by multiplying, dividing, and extracting square and cube roots. Given a hundred-digit number, he can repeat it in exact sequence hours (or even days) later.

He listens to sound waves of frequencies too high or too low for the ordinary human ear to detect and so improves his auditory sense. He has exercised his eyes in the dark to the point where he can see almost as well as a cat. (These last 2 abilities must really have come from chemical preparations since the human eye and ear have innate limits that no amount of exercising can extend. Or maybe Dent was exaggerating.)

He names "dozens of different odors after a quick olfactory test of small vials packed in a case". This is credible. But his sense of smell is also equivalent to that of an ape's. This superhuman (or rather subhuman) ability must have been due to a genetic mutation. It is shared by his relatives -- Lord Greystoke and Lew Archer.

Doc improves his sense of touching by reading Braille. And many other devices used by him in his high-speed highly-involved exercising. It leaves him tuned-up and ready-to-go. But people break into a sweat just watching him go through them.

He knows no leisure and feels ill-at-ease when he tries to take a vacation. "Hazards are his heritage" and so also is the compulsion of probing into the unknowns of Science and of, in fact, almost everything. Almost everything but cooking and female psychology. Until 1946, he doesn't know how to dance. But this can be forgiven in a man whose technical books are in the libraries and laboratories of every great institution of education in the World.

Just a listing of all his designs, developments, and inventions would fill pages of this book. They range over 100 fields:

# Designs for airplanes, dirigibles, motors, elevators.

# Quick-growing lumber trees.

# A cure for paranoia.

# New brain-surgery techniques.

# An electric method for bonding plywood.

# A radar for differentiating between metals at a distance.

# A shoulder-holstered ram's-horn-shaped submachine pistol shooting .24-caliber bullets 786-a-minute, 66 in a magazine.

# The first wire recorder.

# Dissolvable parachutes.

# A cigarette case which shoots (later used by Russian secret agents according to James Bond author Ian Fleming).

# A wristwatch-sized TV receiver.

# A true autogyro.

# A spray-on plastic-skin for resisting -60o below weather.

# Pills for diving which supply oxygen to the blood for half-an-hour.

# A bleach to change a black car to gray in a few minutes.

# A gas to neutralize poison gases.

# The first telephone message recorder.

# An epoxy-like glue for repairing breaks in bone very quickly.

# A cure for the common cold.

Not all of these inventions worked. Though a superman, Doc wasn't perfect. His new cableless pneumatic elevator was described by Monk (rather gleefully) as a "lemon". And in Mad Mesa (#071), the only result of his experiments to cure the common cold is that he himself catches one. His trinitromite (a thousand times more powerful than dynamite) is too unstable to be safely used. His atomic disintegrator is only effective a little over 20 feet. His truth serum sometimes works on criminals and sometimes doesn't. In its strongest form, it is very effective but it can still kill. Thus in The Men Vanished (#094), Doc refuses to use it on 3 captives.

When he is dressed to kill (literally), he is a walking dreadnaught, a human minefield. He wears bulletproof metal-alloy underwear and a skullcap which simulates his own hair. His leather vest is so loaded with gadgets that he must often have looked like a walrus. His fingers are sometimes tipped with false nails at the ends of which are tiny needles covered with an anesthetic drug.

A hollow tooth contains a tiny coiled saw. Other hollow capped teeth contain explosives. He has an artificial scar on his back which hides a tiny flat box of explosive powder or a flare with which to blind his opponents.

He carries (usually inside his belt) a long slender silk cord with a collapsible grapnel at one end. His quiet brown business suits are impregnated with various chemicals for various uses against criminals. The lining of the outside breast pocket is a thin elastic transparent material easily torn out. Put over the head and tightened around the neck, it makes a short-term gas mask. In conjunction with the oxygen pills, it is good for half-an-hour.

His shoes have hollow heels containing anything from a short-range radio transmitter with a tiny battery to radioactive pieces of metal to enable his aides to track him. They can also contain explosives, flares, or lockpicks and drills. The vest always holds small explosive grenades or thin-walled glass balls full of anesthetic gas or chemicals to release smokescreens.

Under his shirtsleeves, he also wears flat glass cases of anesthetic gas strapped to his arm. By tensing his biceps, he breaks these. While he holds his breath, his unsuspecting enemies keel over.

But Doc doesn't wear all these gadgets at the same time. He is usually equipped for the particular occasion.

Even when some knowing villain strips him of clothes and skullcap and uncaps his teeth and tears off the artificial scars, he is as dangerous as a bull moose in rut. 6 armed men with billy clubs might get him. But most of them will be down-and-out before the sap descends on the unprotected head.

Doc is -- in a sense -- a Boy Scout, always prepared. He can only survive through a never-ending suspicion and many measures for preservation. He never stands where he is in the line-of-fire from a window. If he has an appointment (no matter with whom), he checks out the person and the site before the meeting.

"His foes were legion". And if they became less during the years, it was not because he got there first with the most or showed up late or not at all. Sometimes he allows himself to be captured. That is the only way he can get a lead onto the villains or to his own captured aides. This takes supreme confidence. And Doc has it.

He often depends on his gadgets. But he hates to use a gun. For most of his career, he refuses to wear one. During the later years, he loses his interest in gadgets which he once said were his "principal vice". Even so, he carries the silk line-and-grapnel for sentiment's sake.

This divesting of technological devices parallels an increasing loss of self-control. Either he is slowly breaking down under the never-ending strain or he has an unconscious reliance (deeply-rooted) on the gadgets. For some reason -- psychological probably -- he has to give these up. Perhaps he realizes that he is more machine than man as long as he clothes himself with them. To become more human, he sheds them however reluctantly.

But as they depart, he feels less-and-less secure. He can't admit this to himself. So he continues the scaling off layer-by-layer of metal and chemical defenses. Thus, the inner Doc -- the one deprived o his mother at 14 months of age, the one who knew no females during his formative years -- becomes more-and-more the abandoned baby.

In his early exploits, Doc rarely smiles. He never takes part in the juvenile (but therapeutic) horseplay of his aides. He silently endures Monk and Ham's incessant chatter, corny jokes, loud quarreling, and their often cruel practical jokes on each other. When he does reprimand them, he doesn't do so vigorously. More by tone than word, he makes it obvious they are a drag or he sighs so deeply that they know what he is thinking.

In the first 2 exploits, Doc is as violent and bloody as any 2-handed engine of retribution. It is true that his reasons for the merciless slaying of the villains are enough to make the most pacifistic of us want to kill in a most violent way.

In The Man of Bronze (#001), his father is purposely infected with the horrible "Red Death" and dies. In The Land of Terror (#002), his beloved chemistry tutor Dr. Jerome Coffern falls victim to the terrifying "Smoke of Eternity".

In both cases, Doc -- while on the trail of the murderers -- slays right-and-left with his bare hands and anything else handy. He leaves a trail behind him that surely must have brought some questions and reprimands from the police. In both exploits, however, Doc can plead self-defense against known vicious criminals, many of them wanted for murder. But the crooks are often trying to get away from him as fast as possible because they realize what they have aroused.

After this, Doc changed. Revenge has sweetened him. Between The Land of Terror (#002) and Quest of the Spider (#003), he spends 2 weeks in his Fortress of Solitude. (Chapter 9 describes this "Strange Blue Dome" on an Arctic island.) Here he must have brooded on what had happened in the first 2 supersagas. He must have been sickened by the ogre that had broken loose from the dark dungeon of himself.

Certainly, the murderers of Coffern and his father deserved to die. But he doesn't want to go on killing, killing, killing. If he does, he'll become no better than the murderers. Worse in fact because he is far superior to any of those poor sick beings. Criminality is a disease and he doesn't want to catch it.

To keep his own health and because the criminal is sick, Doc adopts a new philosophy. From now on, no antagonist is to be killed unless it's absolutely necessary. And even the necessity will be much regretted by Doc.

Doc "lays down the law" to his 5 associates Monk, Ham, Renny, Johnny, and Long Tom. They seem to agree. But the irrepressible and violent Monk quite often kills by "accident". And on at least one occasion, Renny openly disobeys Doc. It is only when this ruling is broken that Doc harshly reprimands his associates. The rest of the time no matter how much they foul up (and the 2 clowns Ham and Monk often do; "Humpty and Dumpty on a raft"), he never criticizes.

On the other hand, he has the disconcerting habit of seeming to be deaf when he doesn't want to answer their questions. These are usually about the identity of their mysterious assailants or their motives. Doc never guesses and often it's better to say nothing. If his associates knew what he was hypothesizing, they might later fall into the villains' hands and be forced under torture to give the information.

"Sagacity usually motivates Doc's operations," Johnny says.

"Words have to be jarred out of Doc," Monk adds.

Doc has "seen the light" long before the others are out of the dark. As he tells them: "What you don't know can't hurt somebody else."

After a while, his aides adjust to his failure to answer. But others (especially women) are upset and angered by this habit. It is one mode of behavior that he keeps throughout his career.

He changes other traits as time's catalysts permeate him. One is his trilling.

"It was low, mellow ... It might have been the alarm notes of some strange feathered songster of the jungle. Or the sound of an undulating breeze filtering through a ... forest. ... Melodious, it had no tune. And it was inspiring without being in the least awesome.

" 'Doc Savage!' Ham said softly.

"For this was ... a part of Doc. A small unconscious thing which he did in moments of concentration. To his friends, it was both a cry of battle and the song of triumph. It would come ... in moments of stress when events of importance impended.

"It had the peculiar quality of seeming to come from everywhere rather than a definite spot. It might have been emanating from the office. Yet Doc Savage was nowhere about."

This habit was to betray him at least once. Perhaps it was this near-fatal incident that determined him to rid himself of it. In almost every one of the supersagas from the beginning until War World II, he trills. But after started, he begins to lose his trademark and eventually wipes it out of his neural circuits.

In the beginning, Doc knows no fear. The most startling and horrifying events fail even to twitch the bronze mask. But as the years wear on him, something inside him loses control. He reacts with disgust, with alarm, and sometimes with an almost complete loss of control. He jumps at unexpected noises. He loses his temper and throws away his contact lenses (that he used in disguises).\\

In Mystery on Happy Bones (#125), he sweats nervously before a parachute jump. In The Invisible-Box Murders (#105), he loses his temper and slams Blosser across the room. In Men of Fear (#108) while shadowing a suspect, he pulls a thoroughly nonprofessional boner.

He seems to be another person in The Lost Giant (#142). Certainly, he's not the Doc we know. He's full of fears and self-doubts and is neurotically subdued. He does come through (e.g., locates and saves Winston Churchill downed in the Arctic from Nazis). But not in the grand old style. James Bond would have done it with more flourish and gusto. And in the final tale Up From Earth's Center (#181), Doc actually screams with horror. Doc Savage screaming??!

As the adventures roll on, he makes mistakes. They would be expected and forgivable from lesser beings. But they do show that he is human. And we like him the better for them. [StealthSkater note: speak for yourself. It was Street&Smith's later editors that forced Dent to do this.]

In wartime London, he is almost run over because he has forgotten that English traffic is on the left side of the road. In The Metal Master (#037), he forgets that his tied-up captives can get to a kitchen knife and so cut themselves loose. He blames himself (rightly so) for his stupidity. But he evidently still has the "superman" image to conform to. He ignores the fact that everybody -- no matter how intelligent -- has lapses. He thinks that he should be perfect.

At one time, he carries in his head the detailed maps of every large city in the World. Put him down in any one of them and he'll know where he is. But in a post-War story, his marvelous fluency in even the most obscure Arabic dialect is failing. He isn't as good as he used to be even in the widely-spoken Egyptian Arabic.

Due to lack of practice, he cannot lip-read as well as he once did. (He could lip-read Chinese among other tongues. Which seems incredible since the meaning of Chinese words depends not only on phonemes but also tones.) He's forgotten the subtleties of the Oklahoma dialect. And The Speaking Stone (#112) reveals that he speaks Spanish with a slight American accent. In the earlier stories, his Spanish is perfect.

This regression is strange. Once a language is mastered, the vocabulary and grammar may be lost because of disuse. But the pronunciation is ingrained and imbedded in the nerves. Did Dent exaggerate some of Doc's accomplishments in the earlier stories? Did he do so because he had orders from the publishers to build a "superman" for his reads (supposedly largely in the 15-year-old bracket)? And did the publishers decide that he should draw a more realistic portrait in the later exploits? [StealthSkater note: in the DS000 file (doc pdf URL-doc URL-pdf ), this has already been answered. The initial "Doc Savage" came from Lester Dent and the later "Doc" was from Dent's new editorial bosses.]

We know that Doc complained in No Light To Die By (#170) that Dent made the exploits overly colorful. And in one story, he comments disgustedly on a magazine article about him. "That chap certainly has a lot of imagination.

Did he actually kayo a shark with one fist blow on its snout [? ? ? ? ? ?] ? Did he really knock out a polar bear with his fists and then break its neck with a half-nelson? And then tear out steaks from it with his bare hands? The Polar Treasure (#004) Could he turn an automobile back over onto its wheels with his hands only [? ? ? ? ? ?]? Could he leap (in street shoes) 2 feet above the World's record high-jump [? ? ? ? ?]? This -- in 1934 -- was 6' 9-1/8". Doc was 6'8" high and so his jump was 1-foot and 2-1/8 inches above his head. Valery Brumel of Russia and N. Chih-chin of China have cleared 16-7/8" above their own heads. Doc didn't do as well as they. But he was handicapped by his much greater body weight. And he did not have track shoes on.

The other feats -- though marvelous -- are not beyond the bounds of credibility. And since it has been verified that Lord Greystoke has performed equal-or-greater herculeanics, we can accept Doc's as true.

Doc's relations with his aides are those of a big brother to a smaller. They are all older than he. But he is the natural leader. In fact, Doc addresses them as "Brothers" so often that you wonder if they really are.

He often gets fed up with Ham and Monk. So much so that in Trouble on Parade (#153), he is thankful that they are absent from the adventure. He can't take much more of them at this point in his life.

Despite this, he would have been deeply grieved if they had quit the group (fat chance!) or been killed (highly likely). He loves them and often when a situation demands a sacrifice of the life on one insists that he (Doc) be the one to take the chance. The others love him and will throw away their own lives to save him. Sometimes they tried to do just that.

On several occasions when it seems that Doc is dead, the others are stricken. They reminisce about him and it's significant that they don't dwell on his superhuman feats. No, they talk of the little things that they did -- Doc's humanity and compassion and the fun they've had when grim things weren't occupying them. Monk once makes a speech to Doc after he's come back alive that brings tears to Doc's eyes.

Also, much as Doc reproaches Monk for his bloodthirstiness and deceit, he must use Monk as a vicar for his own repressed tendencies. (In a number of cases including They Died Twice (#117), Doc lies straight out.) Sometimes he needs a liar. In Meteor Menace (#013), he gets Monk to tell the pretty Rae Stanley that her father had been killed sometime before when actually he was the mad villain Mo-Gwei. Monk Mayfair would rather lie any day than tell the truth and so he cheerfully does this for Doc.

In addition, though Doc seldom manhandles a captive himself, he sends in Monk for a "softening-up" before the basic questioning begins. He knows very well that Monk's technique is to try to scare the crooks with tough talk and then -- if that doesn't work -- to throw them against a wall; jump up-and-down on them; and bend legs and arms into painful positions.

This is illegal and it is cruel. But there is never the slightest doubt that the captive is guilty and if the information isn't gotten quickly, some innocent will die.

Also despite a moral position that often makes Ham and Monk uncomfortable, he must get some vicarious sexual stimulation and maybe even relief from their studding.

Doc says: "Understand this. I'm no judge of female character."

He's take a course in feminine psychology but gotten nothing out of it. He can generally tell if a man is lying. But he wishes that someone would invent a contraption to flash a red light when a woman is lying to him. In The Terrible Stork (#111), he says that he has finally learned to "read" the female character. But later tales don't bear this out.

Johnny thinks that women scare him. Patricia Savage (the only woman who knows her cousin well) says that Doc had a "goofy training". It hasn't made him a freak although he has his "goofy moments". She says that he's afraid of women because his lifelong education has been scientific and he thus "expects to understand how things tick". Not know what makes women "tick", he is afraid of them.

Despite regarding women as mysterious time bombs, Doc is "powerfully attracted" to them. He is wise. But he is a male. In Meteor Menace (#013), the Cockney Shrops explains to his fellow villain Saturday Loo that he needs Rae Stanley to vamp the Bronze Man. Loo replies: "It is said that wise men are not affected by women." After laughing, Shrops says: "Then there ain't no wise men in this 'appy World."

In Brand of the Werewolf (#111), Doc is kissed for the first time in his life by a woman. Senorita Oveja gives him a big smackeroo on the lips which he finds delicious and stimulating. Rae Stanley gives Doc "a resounding and amorous kiss". Doc gets himself into a find with her because he's gotten affianced to her. He does this just to further his plans against Mo-Gwei. He knows that she is not really in love with him. He pretends to push her to get married immediately and she refuses. But he must have some deep feelings for her because he blushes when Ham calls her a "hussy".

Toni Lash's startling beauty affects Doc greatly in The Devil Genghis (#070). In the comical The Freckled Shark (#073), he takes a few days off from the persona of Doc Savage in the disguise of the bumbling insulting "Henry Peace". He proposes marriage to Rhoda Haven a number of times. When the need for the disguise is over, he's terrified. Ham and Johnny -- for the first time -- laugh at him. They find his terror ridiculous and, probably, satisfying to them. Their "superman" leader has weaknesses after all.

It is in this tale that we get the first intimations that Doc isn't in love with his role of superman. As Henry Peace, he works off many repressions and irritations; plays stupid; pays court to a woman; and knocks Ham and Monk down. (Doubtless the last was the expression of a frequent wish.) He concludes that it is, however, dangerous being "Henry Peace" because he's tempted to keep on being him.

Again, in King Joe Cay (#149) Doc enjoys himself tremendously in disguise. After stealing a purse on a train out of Chicago (for a good reason), he sees an oatfield and desires greatly to forget everything and just lie down in the oats for the sheer pleasure of it. He would like to loaf and invite his soul, be one with the beasts.

In The Dagger in the Sky (#082), Doc is captured because he's not as alert as usual. He's been too interested in watching the beautiful Sandra MacNamara.

The Men of Fear (#108) states that he was frequently inclined to become attached to a girl. More than one throughout the tales has a beauty which makes him "curl his toes".

By the time of Jiu San (#140) (October 1944), Doc is asking women out to dinner. And these beauties accept, of course. In Strange Fish (#144), Doc is attracted to Paris Stevens "more than a little". And he wonders in The Terrible Stork (#148) is he's not trying to show off before Ada Nobel.

Patience (a "cute trick") gives Doc a mere glance from her big brown ices in Fire and Ice (#161) and it sends "electric flashes coursing through him".

He is enraged by Susie Lane's accusations of cowardice in The Exploding Lake (#163). Certainly if he did not care for her, he would not have reacted so strongly.

By the time of The Devil Is Jones (#165) (November 1946), he is interested enough in women to learn to dance.

As for Doc's possible sexual attitude to his cousin Patricia, Chapter 16 contains some speculations on that.

[StealthSkater note: in the aforementioned DS000_Authors file, Will Murray (author of most of the post-Dent DS stories) states that Doc seemed to be greatly attracted to women that were "madonna"-like. And there were only three(3): Princess Monja (The Man of Bronze #001, The Golden Peril #058, They Died Twice #111); Rhoda Haven (The Freckled Shark #073); and Seryi Mitroff (The Red Spider #182, The Frightened Fish #186) The latter is the only one who consistently called him by his legal name "Clark", implying that they had the closest of relationships. Even his aides were shocked when they heard her calling him "Clark".]

Given Doc's unusual vigor and his undoubted desire for women, why did he remain chaste (that is, if he did)? His excuse was that his enemies would strike at him through any women with which he became involved. But he made only a weak effort to keep Pat from taking part in his dangerous exploits. Did his all-male childhood make him impotent? Was Monk speaking in more than one sense when he said: "The woman isn't made who can get a rise out of Doc"?

In The Ten-Ton Snakes (#145), Doc himself implies that he may need psychoanalysis. He admits being a juvenile.

"He still had the kid stuff in him. He never had a chance to work it off." If he had had, he would "now be a young settled family man with a wife who dragged him out to bridge parties." Tickled at the idea of Doc being dominated by a henpecker, Renny gives one of his rare laughs. Offended, Doc shuts up.

But his self-analysis is significant. Juveniles (in Doc's day anyway) thought girls were "sissy" stuff. And there is still an active 15-year-old in Doc.

After he had cooled off from Renny's laugh, he must have agreed with Renny that he is being ridiculous. Such a domestic life could never have been his. Even without the peculiar education his somewhat "cracked" father had arranged for him.

There is a taint in the Savage blood. A lust for danger. He is a genius who could never have adjusted to a "normal" lifestyle. He must have remembered his father's quotation taken from Givvon. His father had placed it before him shortly after he had learned to read. It was one of the first things that he could remember about his father.

Conversation enriches the understanding,

But solitude is the school of the genius.

And as the Man of Bronze, he does far more good than as just a surgeon or businessman. His charities are numerous and far-flung, a listing of which would fill many pages. He has ended the careers of many geniuses of Crime. Any one of them -- if successful -- would have put the World under a tyranny even more unshakable and terrible than that planned by the Austrian Hitler.

He owns (or has large shares in) so many businesses that he is the richest man in the World. (For a time, anyway.) He has rescued dozens of big business from financial ruin and so ensured employment for thousands. His surgical techniques and many inventions have saved thousands of lives and enriched Mankind. His "Crime College" has converted hundreds of crooks into honest men and saved the taxpayers much many and canceled many crimes that would otherwise inevitably have been committed.

Doc is indeed the archangel of Technopolis and of far-off jungle-and-desert Exotica. He is the scientific savior. And as saviors always must, he suffers loneliness and a sense of isolation from the people. He has to be ready for those who would daily crucify him.

The price is worth it. Otherwise, he could have quit his role.

Before we close this chapter on Doc, we must consider some puzzling statements by Pat in The Motion Menace (#063). She tells the villain Penroff that Doc is a man who has always had many enemies. Penroff then asks her what that has to do with the present situation. Pat replies: "Suppose that Doc was never the bronze man he appeared to be. You must admit that his big bronze characterization stands out in a crowd. Almost any enemy would recognize him instantly. Think what it would mean if he was never really the Bronze Man. Suppose he was a totally different individual?"

Penrose likes this idea. It would explain why he has had so much difficulty capturing him. But he wonders about the golden eyes. Pat says that these could be glass caps fitting on the eyeballs.

It is true that Pat seems to say this to simply throw Penroff off the track and make him think that his prisoner is really Doc Savage (which was only a very large man that Doc subdued and planted for capture). He's not and Pat's ruse works.

But what if Pat were really telling the truth? Then Doc's real appearance is never described in the supersagas and the often-discrepant descriptions by Dent and the other "ghostwriters" might be explained. Perhaps Dent's initial description and some others (including the police bulletin in The Man Who Was Scared #137: 6'4" from 210-to-220 pounds) are closer to reality.

In any event, it is meaningful that it was Pat who suggested that Doc's true appearance was not known. If she were Doc's lover, then only she might have seen him in the undisguised flesh.

The Man of Mystery is even more mysterious than we thought.

5 -- The Skyscraper

The building in which Doc had his Headquarters is never mentioned by a specific name. It is always just "the skyscraper". Many times, it is "one of the tallest in New York" or "one of the most impressive". More often, it is "the most impressive", "the grandest", "the highest", "the tallest", or "the finest". When its location is mentioned, it is always in midtown Manhattan.

In The Man of Bronze (#001), Dent describes it thus: "A gleaming spike of steel and brick, it rammed upward nearly a hundred stories."

Variations of this run throughout the supersagas. A respectable number, however, stipulate that the building is only 86 floors high. One gives it 102 stories.

A few times, the dirigible mooring mast on top of the skyscraper mast is mentioned. In The Evil Gnome (#086), it is called "as useful as a pair of tonsils".

The Empire State Building is in midtown Manhattan. It is the only skyscraper in the World to be topped with a dirigible mooring mast (never used). The building itself is 86 stories high. But with the mooring mast added, it is 102 stories high.

There is other evidence which enables us to locate and identify this building precisely.

In The Man of Bronze (#001), Doc leaves the skyscraper and takes a taxi which goes north on Fifth Avenue, directly from the building. In The Land of Terror (#002), Doc takes a taxi on the Fifth Avenue side of Central Park and goes south on Fifth to the skyscraper. In the same supersaga, the Sixth Avenue Elevated is close to the building.

In The Red Skull (#006), the villainous Buttons Zortell walks south from Forty-Second and Broadway until he reaches Doc's skyscraper. To do this, he would have to cross Sixth Avenue. In The Phantom City (#010), 4 criminals walk down Fifth Avenue and turn onto a side-street to observe the exit of Doc's subbasement garage. This side-street has to be either Thirty-Fourth or Thirty-Third Street.

One of Doc's secret tunnels from the skyscraper's subbasement garage leads to a locker in the Broadway subway. The Land of Terror (#002) notes that Broadway is the only street to run the whole length of Manhattan and that a subway runs beneath it nearly its whole distance. Broadway angles southeastward from the intersection of Thirty-Fourth Street and Sixth Avenue (the present-day Avenue of the Americas). It then intersects Fifth Avenue and continues southeastward, straightening out at Tenth to run more-or-less straight south.

If Doc's tunnel leads to the Broadway subway and if Doc leaves the building to take a taxi directly up Fifth Avenue, then the building must Fifth Avenue on its East side and Sixth Avenue to its west. Additional evidence indicates that Thirty-Fourth Street bounds it on the north.

According to The South Pole Terror (#044), Doc's huge warehouse-hangar/dock (the Hidalgo Trading Company) is at or near the Hudson River end of Thirty-Fourth Street. The Hidalgo Trading Company is connected underground to the skyscraper by the great pneumatic tube which Monk Mayfair calls the "velar run" (among other things). The tube starts from the 86th floor; plunges down through the skyscraper deep into the earth; and then curves upward to terminate inside the Hudson River building.

The underground length of this tube must be over 6,000 feet. The expense of tunneling through the bedrock and installing the tube had to be enormous. Thus, the shortest distance to the river was the most efficient for operation, considering the amounts of power involved in sending the passenger car at 100 mph through the tube. (The Freckled Shark #073 specifies this velocity).

The shortest distance to the river is also the most economical in terms of time spent digging and money expended. This is why Doc chose the Thirty-Fourth Street site for the Hidalgo Trading Company. And this is one of the reasons why we know that Thirty-Fourth Street is a boundary of Doc's skyscraper.

What building is it that is definitely in midtown Manhattan and is bounded by Fifth Avenue, Thirty-Fourth Street, and Thirty-Third Street? What skyscraper is the only one in Manhattan with a dirigible mooring mast? The only one that fits these specifications is the Empire State Building.

The Empire State Building also has other qualifications. The Reception room on the 86th floor has windows on the west and north sides. Which would place it on the northwest corner of the building. From there, Broadway, Times Square, and the Hudson River can be seen. The Sixth Avenue Elevated could be seen from there (it's gone now).

The stories are not consistent in specifying the number of elevators in the skyscraper. The Red Skull (#006) states that it has more than 50 passenger elevators. The Angry Canary (#177) says that there are 40-or-50 elevators in it. Only 22 elevators are specified by The Fiery Menace (#155). (This story also says that 5,000 people work in the building.) The Feathered Octopus (#055) counts nearly 100 elevators.

In fact, the Empire State Building has 63 passenger elevators; is 102 stories high (counting the mooring mast); and 25,000 employees of 940 firms worked in it in 1932.

In The Terrible Stork (#148), the 86th floor is called the top floor. Above it, however, is a roof restaurant; a nightclub; an observation tower; a souvenir shop for tourists; elevator machinery; a water tank; and "other stuff". This somewhat resembles the Empire State Building setup of the observation floor.

All things considered, Doc's aerie must have been in the tallest skyscraper in the World. Why then was Dent so vague about its identity? Why did he even set forth contradictory details concerning it in the various supersagas?

The most compelling reason for the avoidance of the truth is the legal reason. Doc was well aware that Dent and other Street&Smith writers were writing a series of fictional stories based on him. Doc admitted that himself in No Light To Die By (#170).

Doc wasn't too pleased with the pulp-magazine versions of the exploits of himself and his aides. They were far too exaggerated, too purplish, and (though he doesn't say so) probably contained a number of character distortions. But he wasn't going to be bothered with lawsuits forbidding Street&Smith from publishing these fantasies about him.

However, he did lay down certain rules for the Doc Savage magazine. One was that his true name not be used. The other was that deliberate contradictions be made so that readers would believe that the supersagas were fiction.

On this latter point, Doc could have saved himself some breath. Dent, Danberg, Hathway, and Goart wrote with such speed and lack of editing that many contradictions were inevitable.

One of the things that must be ascertained, however, is the true location of Doc's Headquarters. Were they actually on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building?

We know that Doc would not be content with anything but the best and the highest. And the topmost residential floor of the highest residential building in the World would be Doc's if it were possible to get it.

From his "skyscraper aerie", he would command a view of the richest city in the World as befitted a man whose private dirigible had cost him more than the national debt of some small countries. And where else would the "Great Wizard" (for Doc was such) dwell? Where else but on the top of the tallest artificial mountain, on top of the loftiest tower of Babel? Here Doc would commute with the lightning and talk with the eagles. Here in this Indiana-limestone and granite, stainless-steel and aluminum Olympus, the demigod of the vast Technopolis worked his scientific miracles and planned his campaigns against the demons below.

The dirigible mooring mast (see Figure 1) is familiar to most of the older generation all over the World (and to many of the younger). They know it as the site of the last stand of the Brobdingnagian ape King Kong. Here at the summit of Technopolis, the great ape fell victim to the Technopolis.

(It's unfortunate that Doc and his aides were not in New York City when the titanic anthropoid escaped its bonds. What a fine supersaga the conflict of Doc and Kong would have made! Perhaps Doc might have averted the tragic end of the ape by capturing it and taking it back to its native isle. However, Kong was doomed even in this event since the isle sank about a year-or-so later anyway.)

It's worth nothing that King Kong's capture on the isle was made possible by grenades which released an anesthetic gas. These were provided by Doc Savage, of course. Only the pressing business elsewhere prevented Doc from joining the Carl Denham Expedition. Doc was, however, a technical adviser for the film which reenacted the Kong caper.

No doubt, Doc lived on one of the highest floors of the ESB. But it would not have been the 86th. This is incontrovertibly the observation floor. I have personally been on that floor twice. But those who may not care to take my word for it can refer to the Photostat of a letter from Mr. Wien (a former co-owner of the ESB). His authority establishes that the 86th is not -- and never has been -- Doc's Headquarters.

I have been unable to determine which story Doc actually occupied. The management of the ESB has informed me that this information is unavailable. I suppose that by this the management means that the information is highly confidential. Probably, the management does not want thousands of Savage fans making pilgrimages to the actual floor and so interfering with the business which now occupies it.

I'll guess that since Doc would want to be as highly placed as possible, his Headquarters were on one of the floors between the 80th and the 86th. On the other hand, since his visitors never transferred at the 80th to go to a higher floor (if we can believe Dent), he may have been in a story between the 70th and the 80th.

For the purposes of this book and in deference to those who would be outraged if any other were named, the 86th will be designated as Doc's throughout this book. And it is called out as such in Figure 1.

From the 86th floor, 3 pneumatic tubes and 3 secret elevators lead downward. The 2 small tubes are in the Reception room. One delivers newspapers from the lobby on the ground floor. The other delivers mail from the central post office on Thirty-Third Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues.

The third tube (the giant) propels its passenger car from a hidden compartment to the Hidalgo Trading Company building on Thirty-Fourth Street by the Hudson River. Monk Mayfair called this great pneumatic tube and its car the "flea run" or the "go-devil" or the "angel wagon".

Obviously, the pneumatic tubes and the secret elevators were not afterthoughts. They were planned before the Empire State Building was built and the shafts and tubes for them were installed during construction. The mail and newspaper tubes must have been used as soon as Doc's father occupied the 86th. The secret elevator near the public elevators is first mentioned in Pirate of the Pacific #005 (July 1933). But Doc had installed it before this adventure, probably shortly after the events of Quest of the Spider (#003).

The first mention of the "flea run" is in The Midas Man #042 (august 1936). The chronology (Addendum B) considers this supersaga to have occurred in June 1935. So it took about 42 years after the skyscraper was built before the great pneumatic tube was ready for operation. During most of this time, digging through the hard bedrock of Manhattan Island from the basement of the Empire State Building westward under Thirty-Fourth Street to the Hudson River had been taking place. The bill for this would have given anybody but Doc Savage the blind staggers even to contemplate. But Doc merely sent out another radio signal to the "Valley of the Vanished" in Central America and another burro caravan of Mayan gold would wend out of the mountains heading for the seaport of Blanco Grande.

Of the 3 hidden elevators, two could go all the way to the subbasement garage. The third went to one of Doc's secret apartments on lower floors. The only one of these which is located specifically is on the 74th floor. This, however, does not seem to have been one of those to which the second secret elevator led. This was accessible by a regular route from the corridor outside it. The third went to a secret apartment on the 13th floor. This apartment is not mentioned in the supersagas but is in Dent's notebook.

The subbasement garage housed Doc's fleet of armored limousines, touring cars, roadsters, a taxicab, and an old laundry truck which contained a chemical laboratory. In the early stories, the vehicles are lifted to street level by a special elevator. By the time of The Man Who Shook The Earth #012 (February 1934), a ramp had been built for the cars to drive out through the giant steel door. Except for a few building employees, no one knew of the garage. By the big doorway was a smaller one which Doc and his gang sometimes used when on foot. They also used a secret stairway from the garage into the lobby.

Where was the entrance to the subbasement garage?

I checked out the possibilities during a trip in October 1972. After rounding the ESB several times, I concluded that it could only have been at the southwestern corner of the building. The rest of the ground floor is occupied by entrances to the lobby, a restaurant, and various businesses. It would not have been beyond Doc's means to open its entire front during ingress or egress. But the vehicle would have had to drive over a sidewalk intended only for pedestrians and mount a curb. He could not have kept that a secret for very long.

The southwestern corner forms the wall of a loading dock, the area for which is in a large recess. A mechanism could have swung out a section of this wall and part of the attached loading platform. The workers there would certainly learn of its existence. But it would be presumed that Doc paid them enough to keep their mouths shut. However, any enemy with determination could have found about it. And this was indeed the case. Doc's secret exit was really no secret.

The garage doors opened automatically when a button was <pressed> on the dash of the vehicle that was going in-or-out. This caused transmission of coded radio signals to a mechanism which opened-and-closed the door. The code was changed once-a-week to prevent crooks from learning it. The use of radio signals to open doors is old today. But in the early 1930s, it was "hot stuff".

The 2 elevators which went into the garage stopped near white concrete-walled passages leading to the nearby Broadway subway. In The Mental Monster (#126), Doc used some secret passages from street manholes and sewer gratings into the building. To cover their retreat into the skyscraper, Doc and his men triggered a device which shot out flaming gas. This prevented their enemies from following them. It also gave them the idea that an accidental spark had caused the explosion of a leaking gas main and that Doc and his pals must have died in the blast. The device was Monk's invention. He had also supervised the installation of the gadgets.

Those who went to Doc's Headquarters to ask for help or to kill the Lion in his den had to take the public express elevator up. Only twice were attempts made to kill him in the 86th floor HQ by other routes.

In the first recorded supersaga (The Man of Bronze #001), the Mayan assassin shot at him from the still-uncompleted observation tower of the Chrysler Building. The first bullet shattered the window on which Doc's father had left a message visible only under an ultraviolet light. The second punched through several inches of the brick&plaster of the wall and through the steel back of the huge old safe against the wall.

The weapon was found later and turned out to be a double-barreled elephant rifle. A .577-caliber Nitro-Express manufactured by Webley&Scott of England. Fired from a height of about 1,040 feet, the 750-grain bullets traveled approximately a half-mile. The sniper had not hit Doc, but he came close. His shooting was very good since it was night and raining.

Looking up through binoculars, he counted upwards until he came to the 86th floor. Here was a light in "the west corner of the building". Dent meant the northwest corner since later stories made it clear that the Reception room had 2 walls of windows. Moreover, only the Chrysler Building would have been tall enough for a sniper to be anywhere near high enough to get a good shot at the 86th floor.

At that time, the Chrysler Building was the second highest in the World, being 1,046 feet high. It had 77 stories including the spire. Which meant that the Mayan had to shoot upwards from a point 9 stories lower than his target.

Dent says that the building from the Mayan fired was 80 stories high and that it was topped by a 150-foot observation tower. No such building existed. The only 2 structures to come close to the ones described are the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. On the other hand, since Doc's Headquarters were not really on the 86th floor, they could have been level with or even lower than the sniper and the latter would not have had to shoot upwards.

Unfortunately, there is grave doubt that a .577-caliber rifle bullet would punch through many inches of stone and the thick wall of a safe after a half-mile flight. Such a bullet has tremendous shock power. It can knock down an elephant inside a quarter-mile range. But the large bullet has a higher air resistance and a lower velocity than rifles designed for sniping at long distances. The truth is that a .577 would not penetrate so much stone and an inch-or-two of steel at the end of a half-mile.

The Chrysler Building had to be the place from which the sniper shot because it was the only one high enough for the sniper to see Doc's figure against the lighted window. But the rifle described as the sniper's weapon could not have done the job nearly as well as, say, a Springfield rifle using the M1 cartridge. This expels a 172-grain boat-tailed bullet with an extreme range of 3,500 yards (or nearly 2 miles). Whether-or-not the bullet would have penetrated so much stone and hard steel is debatable.

In any event, Dent described the weapon as an "elephant rifle" in order to make the scene more impressive. He was free to fictionize. And fictionize he did.

(The second attempt using an unconventional route to get to Doc will be described later.)

Anybody who wanted to visit Doc through regular channels had to phone him first. Doc's number was unlisted. But the telephone operators always put through anyone who said their case was important. Sometimes Doc himself answered. More often, the caller heard a voice that was definitely not Doc's. This was a squeaky voice, a child's. Sometimes a man with a Harvard accent would answer. These 2 voices belonged to Monk and Ham who apparently spent much of their time waiting for the phone to ring.

More often, the call would go through a screening agency. In the beginning, this agency was comprised of graduates of Doc's upstate "College". Later, it was a private detective agency (though possibly this also was run by the "graduates").

Monk and Ham were screening for Doc in a room on the 2nd floor in The Feathered Octopus (#055). In The Awful Egg (#088), they were interviewing visitors in a 20th floor room. They had transferred to the 5th floor in Birds of Death (#104). The screening room (not open at night) was on the 12th floor in The Wee Ones (#150).

A private detective agency questioned would-be visitors on the 4th floor in Measures for a Coffin (#155). By the time of Five Fathoms Dead (#158), the agency had moved to the 5th floor. In The Exploding Lake (#163), it was in Room-710 on the 7th floor. Apparently Ham was working with them. He was the only one there when fat Orlin Dartlic was attacked by 3 men with knives.

In the early days, a private elevator with 1 operator could take the visitor directly to the 86th floor. This does not seem likely in view of the known facts about the ESB elevator system.

The Otis Elevator Company had installed in the ESB 62 express signal-controlled elevators. These were of the self-leveling type and stopped-and-started automatically by the <pressing> of buttons number for each floor. Otis had developed and installed for the time a special device to take the place of human dispatchers. This prevented any 2 cages from stopping to answer the same signal and so wasting the time of one cage. The device also sent cages from the ground floor at carefully-spaced intervals to give a smoothly running and continuous service.

Only 2 out of the 63 elevators went as high as the 80th floor. The 80th was the extreme upper limit for any car. None could go any higher because the weight of the cables required for this elevation was too heavy. Thus, all passengers were required to transfer at the 80th floor to another car. This took them up to the 86th floor where they could get onto the lower observation platform.

Or if they wished, they could take a third elevator up to the 102nd story which was the mooring mast (observation tower). The mast was 200 feet high and had been intended as the mooring for intercontinental passenger dirigibles. The 86th floor was to be a depot for the dirigible passengers. But the powerful dangerous updraft had prevented execution of this plan.

Apparently, Doc was responsible for this engineering goof since he oversaw the plans designed by Renny and authorized them. Why Doc forgot the strong winds is not explained by Dent. But as we have seen, Doc made mistakes and forgot things just as all mortal men do.

The requirement for exchange of elevators by the passengers at the 80th floor throws an unbendable crowbar into the machinery of the Doc Savage stories. So many of these hinge on direct elevator trips to-and-from the 86th floor. Perhaps Dent speeded up events (and hence the story) by eliminating transfer from one cage to another. He ignored the facts and had the cage go directly to Headquarters.

On the other hand, the actual HQ may have been on the 80th floor or floors below it. And so the visitors really used only one elevator.

But what about the Bronze Man's main secret express? This dropped from the HQ with such speed that the occupants felt as if they were floating a few inches off the cage floor. When it decelerated, it did it so abruptly that even the trollishly-powerful Monk was forced to his knees. Only Doc remained standing. And the elevator shot up with equal speed from the depths of the subbasement garage straight to the HQ.

Yet the building laws not only forbade any elevator to exceed the 80-story in one trip limit but they also restricted the elevator speed to 1,200 feet-a-minute. A short time before the ESB was built, the legal extreme velocity had been only 700 feet-a-minute.

The Otis Elevator Company had determined by experiments (to its own satisfaction, anyway) that 1,200 feet-per-minute was the approximate limit of speed which the human body could endure in an 80-story trip considering the acceleration/deceleration factors. It concluded, however, that it was possible to construct elevators capable of traveling nearly 2,000 feet-a-minute. As it was, the ESP express cages could go from the 1st story to the 80th in a few seconds over a minute.

To get his private express elevator, Doc had to overcome 2 obstacles. First, he had to invent a metal alloy to be used for the cables of the cage. This would have to be both strong enough and light enough to lift the cage from the deep subbasement garage to the HQ floor with no danger of cables of breaking. Second, he would have to keep the building inspectors from knowing about his express conveyance.

The first was no difficult problem for him. He developed a number of lightweight and extremely tough alloys during his career. As for the inspectors, Doc could have arranged matters so that the inspectors never became aware of the existence of the secret elevator. no doubt, an examination of the building blueprints would have revealed to the inspectors that a shaft obviously designed for an elevator cage was hidden in the building. That is, the inspectors would have seen this immediately if they had the true blueprints.

Doc and Renny had been the hidden powers behind the construction of the ESB. The public never suspected their involvement with the ESB. As far as anyone outside the circle of Doc, his father, and his aides knew, Empire State Incorporated owned the building. This organization was headed by Alfred E. Smith, the unhappy "Happy Warrior" and ex-governor of New York State. It included in its directorate Pierre S. Du Pont, Louis G. Kaufman, and Lawrence A. Wien.

Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon was the company responsible for the building's design. H.G. Balcom was consultant for the erection of the steel. Meyer, Strong, and Jones Inc. was the engineering firm which installed the utilities. Post and McCord, Inc. set up the steel framework for Starrett Brothers and Eken, Inc., the general contractors.

But we know who was really responsible for the design of the ESB and for certain installations and who really owned the building.

Doc would never have stooped to bribing the building inspectors even if they had been bribable. But Doc did not mend "bending" (or even breaking) the Law as long as it was for the abstract quality of goodness or for the specific good of individuals or the people.

He needed the express elevator in his fight against Crime. And so he got it. How he managed to conceal it and the passenger pneumatic tube from the inspectors is something we do not know. But the richest and the smartest man in the World would have ways and means to do just about anything he wished to do.

The express operated on conventional principles for a long time. But in Dust of Death #032 (October 1935), Doc had installed an air-compression device at the bottom of the shaft. This is fortunate because a short time after the installation, villains cut the cables and the cage fell 80-or-more stories into the subbasement ... only to be slowed down and halted by the cushion of squeezed air beneath it.

By the time of The Green Master #179 (Winter 1949), Doc had removed all the cables. Like the car to the Hidalgo Trading Company, the express now operated on pneumatic pressure. Its acceleration/deceleration was so violent that the interior of the cage had to be padded. It threw everybody but Doc to the floor. (Apparently, it never occurred to Doc to install hanging straps or restraining harnesses for the benefit of the passengers.)

This use of pneumatic pressure would have kept the cage from stopping at intermediate floors. Thus Doc and his aides could enter it only from HQ floor or the subbasement garage. They could no longer use the ground-floor-lobby exit/entrance which was behind a wall panel. It must have disconcerted uninitiates to see Doc disappear behind the panel or come out from behind it. This may explain why the secret express was later moved to another shaft (The King of Terror #122 [April 1943] ).

The second location had its ground terminus at the blind end of a small hall which formed a narrow thumb off the main lobby. The first reference to this relocation is in Birds of Death #104 (October 1941). Here, Benjamin Boot is told by the starter in the lobby to take the elevator around the corner. He does so and finds in the cage one control board with one pushbutton. It is simply labeled: DOC SAVAGE. (Doc was often informal.)

The cage only ascended 5 stories, however, and the door opened directly into a screening room. Here, Monk and Ham interviewed Boot to determine if his business was important enough to interrupt Doc's electrochemistry experiments.

In earlier days (and again in later days), the cage was occupied by an operator. Those entering-or-leaving it might have noticed that mirrors across the lobby enabled the elevator passengers to see the entire lobby. Doc had installed these as a safety precaution at about the time of The Red Skull (#006).

The controls and the plaque were changed from time-to-time. In The Evil Gnome (#086), the cage is in the rear of the lobby and has no operator. There are 2 buttons: UP and DOWN. Over the UP is a plaque: CLARK SAVAGE, Jr. Usually, however, the cage has an operator.

In Return from Cormoral #180 (Spring 1949) [the next-to-last of Doc's recorded adventures], the elevator is run by a human operator. Doc enters it to go up to the HQ floor and speaks to the new man at the controls. This man is obviously a fake since he does not know the codewords that genuine operators in Doc's building are given each week. Doc takes care of the man in a short time without the latter ever catching on. Doc puts him to sleep by breaking one of his anesthetic gas grenades; puts a plaster cast on the man's elbow; and then leaves. The man awakes sometime later and is told that he fainted and wrenched his elbow when he fell.

The crook does not understand what has happened. But he does not like it. However, the 3 pistols he carries are still on him. So he decides that his disguise has not been exposed. He takes the day off, not knowing that Doc has installed a small radio transmitter in the cast and that Monk and Ham will soon be following him.

This adventure is the last in which the elevator to the Headquarters floor is mentioned (at least in the original 181 stories).

6 -- The 86th Floor

In The Evil Gnome (#086), the beautiful heroine Lion Ellison is directed to the private elevator in the rear of the lobby. She <presses> the 'UP' button and is shot directly to the 86th floor.

However, as we know, this elevator would not be permitted to go higher than the 80th. Here Lion undoubtedly transferred to another of Doc's private cages and went on up to the 86th. This cage was in the bank of elevator shafts called out as (1) in Figure 2.

Before Lion can get out of the cage, a voice from a loudspeaker in the ceiling tells her to remove the knife from her purse. Ham Brooks then comes out of a secret room (2) through a small door into the elevator. He has used the X-ray machine in (2) to locate and identify any concealed weapons carried by passengers.

In later supersagas, it won't be necessary to keep a man in the secret room. The X-ray pictures will be transmitted by TV to wall screens in the 3 rooms of Doc's Headquarters. The X-ray is also used to fog the film of newspaper reporters who try to sneak cameras in.

Lion Ellison goes down a modestly-decorated corridor. It has only blank walls. However in The Czar of Fear #009 (November 1933), the corridor is richly-decorated and even has a mirror. The Angry Ghost #084 (February 1940) states that it is a long plain hallway of rich marble.

From the account in The Evil Gnome (#086), it would appear that the door (D) to the Reception room could be seen from the elevator. But too many other supersagas make it evident that the door is around a corner of a corridor. The Phantom City (#011) differs from most in saying that the Reception-room door is halfway down the corridor. And so it is as may be seen from Figure 2. The door is halfway down a corridor after you turn the corner from the elevator corridor.

In most of the stories, the corridor floor (when described) is tiled. Apparently Doc had it luxuriously carpeted for a while (The Man Who Shook The Earth #012, February 1934). Later, he removed the covering.

Most of Doc's visitors (evil or good) looked up-and-down the corridor with a keen eye after getting out of the elevator. But none suspected that a wall panel down the hallway concealed Doc's superspeed express elevator (3).

They could, however, see past the elevator bank to the nearest stairway (ST). According to The Man of Bronze (#001), this was 60 feet from the Reception-room door. If they had gone south down from the corridor and around the corner, they would have found another stairway (ST). Near it was a pillar (3A) containing a secret shaft. This was to hold the express elevator of (3) when Doc relocated it. Presumably, he moved it so he could get to it with less chance of being observed. He could pass through a secret panel (SWP) in the Laboratory wall and cross the corridor without being seen by anyone getting off the regular elevator (1).

Looking at the Reception-room door, Lion Ellison sees a bronze-colored panel bearing in plain letters the legend: CLARK SAVAGE, Jr. No doorbell is mentioned. But there is no need to do so since Ham accompanies her.

The first description of the door is in Quest of the Spider (#003). Big Eric Danielsen and his beautiful daughter Edna arrive in Manhattan at Grand Central Station. Their taxi cuts over to Fifth Avenue and goes south on it before stopping in front of a towering white skyscraper. (This is one more locative item establishing the ESB as the site of Doc's HQ.) On the 86th floor, they touch a bell-button beside a severely plain door with no lettering.

3 tales later in The Red Skull (#006), the door bears in extremely small bronze-colored letters: DOC SAVAGE. The bell button is still there. Poison smeared on it kills Bandy Stevens when he <presses> it.

"Bandy had ridden his last bronc unless they have cow ponies in the Hereafter."

By the time of The Phantom City (#010), the lettering has changed to: CLARK SAVAGE, Jr. This is kept unchanged through most of the supersagas.

In The Man Who Shook The Earth #012 (February 1934), the bell-button is gone. The door has a knob and a lock. However, it opens mysteriously when Doc approaches it. So do the Library and Laboratory doors, the warehouse door, and the release valves of some gas containers. All open when Doc nears them. Monk is mystified. Dumbfounded in fact. But he refuses to comment on these phenomena. Not until he is in a frenzy of curiosity does he break down and ask Doc how he does it.

Doc explains that he carries a piece of radioactive substance in his pocket. The doors and valves have driving mechanisms which are attached to a relay and a screen sensitive to radioactivity. When Doc is close enough, the radioactive particles strike the screen (even through cloth or metal) and this starts the chain of electro-chemo-mechanical events which results in the opening or closing of the doors.

Today such a device is commonplace. But in the early-1930s, the reader of the supersagas was thrilled by this novelty. In later stories, Doc, his aides, and his cousin Patricia would carry radioactive tokens which looked like coins to open the Headquarters and Hidalgo Trading Company doors.

In Mystery on the Snow #111 (May 1934), Doc equips the Reception room with a new door. It looks like wood but is of thick steel with a veneer coating. In the panel is a slit for a letter drop. Inasmuch as Doc's mail is delivered directly from the central post office via the pneumatic tube, the reader might wonder why a mail slot in the door is needed. No doubt, Doc installed it for the benefit of those who might not want to use the regular mail service. This is the only mention in all of the original 181 supersagas of a letter drop. Doc must have got another door (minus the mail-drop slit) very soon thereafter. Chances are that he found that more poison and explosives came through the slit than mail.

The door still has a knob in The King Maker #016 (June 1934). In The Terror in the Navy #050 (April 1937), the knob is gone. In The Golden Peril #058 (December 1937), it's back again.

This could be because The Golden Peril case occurred before The Terror in the Navy even if the latter was published first. But it's more likely that Dent simply forgot that the knob had been eliminated. As has been noted, Dent and other "Robeson" ghostwriters sometimes (or perhaps often) made mistakes because of their haste in writing these half-fictional narratives.

Doc's visitor would step into the Reception room and the door would automatically shut behind him. He would find himself in an air-conditioned room 40-feet long and 20-feet wide. (The Reception room is shown as a square in Figure 2 for the sake of convenience.) The walls of this room were said to be soundproofed. But it could not have been very effective. In several supersagas, those in the corridor can hear voices in the Reception room. And in Dust of Death (#056), Doc hears a cry for help from the corridor while he is in this room.

The visitor would be standing on a very beautiful carpet (a gift from the Khedive of Egypt for some unspecified service that Doc had once done for him). In Mystery Under The Sea #036 (February 1936), part of this rug is cut out by Seaworthy so he can study the writing left on it by a murdered man. Undoubtedly, Doc had a new piece later woven into it. In The Submarine Mystery #064 (June 1938), the rug is electrified as the shocked "Prince Albert" discovers.

Across the room by the north windows is a massive oriental table (4). This had many exquisite inlays on its top, some of which were disguised controls. <Pressing> one opens the door. Another can be used as a telegraph key to transmit messages to the subbasement garage. Pressure on another causes a transparent bulletproof glass shield to drop from the ceiling before the Reception-room door. Another is the control which causes metal gates to block the stairways of the corridors.

However in The Roar Devil #028 (June 1935), the stairways are always kept locked. This does not seem likely since the building inspectors would have forced Doc to unlock them. In case of emergency, the people on the observation floor above would have had to have an open route to safety on the lower floors. Dent threw in this statement about the locked stairway gates without pausing to think out the consequences.

By the time of The Headless Men #100 (June 1941), 2 new defenses are installed in the Reception room. One is a magnetic field which paralyzes anyone stepping on the floor. Ham <presses> the appropriate inlay to torment Monk with the magnetic field. Also, an invisible flexible curtain is lowered into the room by <pressing> another inlay.

One of the inlays if <pressed> will cause all elevators in the building to stop. Its neighbor causes the stairways on the 86th floor to be flooded with a gas which puts a person into a sleep even if the gas has only come into contact with the skin pores.

An adjacent inlay causes a light in the lobby to <flash> and so warns Doc's armed elevator starters that something "is up". <Pressing> yet another inlay releases a chemical film on the corridor floor just outside the door. This impregnates the shoes of anyone there. His trail may be followed by observing the traces of the stuff on the floor or ground through infrared glasses.

A concealed alarm in the table buzzes (accompanied by several flashing red lights disguised as inlays) if an unauthorized person is in the private elevator. Anesthetic gas can then be released into the elevator by <pressing> another inlay. And 2 other inlays control the stopping or starting of the elevator.

On the inlaid table is an inkstand with pens and wells with red and black ink. Beside these is a box which holds cigars in individual vacuum containers. Costing at least $10 apiece, these cigars take the wind out of the big phony Judborn Tugg in The Czar of Fear (#009). At one end of the table is an intercom box.

Near the inlaid table is a huge and very comfortable leather chair (5). This is equipped with Doc's new lie detector by the time of the events of The Freckled Shark (#073). The detector is concealed inside the chair and apparently is operated by means of an inductive field. Its indicators are in a niche in the Library wall (21). A large bookcase which can be swung aside conceals Doc in his chair as he watches on the instruments the reactions of Rhoda Haven to Johnny's questions. This chair is completely burned by the chief villain's gadget in The Headless Men (#100) but apparently is replaced a short time later.

The visitor will notice that the Reception-room windows are closed. He probably attributes this to the demands of the air-conditioning. He won't know that the window glass is composed of Doc's own invention -- a one-way bulletproof "health" glass. In fact, Doc has 2 factories going full-blast producing this much-in-demand commodity.

These windows are first mentioned in The Derrick Devil #048 (February 1937). He may have them installed much earlier since the attempt of the Mayan sniper in the first recorded supersaga (#001) should have made him aware of their necessity.

However, in The Terror in the Navy #050 (April 1937), crooks are watching Doc through the windows from a balloon. A few pages later -- all of a sudden -- the windows have one-way glass. The only explanation I can offer for this discrepancy is that Doc deliberately opened the windows so that the crooks could observe him.

The ceiling of the Reception-room (Mystery Under the Sea #036) is "decorated in modernistic fashion with trim triangles and discs of shiny metals and colored glass". What seems to be an ordinary glass plate in it is actually the lens of a movie camera recessed into the ceiling. This takes pictures of the beautiful Diamond Eve post, her companion Seaworthy, and Captain Flamingo who kicked the unconscious Ham and Monk in the ribs so hard.

A flashing red light in the ceiling indicates that someone is coming down the hall. By the time of The Terrible Stork #148 (June 1945), the ceiling needs repainting. If it was redone, Dent doesn't mention it.

Against the wall near a corner is a 40-year-old safe (6) which had belonged to the elder Savage. It is as high as Doc's shoulders (which makes it at least 6-feet high). It is of laminated construction with materials that can stand any conventional melting devices. Its interior is heavily insulated with lead and coated with a special rubber-like composition. One of the largest amounts of Radium in the world in the possession of a private individual is kept here for experiments. Behind the safe is a niche containing a rack for the super-machine pistols.

Near the safe is a file cabinet (7). One the wall beside it is a huge stuffed fish (8) which contains a peephole through which Doc examines the Reception room while hiding in a wall passage behind it.

Next is a concealed clothes-locker (9). A little farther south is a visible locker for clothes (10).

Just south of the door (D) to the Library are 2 pneumatic tubes (11). One receives mail directly from the central post office on Thirty-Second and Eighth. The other delivers newspapers from the stand in the ground-floor lobby. Signals <flash> when these are operated.

The old walnut desk (12) holds on its top a televisiphone. Its glass top is the screen for an interoffice TV communicator. One of its drawers contains a mass of phones and indicators. This old desk, however, is blasted apart by the villains in The Headless Men (#100).

Around the corner from it is a niche concealing another televisiphone (13). Beside it is a blank plate on the wall which is the screen of a TV receiver (14). This shows X-ray photos of visitors in the corridor if they carry any metal object larger than a small suit button. After the X-ray quits operating, the screen shows normal films of the visitors.

A picture of Doc's father (15) hangs on the wall on the other side of the door. In The Land of Terror (#002), Dent says that its resemblance to Doc was marked. However, Sammy Wales in No Light To Die By (#170) states that Doc does not resemble his father very much.

Such objections are, of course, strongly influence by subjective factors. We do know from Doctor Watson's description of Doc's father in Watson's "The Adventure of the Priory School" that he was small and had blue eyes and mobile features. His hair probably was not bronze although it may have been like his father's (the 6th duke's).

Next to the picture is an alarm indicator (AI) which gives visual and audible warnings of intruders in the subbasement garage or in the 86th floor rooms. These AI are on the walls of every room and in such numbers and locations that an occupant can see them no matter what direction he faces.

Against the south part of the western wall is a teletype machine (16) connected to the police circuits.

Set in the one-way windows are huge specially-constructed windows (SCW). These can be opened wide for firing of the giant wheeled ray-repeller machine (50). One of the SCW in the east or south Laboratory walls is used in The Flying Goblin #089 (July 1940). It does its work well and then -- apparently -- is never fired again. If it had failed, Doc, Ham, and Monk would have been blown apart along with most of the 86th floor.

In the northwest corner is a cabinet (17) holding a stereopticon and some supermachine pistols.

Pass through the door into the enormous Library, the uninitiated might travel directly toward the Laboratory door. He will do so within an aisle (20) formed by great bookcases. If he does not progress in a certain way (unspecified by Dent), he will suddenly find himself in a glass cage dropped out of the ceiling.

If he pauses just after passing through the door and then turns north, the visitor sees near the northwest corner a large chart case (18). In the northeast corner is a big cabinet (19) holding rifles and other weapons.

The place inside the wall (21) has been noted. But Doc could do more than watch the lie-detector indicators in the easy chair in the Reception room. Through peepholes, he could observe the Reception room, the corridor outside it, or the Library.

Near the concealed place is an easy chair (22) which snaps out steel bands to restrain a prisoner. It also contains a capacity alarm so that Doc will know if the person in the chair has suddenly left it. Like the Reception-room easy chair, it also hides an inductive-field lie-detector.

Near the chair is a desk containing some binoculars (23) which Doc always seemed to be using. Across the room from it is a table (24) with a battery of telephones. This figures quite often in the Savage supersagas. Near it is the case (24) holding the ossified boy of a young pterodactyl. To its south is the mounted African lion (26) which W.O Bittman had stuffed after shooting it to save the life of Doc's father (The Land of Terror #002). Bittman, however, tried to kill the son (Doc).

In the southeast corner is a bookcase (27). It conceals a wall niche in which are telephone "robots" and a loudspeaker switch.

Near the Library's south wall is the display case (28) noted by Sammy Wales in No Light To Die By (#170). Among other decorations, it holds the Congressional Medal of Honor and 4 Purple hearts. Sammy thinks that these are Doc's. But he could not have won them for exploits in World War II. Though a brigadier general in the Army Reserve, he was never activated. He did see action during World War II (actually, more than most soldiers). But it was always as a civilian even though the U.S. Government sent him on most of his missions.

Doc must have the medals for his services in World War I. The Purple Hearts would have been given him sometime after 1932. It was then that President Hoover reactivated the honor which had been originated by George Washington but had been neglected after three(3) were given to Revolutionary War veterans. Hoover's action made the honor retroactive.

Continuing clockwise around the Library, the visitor passes another bookcase (29). He does not know that it conceals another niche or that it also hides dials and styli connected to the easy-chair lie detectors.

The visitor then goes through the door into the Laboratory. Hidden controls can cause a blue flame barrier to spurt across the doorway. This is used in Murder Mirage (#035) to keep the villains from leaving the Laboratory.

The Laboratory is a vast white-enameled room which in The Yellow Cloud (#072), Monk calls "the Wizard's Den". It occupies two-thirds of the floor space according to most accounts. It is crammed with supplies and apparatus. Not even the great Federal Department of Justice laboratory can equal it. It is the second most complete laboratory in the World, exceed in equipment only by Doc's lab in his Fortress of Solitude. Some pieces of apparatus (most of them Doc's own invention) are as ponderous as trucks.

Doc, of course, has every facility needed for making models in his Laboratory. But he is often too busy to do this himself and so gives much of this type of work to Tolliver Jonas. In The Terrible Stork (#148), Jonas has a model shop of the 82nd floor of the ESB. He shares his place of business with patent attorney J.B. Fowler. Jonas is a young man with a wooden leg. He can do the very exacting and difficult work required by Doc in a very short time and on sudden notice. But his bills are not small.

In all descriptions which include the number of walls, the Laboratory is said to have 3 walls of windows. The south wall if apparently solid except, of course, for the specially-constructed windows. No doubt that Dent was thinking of these when he wrote in The Monsters (#014) that there were windows on all 4 sides.

In Murder Mirage (#035), the trapped Bedouin runs over to the Laboratory wall to look for a window through which to escape. But he finds none. This would seem to contradict all other accounts of the windows.

But this supersaga was written by Norman Danberg. He either threw in the part about there being no windows or he failed to specify that it was the south wall to which the Bedouin ran. It must be remembered that Dent was the only writer of the "Robeson" ghostwriters who was familiar with the 86th floor setup. But even he made errors which he did not time to correct even if he had wished to do so.

The Laboratory floor is of brick with here-and-there some rubber composition mats. The unwary intruder will never guess -- until it is too late -- that a trap (30) lies in his path not too far from the door. This is a wolf trap designed for men (human wolves). The brick floor will suddenly turn out to be of steel and 2 sections will spring out and clamp the intruder's leg.

In the northwestern corner is an apparatus (31) for making distilled water. This has been installed after some enemies of Doc's tap the water supply to the 86th floor and pour poison into it. Beside the still is a huge X-ray machine (32).

A long way down the Laboratory near the north windows are several machines (33). One is a TV transmitter used to send fingerprints to the Department of Justice in Washington. Beside it are a teletype machine and a telephone robot with a loudspeaker switch.

A number of TV receivers (34) are nearby. One is for watching the corridor outside the Reception room. The second screen shows the interior of Doc's private elevator. The others are for viewing the interiors of Doc's vehicles. All have been put to much good use over the years.

Also included under (34) are the extremely power shortwave radio transceivers used in so many supersagas. Like the TV receivers, these are enclosed in glass booths. Their antennas are up on the roof running along the mooring mast.

The photographic darkroom (35) is often used by Doc or Monk. It contains equipment that would turn the scientists of Eastman Kodak pale with envy if they should learn of it.

Around the corner are the living quarters (36). Originally, this area seems to have been an open room. But Doc later encloses it. Here he takes his refrigerated showers, changes his clothes, sleeps on the foldup bed, and occasionally cooks meals. The room holds a bathtub. But its use has gone unrecorded.

It is in this room that Monk uses in Bequest of Evil (#096) to put on the clothes that Ham had picked for him after Monk inherited the earldom of Chester, Essex, and Cornwall (or thought he had). It is into this room that Monk retires cussing a blue streak to study the book that Ham has urged on him: "Ten Thousand Correct Sayings for Every Occasion". Georgiana Lee stays here in The Magic Forest (#110).

Dent calls it "a private room in Doc's skyscraper apartment". Which indicates that the cubicle had definitely been made into an enclosed room.

On the inner wall near the door into Laboratory is a panel (37) with 6 levers. Each one bears the name of the group. Depressing Renny's lever, for instance, causes transmission of a radio wave of a certain frequency. This heats up a receiving device in a ring on Renny's finger. On feeling the heat, Renny knows that he is wanted at Headquarters .

Near the "heat wave" panel is a niche (38) with a chair in which a hidden person can rest comfortably. It is concealed by a big piece of apparatus (39) the nature of which is not described. The table (40) has an illuminated top. Doc often uses this to clarify details in maps or manuscripts.

Just east of the table is a cabinet (41) with a televisiphone.

In the center of the 86th floor is a massive pillar (42). This contains the shaft for the mooring-mast (observation tower) elevator. The 4 main columns of the mooring mast are carried down through the building 33 feet below the surface to the bedrock. This anchoring is necessary to keep the horizontal pull of a moored dirigible from being transmitted to the upper parts of the building. Instead, the tugging will be transmitted to the massive concrete foundations.

But the moorings are not strong enough to keep the mast from being knocked off by the villains' repeller-ray gun during the distressing events of The Deadly Dwarf #056 (October 1937)

Doc has seen to it that the mast pillar is larger than it needs to be. He has built a false wall around it. In the space between the 2 walls is not only a secret passage but also a stairway (43). This leads up to a wall passage inside the mooring mast itself.

On the west-central part of the Laboratory floor is a great pile of metal cases (44) containing supplies and metals.

Northeast of the big pillar is something that always catches the visitor's attention. A gigantic fishbowl (45) which holds many dangerous-looking fish, all teeth or all sharp spines or both. One (in The Men Who Smiled No More #038) simply warns: POISON FISH. The other (in Spook Hole #030) reads: THESE FISH ARE POSIONOUS SPECIES. KEEP AWAY!

The base of the fishbowl rests on the floor. Its top (chest-high to Doc) must be about 6-feet from the floor. In the bottom on one side is an aquarium castle. In The Men Who Smiled No More, Doc hides a photographic plate in the castle. In Spook Hole, Doc uses the bowl as a secret exit. A touch on a valve causes the water level to sink about 6 inches. This exposes a circular glass tube over 3 feet in diameter which extends upwards in the center of the bowl. The optical design of the bowl makes it almost impossible for the tube to be seen when the water level is at its height.

Doc jumps to the rim (who else can do this?) ... balances himself ... then squats down and leans way out to remove the glass cover from the tube. Having done this, he steps over to the edge of the tube ... balances himself ... and then goes down into the tube. After replacing the glass cover, he lowers himself below the floor level on a ladder in a metal shaft. Dent does not say so, but doubtless that Doc turns a lever inside the shaft so that the water level in the bowl will rise again.

The hole at the floor level inside the tube is invisible to observers because of the placement of mirrors in the bowl.

The ladder in the shaft leads to a tiny elevator just big enough for Doc (or 2 ordinary-sized men). The cage does down into the building and deep under the ground. Doc steps out of the cage into a narrow tunnel. This leads directly into a big tool locker in the Broadway subway. Here, Doc changes into grimy work clothes and emerges from the locker disguised as a subway worker.

Doc has a number of secret exits, horizontal and vertical. As Figure 2 shows, he can ease through secret wall panels (SWP) from any one room into the next or from any room into a corridor. One of the wall passages has a shaft down which he can go to a lower floor. From there, he takes a regular elevator to the lobby.

Laboratory test equipment is everywhere, of course, including big electric furnaces and a workbench (46). Ham often sits at the latter sharpening the point of his sword cane. Near this is a giant test chamber (47). Farther south is a large chest (48) which holds the cylinders that Doc used in The Man Who Shook The Earth (#012) to trace criminals.

The cylinders are thrown out of all the windows including the SCW in the south wall. Renny worried that the heavy cylinders might hit people on the sidewalks below. But they all blow up in green flames while still in the air. A gray vapor succeeds the flames and the streets around the ESB are soon filled with a gray cloud. The villains escape in a touring car, though the vapor has settled on them before they do this. Doc then uses an ultraviolet device to locate them. Under its light, the touring car and villains fluoresce greenly.

In the southeast corner of the Laboratory is a table (49) with a typewriter which Doc uses in The Pink Lady #099 (May 1941). No doubt, every room has a number of typewriters. Otherwise Doc will have to walk half a city block every time he wants to type out a letter or a report (remember how large the 86th floor is). But this is the only time when one of the 86th floor typewriters is mentioned.

Around the corners is the giant wheeled ray-repeller machine (50) described in The Flying Goblin (#089) and noted earlier in this chapter. The "flying goblin", by the way, is located by Doc's private radar set. He developed radar long before World War II but has, however, been a consultant on the Signal Corps development of the long-range radars first used in 1939.

Near the corner where the ray machine is kept is another niche (51) with a couch. Like the others, this niche is air-conditioned and holds Doc and his aides when they have to hide and -- at least once -- Doc's prisoners.

Halfway along the south wall is the storeroom (52). It is as large as the living room of many mansions although it looks small compared to the vast room housing it. It contains many supplies including Doc's specially-prepared cases and chests. These bear numbers to indicate their contents. The numbers are raised so that they can be identified in the dark by feel alone.

Inside the storeroom and accessible through a secret wall panel is the terminus of the giant pneumatic tube (53) to the Hidalgo Trading Company warehouse on the Hudson River. The tiny car in it (Monk's "go-devil" or "angel wagon") can hold just 4 passengers.

The car is bullet-shaped and has a thickly-padded interior. No seats or seatbelts are ever mentioned. But the occupants have straps to hang on to. Once all are aboard, the hatches are closed and the operator pulls a lever. A shock, a whining noise, and a great vibration follow. The passengers are jammed against the lower end as compressed air cushions it to a stop. Then the <click> of holding devices is heard and a red light signals that the trip is over.

Doc does not fail to have medical facilities on the 86th floor. In addition to first-aid supplies stored in several places in each room, he has a completely equipped operating room (54) in the Laboratory. Doc used this in The Green Death (#069) when he tried to determine the nature of the horrible Matto Grosso disease which has struck down Frick. He also used it on several other occasions to perform autopsies on visitors (wanted or unwanted) who have come to bad -- and usually peculiar -- ends at Doc's Headquarters.

The Green Death contains a puzzling reference which it would be nice to be able to ignore. It states that Doc took Frick's corpse deeper into his suite of offices. What suite? It's obvious from the majority of stories that the 86th floor is occupied by Doc Savage only. Moreover, only 3 major rooms are ever described (except in one story). The 3 rooms are the Reception room, the adjoining Library, and the Laboratory beyond.

But this use of "suite of offices" can be explained. Dent sometimes thought of the rooms as "offices" although his use of this is rather idiosyncratic. Thus in the first story The Man of Bronze (#001), Dent refers to the great Library as "another office adjoining". And he refers also to Doc's suite of offices.

Dent does not, however, explain the situation in Pirate of the Pacific (#005). Chapter 6 of that book states that a suite of offices adjoins Doc's office. It is unoccupied because rents are so high and times so tough. An Oriental villain forces open the door of the adjoining suite and cuts a hole in the wall into Doc's office. This office, evidently, is what most of the other stories call the Reception room.

Pirate of the Pacific poses a hard problem. It is the only story which even suggests that there were offices open for rent on the 86th floor.

There is only one way to deal with this. And that is to regard the unrented suite of offices as fictional. It may be that Dent was never informed about the exact manner in which the Oriental got into Doc's Reception-room to steal the window with the invisible writing. Dent rattled out a scene to explain this without pausing to remember that the 86th floor had only 1 renter or ever would have (up to 1949, anyway).

Thus, we can be sure that the villain from the East did get into Doc's office. But just how he did it is something that perhaps only the Oriental knew. But he does not live long enough after the deed to explain how he did it. Caught in the act, he starts to throw a knife at Renny. But Long Tom shoots between the eyes.

The business of renting offices brings in another seeming contradiction. The Metal Master #037 (March 1936) notes that Doc has also rented the 85th floor. He has done this to keep it unoccupied and so prevent crooks from trying to get into the 86th floor from the one below.

Later, he must have decided that this was too expensive. The Midas Man #042 (August 1936) tells of 4 men up to no good who rent some offices on the 85th and do just what Doc fears.

By the time of The Green Eagle #101 (July 1941) -- and probably before that -- Doc is renting the 85th floor again for his sole use. At least, he's renting some offices in it. Renny and Johnny use these to extend a net device in which to catch a crook that Doc has thrown out of an 86th floor window. Doc does this to frighten the crook's buddies into thinking he'll heave them out to a blood death too if they don't talk.

Near the southwest corner of the Laboratory is another secret wall panel. Doc goes through this in The Laugh of Death #116 (October 1942). He then runs across the hall ... opens an apparently solid pillar (55) ... and steps into a small elevator which he has recently installed. We learn that Doc has a secret hideout in a not-too-respectable office building in Times Square where he keeps supplies and disguises.

Though the 86th floor is used to the last adventure, Doc has quit living in it by the time of the third-from-last story The Green Master (#179). He is residing in a hotel on Fifty-Eighth Street not far from Madison. For some time, he's been changing his residence as "a commonplace precaution". Why he doesn't continue to live on the 86th floor where he would be best guard is not explained. We may, however, be sure that Doc has good reason.

It is also near the end of his career that Doc seems to have lost much of his money although this again cannot be explained. He can't afford to buy a yacht -- a big comedown for a man who once purchased a newspaper publishing company as an item in a plot to catch a villain.

The big fleet of fabulous armed-and-armored vehicles in the subbasement garage is reduced to two(2). The others have been given to the Government during the War. Those left no longer carry the distinctive license plates DOC1, DOC2 or DS1, DS2. This may be because he is no longer so highly regarded by the authorities.

He has been charged too many times with murder; kidnapping; jailbreak; flight to avoid arrest; flight to escape giving testimony; car stealing; piracy; malpractice; illegal use of drugs (on others); illegal use of a hotel room; and a host of other misdemeanors and felonies. Even though Doc has cleared himself of all these charges (though technically guilty of some), the police believe that "where there's smoke, there's fire".

Doc's wealth and his image have been getting steadily less and more tarnished since the War years.

7 -- the Hidalgo Trading Company and Its Craft

In the beginning, Doc keeps his airplanes in a hangar at a North Beach airport just outside New York City. He flies an autogyro out of there in the first supersaga The Man of Bronze (#001). Apparently, at this time no one but himself knows he is using this port. Otherwise, how account for Ham having to ask him where the gyro is kept?

An autogyro is more often spelled "autogiro" from its trademark Autogiro. It was a rotary-wing aircraft which used a propeller for forward motion and a freely rotating rotor (like a horizontal propeller) instead of wings for lift. The autogyro was a predecessor of the helicopter. But unlike the latter, it could not hover in the air or make a vertical descent. (And I feel even older because I have to explain what an autogyro is.)

The first reference to the place where Doc keeps his amphibian planes is in The Lost Oasis #007 (September 1933). This is a boathouse located on the Hudson River side of Manhattan Island.

Later, Doc stores his amphibian planes and boats in a huge building disguised as a warehouse. It isn't until about the time of The Czar of Fear #009 (November 1933) that Doc puts up a sign on the front of the building: HIDALGO TRADING COMPANY.

The name is suggested by the tiny Central American nation in which Doc had a number of adventures and which supplies the gold for his charities and his fight against Crime. The name evokes far-off vistas and exotic perfumes and hidden treasures. Many a person who went by the building must have wondered just what the company traded in and -- for a minute or two -- the more imaginative may have constructed in their minds all sorts of fabulous adventures. But none of the fantasies could have matched the realities that were launched from the Hidalgo Trading Company.

Adventure and excitement are the only commodities dealt with by the Hidalgo Trading Company. It does not even have an official existence. It is not listed in the world's books. It does not even have an unlisted telephone number. Doc and his 5 aides are the company, accountable to no one except themselves and their consciences. Their "imports" and "exports" are themselves and their varied craft.

Except for gold. This does come into the warehouse in the dead of night. Every once in a while, the Mayan gold is shipped in and Doc and his gang have to be on hand to take care of the precious metal themselves. We don't know who makes the regular runs from Blanco Grande (Hidalgo's capital city and seaport) to the Hidalgo Trading Company. Probably the captain of the ship is one of the graduates of Doc's upstate New York "college".

We do know that his cousin Patricia is employed on at least one occasion to bring in the gold (Poison Island #079 [September 1939]). Doc has to go after her and the gold (but that's another story). Patricia takes aboard the gold in her own yacht (the Patricia) which is a converted Nova Scotia fisherman, a schooner with 3 masts, a clipper-type bow, and a good freeboard.

When Pat isn't using the ship, she keeps it inside the company's building. It is docked alongside Doc's own yacht (the Seven Seas). No dimensions or tonnage are given for it. But we know she is made of steel and is propelled by powerful diesel motors. Pat, Monk, and Ham are on her when she is wrecked on a reef off one of the Galapagos Islands about 500 miles west of Ecuador (The Fantastic Island #034).

Although Doc has reconstructed the interior of the building itself, its exterior is that of an old smoke-stained warehouse built of red bricks and having one huge corrugated metal door. On its walls are concrete or wood. The Mystery on the Snow #015 (May 1934) says that the walls are concrete. The Headless Men #100 (June 1941) says that they are wood. The latter was written by Alan Hathway who obviously was not referring to his notes when he wrote this supersaga. Since most of the stories stipulate red bricks, red bricks are what we'll settle for.

It's likely that there was thick concrete behind the bricks since the building was proof against anything but a blockbuster or a cannon shell. Indeed, it must have been the concrete reinforcing that Dent was thinking about when he said the walls were concrete in The Mystery on the Snow. Dent also stated in this story that the walls were reinforced with stout steel beams and that the building had no windows.

Half of the building extends on a pier cut over the water. The walls were built downward from the structure on the pier so that they plunge into the riverbed itself. Inside at the river end, a concrete apron into the river permits the amphibian planes to climb into or out of the hangar.

Inside are almost a dozen planes from a gigantic trimotored plane (which can go almost 300 mph) to a pair of "true gyros". By the latter, Dent mean a pre-helicopter -- an aircraft that could fly perpendicular to the ground if need be. One of these gyros is so tiny that it can land on a tabletop (although the size of the table is not mentioned). Later, the trimotor is replaced by a 2-motored plane. And after the War, a speedy jet amphibian replaces that.

At first, the interior is divided into 2 sections. One holds aircraft. The other contains boats and ships. The latter range all the way from the Helldiver (the Polar-going submarine which Doc stole in a sense) to a rowboat.

Later in Land of Always-Night (#025), a 3rd section (higher than the others) is added. Its river end is fitted with enormous doors through which Doc's new dirigible leaves its hangar. This was the most advanced lighter-than-air craft in the World then (and for that matter, even present-day). It is very streamlined, having the control gondola enclosed in the hull and so cutting down air resistance considerably.

Doc does not say so, but the motors must have been in the hull also with only the propellers and their gearing housing and struts sticking out into the air. Doc has developed the lightweight alloys of which the motors are made and certain medications which make them the most powerful for the size and weight in the World.

Doc and Monk worked together to synthesize a nonflammable gas with lifting powers greater than those of hydrogen or helium. This sounds incredible since hydrogen seems to be the lightest element possible. The building block of the Universe, it consists of a nucleus with 1 unit of positive charge and an electron (1 unit of negative charge) which "orbits" the nucleus. So far as scientists know, a stable atom with a half-nucleus and a half-electron could not exist. Perhaps Dent imagined the gas in order to give Doc even greater stature in genius.

My own theory is that Doc might have used hydrogen but had some means of suppressing its high flammability. On the other hand, he may have invented some kind of "gas" composed of ions only (i.e., an atom without its electrons). Still, the electrical charge resulting from the quantity of ionic gas needed to levitate the craft would make the situation very dangerous. The airship carries the equivalent of several lightning strokes in its ballonets. Perhaps it was this that caused Doc to give up the use of the unconventional "gas".

[StealthSkater note: In the nucleus, protons and neutrons are in turn made up of quarks and gluons. It might be feasible to create a new nucleus "weighing" less than hydrogen's. But this would take place in giant particle accelerators for only brief seconds doc pdf URL . The perfect lifting force would be a pure vacuum. But this would require that the balloon material be resistant to outside air pressure and undeformable. Maybe a gas could be invented that would react with the air inside the balloon and transform both substances into a solid residue of negligible volume. That would make a near perfect vacuum.]

In any event, by the time of The Green Death #069 (November 1938), his dirigible is lifted with helium. The one used in the earlier supersaga The Magic Island #054 (August 1937) seems to be the same as that in The Green Death. Doc has probably reverted to helium after the destruction of the new stratospheric dirigible of The South Pole Terror #044 (October 1936).

Nine(9) of the supersagas involve Doc and his pals with great gasbags. Their first experience is in the 7th published story The Lost Oasis #007 (September 1933). The dirigible, however, is not Doc's. The Zeppelin ZX 03 named the Aeromunde has disappeared about 1920 in a flight over the Mediterranean. The body of its commander is found floating in the sea.

After a series of horrifying narrow escapes with the "squeaking death" of the villains, Doc and his gang stow away on the ZX 03. Later in the Sahara, they hijack the hijackers and get away to Cairo with the Zeppelin. But Doc returns it to the German Government although probably not until he has got a good salvage fee for it. Doc always turns over such money to reputable charities or builds hospitals with it.

The dirigible of Land of Always-Night #025 is blown up by a bomb and burned in Murder Mirage #035 (January 1936).

Doc's 3rd adventure in a dirigible of The Seven Agate Devils #039 (May 1936) comes to a bad end. Again, this ship is not Doc's but a European world-girdling airship on which Doc to passage from New York to Los Angeles.

The new stratospheric dirigible of The South Pole Terror #044 (October 1936) comes to a bad end also. It is stolen by the rich, beautiful, and spoiled-rotten world-famed aviatrix Velma Crale. Later it is blown up by some very nasty characters.

The speedy little demountable ship of The Magic Island (#054) is stolen by pretty Kit Merrimore. It is recovered near the fantastic jungle city Ost of the blue men and then abandoned when its lifting gas escaped.

Twice, a good-looking woman steals Doc's dirigible. Since the great rigid inflated vessels are well-known phallic symbols, it is inevitable that Freudians will make something of this double rape. But Doc gets his dirigibles back although not always in the condition they were in before he lost them. In fact, since his airships are all deflated and since he eventually quits using them, he should furnish the Freudians with a field day.

Doc's 6th involvement with a dirigible is in The Motion Menace #063 (May 1938). The dirigible is not his property but that of some Balkan nation. Doc, Ham, Monk, and the pets Habeas Corpus and Chemistry stow away in it while Long Tom (in disguise) becomes the Manchen's radio operator. Doc successfully completes this particular crusade. But the airship is wrecked.

Apparently, Doc returns to the jungle island to levitate the dirigible abandoned in Ost. A craft so similar that it must be the same is Doc's chief vehicle in The Green Death (#069). It escapes destruction in this supersaga only to be shot down over Arkansas in The Crimson Serpent #078 (August 1939). After this, Doc gives up on the gasbags. He has lost three(3). And each one has cost him more than the national debt of some European nations. Even Doc Savage can't stand such expense.

The roof of the Hidalgo Trading Company is originally a solid unit. A few years after the sign is hung up on its front, the roof is rebuilt so that it can open to let out the dirigible or the autogyros.

The doors to the building are (in the early doors) opened by ultraviolet or radio signals. In Terror Takes Seven #151 (September 1945), a piece of radioactive material in Doc's shoe heel does the trick.

A bulletproof glass wall which could be dropped from above is installed. This saves Doc and his aides when they are fired on at point-blank range by the Green Bells (The Czar of Fear #009). Another wall dropped behind the invaders cuts off their escape from the building.

A capacity alarm system in the warehouse is connected to an electric sign on a building a few blocks away. Actuation of the alarm by intruders causes this sign to be illuminated.

A periscope is installed so that Doc can look through it and see what is going on in front of the building.

While Doc is away, automatic cameras take pictures of the interior once-every-second and the film is automatically developed in a minute by one of Doc's processes. (He anticipated the Polaroid camera by 10-or-more years.)

The lighting system is shadowless, set up by Doc himself.

A large machine shop is installed in the building. Later in The Men Vanished (#094), a small completely enclosed compartment is erected for Doc to work in. This is soundproofed and dustproofed and among other things holds a desk and a telephone. Doc does not seem to use this office much.

As early as Mystery Under the Sea #036 (February 1936), an "iron doctor" (i.e., a decompression chamber for deep-sea divers) is installed. Doc puts an unknown man suffering from the "bends" in it. But the man dies. Not however from the excess of nitrogen in his blood but from acid burns and slashed wrists he incurred from the bad guys.

The pneumatic-tube "flea run" is first used in The Midas Man #042 (August 1936). As noted in Chapter 5, work on it started at the same time the foundations of the Empire State Building are being completed. But the "flea run" itself is not finished in all its aspects until the time of The Red Terrors #067 (September 1938). It is possible, of course, that its use before this time had gone unrecorded.

In this supersaga, we first discover that the tube has 3 terminuses. One is inside a large concrete block in the Hidalgo Trading Company. Another is on the 86th floor in a secret compartment. The third is in the subbasement garage of the ESB. Doc must have designed an ingenious arrangement for shunting the passenger car (or "go-devil") to the garage or the 8th floor. This involves remote-control of the great valves at the fork of the tube. But such was not beyond Doc's ability to make.

Most of the time, the Hidalgo Trading Company seems to be guarded only by electromechanical devices. It has a watchman in The Black Spot #041 (July 1936). Perhaps Doc tried human guards for a while. But he had great difficulty hiring them. Word had got around about how dangerous it was to be near the Hidalgo Trading Company.

The South Pole Terror #044 (the 3rd story after The Black Spot) contains a curious incident. I quote a paragraph from it:

The message to the Hidalgo Trading Co. was about to be delivered. The messenger boy entered a ramshackled building on Thirty-Fourth Street and mounted stairs to a musty door bearing the legend 'Hidalgo Trading Co'. The messenger entered.

He is greeted by an elderly man in shirtsleeves and wearing a green eyeshade. The old man signs for the radiogram; puts on his hat; takes his umbrella (which never leaves him rain or shine); and hooks it over his left arm so that he can reach inside with his right-hand and remove the revolver concealed there if he needs it. 15 minutes later, he is handing the radiogram to Doc who is in a hotel room.

The old man does nothing but stays in the Hidalgo Trading Company and does a few simple jobs.

The Black Spot (#041) and The South Pole Terror (#044) are the only ones of the 181 supersagas that mention a watchman.

But how is the outside entrance to an upstairs office in the building explained? And explain how the sign that hangs over an inside office and not on the front of the building itself.

It seems obvious to me that the old man who received the radiogram did not have his office in the Hidalgo Trading Company building. His office was in an ancient ramshackle building on Thirty-Fourth Street near the site of the company. The old man's office is in a building which contains many offices of different kinds of business. His office is the one designated as the 'Hidalgo Trading Company' in the city directory and the telephone book. The old man's chief function is to take messages from Doc or his aides and transfer them to wherever the recipient should be.

Doc has never registered the company with the board of trade or sold stock in it. He has simply purchased the building and hung a sign in front of it. The phone company is not aware of its existence. Presumably, the utility companies know of its existence although it is possible that Doc had installed his own electric generators and water system. The police are all too aware of the place since so many shootouts, fires, and explosions have occurred there.

Twice, the building is partly burned down. But this does not both Doc who takes advantage of the reconstruction to install additions and improvements. He may be upset by losing so many expensive airplanes and ships by fires and blasts. But he can afford these losses. Besides, he has to be ready to pay a high price for the place. It is the launching platform for his many dashes around the Globe and is of great service to him in other ways.

The Hidalgo Trading Company is last heard of (after not being mentioned for a long time) in Terror Takes Seven (#151) (September 1945). At this late date, it has "boarded-over windows and an air of uselessness". The latter is understandable. But "boarded-over windows"? The Mystery on the Snow (#015) stated that the building had no windows. And a number of other stories repeat this.

Moreover, a virtually bombproof structure housing, so many expensive craft, a structure so often attacked by criminals would not have windows. Doc would see to that. So we can discount this phrase as a slip of memory on Dent's part. It is also a desire to add "atmosphere" since he is trying to create an impression of neglect and decay.

The letters of the sign, for instance, are barely readable. The interior -- once crowded with a splendid dirigible, a 4-motored giant amphibian, the fastest pursuit plane in the World, several yachts, and a submarine -- now has large empty spaces. The craft are few: a seaplane, a helicopter (alas for the autogyros which are now as extinct as dinosaurs!), a speedboat, and a somewhat larger express cruiser. Pat's yacht (the schooner Patricia) is not docked here and chances are that she sold it long ago.

"The collection gave the place a ... spidery look."

Dust and cobwebs and a sense of the forlorn.

That may have been the reality. In my mind, however, it remains clean and bright. I was always fond of the Hidalgo Trading Company. It is one of the most evocative names I know. To hear it, to see it is to think of fluid golden images, to be enveloped in an aureate glow.

It is one of the great fantastic businesses of semi-business organizations that never fail to pull the trigger of the wonderful. It is one with the Red-Headed League, the Suicide Club, the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company, the Universal Baseball Association, the Clyde Burke Clipping Bureau, the White Company, and Peleg&Bildad.

But don't look for it in the Manhattan telephone directory. It is like the island of Kokovoko:

"It is not down in any map. True places never are."

8 -- the Crime College

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (Random House, 1965) tells among other things of the trial for murder of Hickock and Smith in a small Kansas town. During the trial, a Reverend Post joins in a conversation about the defendants.

He shows the others a photograph of the drawing of Jesus by Smith. And he says that anyone who could do such a portrait cannot be 100 percent evil. The reverend then continues:

"All the same, it's hard to know what to do. Capital punishment is no answer. It doesn't give the sinner time enough to come to God. Sometimes I despair." A jovial fellow with gold-filled teeth and a silvery widow's peak, he jovially repeated: "Sometimes I despair. Sometimes I think old Doc Savage had the right idea.

The 'Doc Savage' to whom he referred was a fictional hero popular among adolescent readers of pulp magazines a generation ago.

"If you boys remember, Doc Savage was a kind of superman. He had made himself proficient in every field -- Medicine, Science, Philosophy, Art. There wasn't much that old Doc didn't know or couldn't do. One of his projects was that he decided to rid the World of criminals.

"First he bought a big island out in the ocean. Then he and his assistants (he had an army of trained assistants) kidnapped all the World's criminals and brought them to the island. And Doc Savage operated on their brains. He removed the part that holds the wicked thoughts. And when they recovered, they were all decent citizens. They couldn't commit crimes because that part of their brain was out. Now it strikes me that surgery of this nature might really be the answer to ... "

A bell -- the signal that the jury was returning -- interrupted him.

The Reverend Post was depending on his memory when he related the "facts" about Doc Savage. It is no wonder that it partially failed him. He did not have Doc's total recall.

In the first place, Doc had only vowed to fright Crime. He had not set himself the impossible Augean labor or ridding the World of all criminals. Nor did he buy a big island out in the ocean; kidnap all the World's criminals; and transport them to his institution.

He did operate on those criminals who made the mistake of attacking him. He did not remove the part that held their wicked thoughts. It is true that the operates did become decent citizens. But it is not true that all of them did.

The institution where Doc sent the captured criminals is first mentioned in the second published supersaga The Land of Terror (#002) (April 1933). In this story, Doc captures some of the gang of the fiendish Kar. But he does not turn them over to the police. He never gives his prisoners to the authorities unless the police happen to be on the scene of the capture. And this seldom happens.

In The Land of Terror, Doc ships his prisoners to a private sanitarium located in the mountains of upstate New York. The place is owned and operated by Doc for one purpose -- to cure the criminals of criminality. The cure is based on the principle are mentally unbalanced. Otherwise, they wouldn't be criminals.

But no definition of "criminal" is given. Would Doc classify as "criminal" a man who stole food to keep from starving? Hardly. And especially in those Depression times. Doc would see that the man got a job and if anybody had the influence to do this, Doc did.

But what about a black militant? How would he be classified? How would Doc categorize a militant of any race who preached violent overthrow of the government or justified violence in taking from the "Haves"?

No problem. Doc would do nothing to anybody who just shot off his mouth. But when action was taken, when bombs wounded and killed innocent people (mere bystanders) just for the purpose of making a terroristic point, then Doc would not hesitate.

However, Doc never went out of his way to fight criminals. He was against Crime in the abstract. But he only attacked criminals, not Crime. And that was only when they attacked him. The whole battle against Evil was a highly personal one for Doc.

According to The Land of Terror (#002), a famous psychologist had been hired by Doc to treat the prisoners. The treatment might take many years but it would eventually result in a cure. Terror says nothing about Doc's brain operations on criminals.

In Quest of the Spider (#003), Doc ships off some criminals whom he's put to sleep with drugs to his institution. Quest contains the first mention of brain surgery.

The 4th published adventure The Polar Treasure (#004) reveals for the first time that "a delicate brain operation" will "wipe out all knowledge of their past". This will cause the criminals to revert to a childlike state and then they will be re-educated. The ideals of honesty and citizenship will be drummed into them. They will be taught a vocation before being released. They will know that they were criminals at one time. But they'll have no memory of their pre-College life.

The surgeons and psychologists who run the place are famous in the professions, extremely well-paid, and have been trained for their work by Doc himself.

Why is there a discrepancy between the first 2 stories and the 3rd? Why is the impression given in the first two that only conventional psychological methods are used to rehabilitate the criminals?

The explanation is simple enough. Dent got most of his information about Doc and his activities from Doc and his aides. Occasionally, he learned about some new exploit of Doc's in the newspapers. Most of his information consisted of short outlines of the particular adventure with brief comments by Doc or his pals. These were dictated by them and probably types out by one of the secretaries of the agency that did detective work for Doc. Lea Aster (Monk's pippin of a secretary) did the typing in the early years.

Dent may have talked to Doc face-to-face now and then although there is no record of such a meeting.

Apparently, Doc had felt in the beginning that the brain surgery might be too shocking to readers of Doc Savage magazine. Later he changed his mind. If the violence and killing in the first 2 issues of the magazine did not upset them, then the forcible seizure and surgery of men who deserved it was not going to cause a controversy.

It was, we may be sure, not a matter of Doc suddenly deciding to us a new method. From The Purple Dragon #091 (September 1940), we know that the College doctors had been operating on criminals since at least 1929. Mavrik (Shalleck) had been shipped to Doc's place in that year for the surgical treatment. Thus, the discrepancy is the first 2 accounts of the College is due to Doc's hesitation about revealing to Dent just what was really going on there.

By the way, the term "the College" is first used in the 22nd published story The Annihilist (#022) (December 1934). This is one of the most interesting of the supersagas. In it, we learn of the weird disease which causes its victims' eyes to "pop out" before they die.

We learn that the College has been run for Doc by Robert Lorrey ("a scientific surgeon of fabulous skill"). He has been trained by Doc himself. His chief assistant is Leander Court. Leander does not last long after the events of The Annihilist begin. He is murdered in cold blood. Shot down in the reception room of that peculiar institution called the Association of Physical Health.

Lorrey had taken the Hippocratic Oath as had Doc. But he is bothered no more than Doc by the ethics of what he is doing at the College. He is breaking the laws of the United States and New York State every time he accepts a criminal for treatment. But he is doing it in a good cause.

Doc and everybody associated with operating the College could have been brought up on charges of kidnapping, forcible drugging, infringing on civil rights, transportation across the state line, and malpractice. The total number of years for these charges could have kept Doc in the penitentiary for life. Indeed if the jury and judge had so decided, Doc could have been sent to the electric chair. The "Lindbergh law" made Doc's activities a Federal offense punishable by death.

Never mind. Doc is endangering himself for the greatest benefit of the majority. And though he is himself acting criminally (from a legal viewpoint), his actions can easily be justified. It is not a case of evil means being used to achieve good results. Although unlawful, the means themselves are not evil.

If Doc turned his prisoners over to the police, he would see most of them rot in jail and some die in the execution chamber. None would go "straight" when they got out. Under Doc's administration, the criminals are not housed and fed at the State's expense. Doc pays for all this. Moreover, Doc's treatment guarantees (almost) that the crook will re-enter society as a useful member.

Robert Lorrey is No. 7 on Doc's payroll (which listed many thousands). He is, of course, paid more money than he could possibly have earned as a freelancer. He is bright. But his twin brother Sidney is brilliant.

Sidney is an inventor who spends most of his time experimenting in his private laboratory in New York City. His chief invention is a device which generates the same emanations as Radium but less expensively. The device, however, has not been developed to the point of being commercially profitable. Sidney hopes the invention will eventually become useful in treating cancer. Sidney the idealist is to become a prominent figure in the events of The Annihilist.

A strange man by the strange name of Janko Sultman also plays a large role in this story. It is from him that we first hear Doc's theory of the cause of criminal behavior. Sultman states that Savage has discovered that Crime is a disease. Using infected tonsils as an analog, Sultman says these send poisons through a man's system and so affect him physically and mentally.

To go a step further, glands secrete everything from sweat to digestive acids. The brain contains many glands and these are the least understood of any in the body. A certain tiny gland in the brain governs the workings of a part of the brain which in turn controls a man's behavior. A malfunction of this gland results in a disturbance of his ethical sense. He becomes confused about the distinction between right and wrong.

Doc Savage corrects the malfunctioning of the gland. He also severs certain nerves so that the criminal entirely forgets his past.

The identity and exact location of the gland are not even hinted at. Since it may be presumed that (as of 1972) all glands in the human brain have been located and labeled (though all their functions haven't yet been discovered), it should be a simple matter to name the gland. So far, no scientist has come forward with this information.

However, it's doubtful that any psychologist or social scientist of today would agree with Doc's explanation of the causes of criminal behavior. These are very complex. To go into all the theories would make this current chapter into a book. Doc's explanation of the crimogenic gland may not be the true one at all. It is possible (in fact, very probably) that Doc misled Dent.

Why he would do this is not certain. But it may have been that he felt that it would be dangerous even to hint at the true nature of the method used. From the sketchy description that Dent could have supplied, a scientist may have gotten a clue which would lead him to Doc's methods.

These methods would be a 2-edged sword. If they could be used for good ends, they could also be used for evil. Perhaps they could become a tool for the control of the operatee's mind. Or they could be used to make criminals out of honest men.

This latter possibility is indeed why the master criminal Boke raids the College. He intends to force the secret of the treatment out of the staff. Then he will forcibly give industrialists, politicians, and statesmen the reverse of the treatment and make criminals of them. (He overlooks the fact that many industrialists and politicians are already criminals!) These will then be his partners in crime.

The College is situated in very wild and rugged terrain. A single dirt road winds from the distant country highway through heavy timber. It generally follows creeks and goes through many small valleys. The road terminates at a massive gate of steel. This is the only visible entrance in a high and heavy wire fence topped by barbed wire which circles an area of many acres.

An observer in an airplane would think that the fence guards only a small lake and a log hunting lodge. At one side of the lake is a high craggy hill of gray stone. About a mile outside the gate on top of a hill which commands a view of the encircled area is a small cabin.

The institution is equipped with a number of devices for detecting intruders. In the woods out the fence are capacity alarms. Amplifiers for sonic detectors are all over the place and are monitored by one man in the lodge.

When Boke launches his attack, the monitor hears the approaching planes and alerts the College. At that moment, there are 200 men on the grounds. Most of them are patients dressed in white. The few men in blue are the nurses (former criminals who have remained to work in the College).

On hearing the warning signal, all 200 march into doors that have opened in the seemingly solid rock hill. In a few minutes, the doors close on them. The patients go into the many rooms inside the hill.

As the planes fly over the College, sections of dirt slide back to expose concrete pits. These hold anti-aircraft rapid-fire guns loaded by automatic machinery and remotely-controlled by a staff member in a concealed place. Boke soon finds out that the place has no "Welcome" sign hung out.

Doc's treatment seems to be very effective. In The Vanisher (#046) (December 1936), it's stated that not one of the graduates has "ever returned to the avenue of Crime". But as we'll see, this won't be true in the future.

In The Flying Goblin (#089) (July 1940), Doc has erected buildings inside the fenced area. Why he did this is not known. Possibly the College like more conventional educational institutions has expanded. The increased population not only resulted in a boom in "students" but also resulted in an explosion of the criminal class. The rooms carved out in the stone hill are not enough and there is no more space inside the hill for more rooms to be carved out.

Besides, in 9 years Doc has been increasingly busy and has accumulated a large collection of crooks.

A large building now exists inside the fence. It is at least 3 stories high and its windows are barred. These bars are not so close together that a small object can't be thrown between them. This is done by 2 crooks who have sneaked onto the grounds. (How they got past all the detectors is not explained.) The object is a device which guides in Oscar (the "Flying Goblin") who strikes the corner of the building ... blows it open ... and thus permits Birmingham Jones to escape.

Jones if the first failure of the criminal-curing operation. Apparently a blow on Jones' head by one of Dillinger's boys given some years before has prevented the usual 100 percent cure. Jones does not remember his former life. But he still has his psychotic lust for killing.

It is worth noting that Doc does not care what crimes his captives had committed. Even mad-dog murderers (with one exception) have gone to the College. The only requirement for admission is violent action towards Doc.

In fact, during World War II Doc even sends Germans and Japanese who've attacked him to the College. It doesn't matter to Doc that he is breaking the Geneva Convention or that these men were motivated by patriotism and not criminal desires. They get the full treatment and are graduated with honor.

On the other hand, Doc is doing most of them a favor. Many are spies who would be executed if turned over to the U.S. Government.

The sole exception to Doc's rules is the same Birmingham Jones who has escaped from the College. Doc recaptures him but tells his men that Jones will probably not be returned to the College. His murderous compulsions are just too strong.

Dent does not say what eventually happens to Jones. He writes an ambiguous statement: "All understood what the Bronze Man meant."

Monk, Ham, and Renny may have understood. But I don't. What did Doc intend for Jones? Did he just surrender him to the police? How could he when Jones could tell them all about the College? Or did Doc do something more sinister? The latter seems unlikely since Doc did not believe in taking life unless it was absolutely necessary.

The next supersaga in which a graduate plays an important part is The Purple Dragon (#091) (September 1940). In this story, the operation consists in severing certain nerves to isolate the memory of the pre- to the College life. The "crime gland" is not mentioned here or in any succeeding story.

Hiram Shalleck (real name: Joe Mavrik) disappears one night. He has been living in the small town of Lamar, Colorado for 10 years. But he is never seen by the citizens again after he vanishes.

Investigating, the Lamar sheriff finds a number of newspaper articles about Doc Savage in Shalleck's room. He does not, however, connect the well-known Man of Bronze with Shalleck. Nor does he connect Shalleck with a strange newspaper story which comes out of Chicago a few days later.

I won't reveal what happened afterwards to Shalleck(Mavrik). The Purple Dragon is one of the best of the supersagas, still enjoyable for anyone who likes an excellent mystery story. But it's evident that Doc had operated on the gangster Mavrik in 1929. Also, the villain (the "Purple Dragon" as he styled himself) has found means for reconnecting the neural circuits surgically cut by Doc.

Every once in a while, a graduate pops up. One is Bob Castron, mentioned in The Man Who Fell Up (#113) as the operator of the newsstand and cigar counter in the south lobby of Doc's skyscraper. A number of others appear as taxi drivers or mechanics. Many are employees of a private agency which is personally directed by Doc. (His cousin Sherlock Holmes had his agency, too. It's mentioned by Watson in The Sussex Vampire.)

Doc's organization was worldwide. Ex-professional thug Bill Lee runs the London agency. Another graduate heads the Capetown, South Africa agency.

Onie Morton (who lives with his sleepy redheaded wife in the Bronx) is a "news condenser" for Doc. He is a member of a complex organization of specialists who gather news from all over the World and condense it for Doc's perusal. Doc can go through these items and smell the ones that mean trouble just as a bloodhound smells tracks according to Monk. It was Onie's failure to report for work that initiates the chain of events in The Time Terror (#119) (January 1943).

(Doc's American cousin A. Rassendy II [sometimes known as Kent Allard, Lamont Cranston, etc.] has a similar setup but on a much more modest scale.

The Clyde Burke Clipping Bureau is owned by him. His office -- when he is "the Shadow" -- is an unoccupied room in an old build on Twenty-Third Street east of Broadway. It is on the 3rd floor and the door bears on its frosted glass only the legend: B. Jonas. Beneath is a mail slot with a sign: LEAVE MAIL HERE.

The Shadow picks up communications from his small group of agents and sometimes plans his campaigns here. He has none of Doc's desire to reform criminals. He stops the criminals' careers by putting huge holes in them from his two .45 automatics. Doc would have deplored this attitude. And he certainly would have rebuked the killer if he had had the chance. Their paths may have crossed now-and-then and it's like that Doc knew the true professions of A. Rassendy II/Kent Allard. There was not much that Doc did not know.)

All in all, the College was a great success. It's too bad that the legislators and the social workers and social scientists in this country are still resistant to Doc's advanced ideas. The adoption of his techniques would but down the problem of repeats by law offenders to almost zero.

Of course, Society would still turn out new criminals every year. Doc had no ideas for striking at the sources of Crime. But then, who does? Except for a few largely ignored proponents of an economy of abundance.

Of course, it would be necessary to get the convict's permission for the operation and many might refuse. As a private individual, Doc did not ask the criminals for the consent. Why should he? He saw what needed to be done ... and he did it.

9 -- the Fortress of Solitude

The Fortress of Solitude exists from the very beginning. The first story (The Man of Bronze #001) says that it was Doc's father who thought of setting it up. Doc followed the recommendation and built it "on a rocky island deep in the Arctic regions".

Here he "retired periodically to brush up on the newest developments in Science, Psychology, Medicine, Engineering. This was the secret of his universal knowledge for his periods of concentration were long and intense. ... And no one on Earth knew the location of the retreat. Once there, nothing would interrupt Doc's studies and experiments."

In the first supersaga, Doc has just returned from Fortress to discover from the newspapers that his father had died of a weird disease.

In The Land of Terror (#002), Jerome Coffern says: "at intervals, Savage vanishes ... as completely as though he had left the Earth. And when he returns, he nearly always has one-or-more new and incredible discoveries to give to the World. ... Any scientific man would give half a lifetime to inspect that Laboratory, so remarkable must it be."

In the 3rd published story Quest of the Spider (#003), Ham takes offense at beautiful Edna Danielsen's criticism of Doc because he can't be found when needed. In a severe tone, Ham says: "Young lady, you do not realize that Doc Savage's benefactions to Humanity extend beyond helping every Tom, Dick, and Harry or Mary, Jane, and Anne out of their private troubles. ... No doubt he has retired there. And when he appears, he will be bearing some new contribution which will save thousands of lives.

"That contribution ... will be of vastly more importance than any personal misfortune that you or anybody else might meet in the meantime!"

Fortunately, Doc comes back from his Arctic retreat just in time to catch the man who is trying to kill Big Eric and his daughter Edna. And we're off on another great adventure.

Succeeding supersagas mentioned the Fortress. Only occasionally is a reference to it missing from the stories. But it is not until the October 1938 issue that it is directly involved in one of Doc's exploits. This story, fittingly enough, is titled Fortress of Solitude (#068).

Doc is not at the place when the action begins. Otherwise, events would have been different.

A man finds the Fortress. And he is the last man on earth who should find it! He is John Sunlight ("a weird, terrible being"). That he is the only villain ever to appear in 2 of the supersagas gives some idea of his intelligence and high survival quotient. All the other great villains were either dead or sent up to the College by the end of the particular story in which they first appeared.

John Sunlight escapes on a ship from Siberia. In the Arctic fog, the ship blunders into the island on which the Fortress sits. The ship's lookout thinks it is a blue whale. But a closure inspection disproves this.

"It was like nothing that should be. Its height must be all of 100 feet. And there was a shimmering luminance to it that was eerie. ... It resembled the perfectly spherical half of an opaque blue crystal ball."

The island on which it stands is of smooth gray rock. The wind has swept the snow off the rock at the island's edges. Inland, the snow is piled high around the strange Blue Dome. John Sunlight claws at the glazed blue which feels as hard and as cold as steel. He can't see into the stuff. It is a "solid substance of a nature unknown. Not glass. And yet not metal either."

John Sunlight tries to break the Dome with blows from a sledge hammer. A clear ringing results "as if a great bell had been tapped once" and the sound carries for miles even if it is not loud. The substance is not even nicked. More blows fail to affect it in the slightest.

The local natives tell Sunlight how to enter the seemingly impenetrable Dome. The information, however, does not come from the Eskimos voluntarily. Torture can't force it from them. But Sunlight's acute observation finds the key.

Sunlight enters and gets hold of some of Doc's weapons. These are so terrible that Doc's impassive face is twisted with horror when he realizes that someone has been eating his scientific porridge. [StealthSkater note: Actually, my interpretation that Doc had confiscated devices from unscrupulous entities which he felt could do the World great harm if harnessed incorrectly. His intent was to store these safely until he could find some redeeming qualities in them. If not, he would end up destroying them. And what better place to store them than at his supersecret Fortress of Solitude .]

Late in this supersaga, we learn that the Dome was built by the island's Eskimos under Doc's supervision. He brought the materials in himself in a huge transport plane. It took many plane trips and a long time abuilding. The Eskimos are caretakers in a sense, although they do nothing to (or for) the Dome itself. They can get dehydrated food from the Dome whenever they wish. The secret door opens for any of them when he gets close while wearing a white rabbitskin cape (a gift from Doc). The tiny permanent magnets sewed into the cape's lining activate a door-opening mechanism.

Near the end of the adventure, Doc tells Ham that the blue stuff is "a form of glass composition which could be welded with heat and which had strength far beyond that of true glass. The welding operation explained how the Dome had been constructed without joints. The stuff ... being a nonconductor ... kept out the cold."

John Sunlight escapes with about 20 of Doc's "deadly scientific devices" and Doc can't sleep easily until he has found Sunlight. But he will not do so until about 3 months later when Sunlight comes looking for him. This is narrated in the strange (and near-fatal for Doc) events of The Devil Genghis #070 (December 1938).

The Fortress of Solitude is mentioned often in the following issues, though not as frequently as before. In The Laugh of Death (#116), Doc is at its site again. This time, he is out in -60o weather in the Arctic night. He is stark naked and exercising. 'The jumping around in the snow made him sweat and the sweat gathered between his skins.'

This statement is one of Dent's many narrative "hooks". Doc's outer skin is actually an experimental plastic. The stuff is "almost a complete insulator against heat or cold". It is designed specifically to be used by the military. But like many of Doc's devices, it has some disadvantages. In this case, perspiration makes the false skin crack and peel. Disgusted, Doc walks back into the Dome to work on the stuff some more.

The structure of the retreat now no longer resembles that seen in the earlier Fortress of Solitude (#068). Doc has lately changed its appearance. Now it looks just like a great chunk of ice sticking up from the Arctic ice pack. The change is necessary because so many more planes are now flying over this area. The War has brought them over the polar skies. This is not the early-1930s when it was easy to find an isolate unobserved place.

The Fortress now has 3 doors in The Laugh of Death. When Doc is inside and looks up, he can see the stars. The plastic is polarized so that light passes in only one direction. Doc usually listens to the daily report before going into its Laboratory. The reports are made thus:

One of his aides or Pat dials an unlisted number and dictates the report to a recording machine. Promptly at 12:00 am and 12:00 pm, the reports are automatically transmitted via radio beam to the Fortress.

But he never gets into it because of the daily report he now hears. Doc is listening to Pat's report when a sinister laughing interrupts her. "It was certainly not human. And it did not seem animal. So maybe 'laughing' was not the word for it. It was a completely unexplainable sound. ... It had a macabre, chilling quality."

Pat screams then. A ripping sound follows. Pat is then silent. But the laughing goes on for at least 10 minutes.

And we're off with Doc again. But this time he is sweating with anxiety about his cousin Pat.

We are allowed to be present at the site of the Fortress no more. The references to it dwindle away in succeeding adventures. Of course, Doc was really too busy to go there. He had been too busy since The Man of Bronze (#001) to do more than make short visits. He had to work swiftly on his inventions because he usually no sooner got there than a crisis demanded that he return to New York.

10 -- Monk, the Ape in Wolf's Clothing

In The Man of Bronze (#001), Monk Mayfair makes his first entrance trailing behind the others. Pigeon-toed and walking with a peculiar ape-like waddle, he trails the other aides. "Last came the most remarkable character of all." And this he is indeed. Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair would be remarkable in any group.

Monk is 5'2" and weighs 260 pounds of mostly bones, guts, and muscles. He is "a hammered-down Cardiff Giant", "a dwarf edition of King Kong", "half-a-man tall and 2 men wide". He's covered with red hair as coarse as pig bristles and his skin is brick-red.

His chest is thicker than it is wide. He has no hips. His arms dangle below the knees of his bowed legs. His forehead is so low that it looks as if he has no more brains that would fill a cigarette. His ears are little and cauliflowered. The tip of one has been chewed off and the other perforated by a rifle bullet.

His eyes are so surrounded by gristle from fist and club blows that they resemble pleasant little stars twinkling in pits. (No eye color is ever mentioned. But the cover illustration for The Awful Egg #088 shows them as blue-gray.) When he grins (which is often), his mouth looks as big as a frog's or as if it had been widened by the knife of a villain.

Of the 6 adventurers, he alone bears scars. His skin looks as if a flock of chickens with gray chalk on the feet had paraded over him. But he is so proud of these that he has consistently refused to let the surgeon Doc Savage remove them.

He glories in his tough looks. Yet he is the only one of the 5 aides to carry a pocket mirror. Frighteningly rough as he looks (and is), he gets seasick easily and suffers from claustrophobia. He once tells Doc during a voyage that the only reason he stays alive is so he can die and the sickness over with. This is a typical Monkicism.

He has a squeaky voice which sounds like a wet stick being rubbed over a tin can or a nail being pulled out of green lumber. But when he is in a fight, he roars like a grizzly defending its territory.

Monk's technique for running in the dark is to double over and travel anthropoidally in great bounds using his unnaturally long arms to balance himself if he stumbles. As a runner on 2 feet, he lags behind Doc and Johnny but is even with the long-legged Renny. Despite his gorilloid structure, he is the most agile of the 5 aides.

His strength is indeed ape-like. He can bend pennies between thumb and forefinger and then unbend them. In The Land of Terror (#002), he bends a villain's revolver barrel as if it were a hairpin and hands it back to him, telling to shoot it. Despite this, he never exercises but depends on his rigorous life to keep him fit.

When he sleeps, he snores. And peculiar, no 2 snores of his sound alike.

He loves a fight more than anything. The worst possible thing that can happen to him is to miss one. His second love (according to what he once told a cop) are blondes over 21. Third, he loves eating. In The Wild Men (#114), he was interrupted while devouring his 3rd steak!

Actually, probably his greatest love is tormenting Ham Brooks.

He has little tact except when chasing "skirts". And often not then. Though a terrible antagonist, he is not cool and calculating in fights. He is as wild and uncontrolled as a wild bull on ice and as likely to slug one of his compatriots as the enemy. This frenzy doesn't prevent him, however, from seeing everything that is going on.

Other characteristics are a distinct sound made by his feet when he's pacing back-and-forth in an upset condition and some false front teeth. When they're out, he lisps. Ham steals them in Rock Sinister (#147) and so prevents Monk from going out on a date. In The Green Master (#179), he hides a precious green stone in the hole recently occupied by a wisdom tooth.

Monk's clothes always look as if slept in. They are as garish as those of a sideshow barker's. He thinks nothing of wearing to the most elaborate affair a $19.98 checkered suit, bright-yellow tie, bright-green shirt, loud plaid vest, and bulldog-toed shoes. His favorite hat looks as if it has been used to fight bumblebees. His tastes are low. But he dresses this way partly to offend the fastidious fashion-plate Ham.

His car is as garish as his clothes. It is "a combination of sunset and earthquake on wheels".

He carries an old-fashioned watch with a closed front which opens by pressure on the stem. This may be a family heirloom. But if it is, Dent never says so.

Of Monk's early life, little is known. He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, probably about 1899. When a child, he had a hound named Pronto. When Ham in The Freckled Shark (#073) says that Ham's family sprang from the best stock around Boston, Monk replies: "My family never sprang from anybody! They sprang at 'em!"

Despite this disclaimer, some of Monk's ancestors were descended from passengers on the Mayflower.

His parents were Blodgett Mayfair and Melissa Rutherfood. Her brother was the famous (or infamous) zoologist, anthropologist, and explorer Dr. George Edward Rutherford. (Doyle calls him "Challenger" in the semi-fictional stories based on his colorful career. For details of Monk's genealogy not mentioned here, see "Addenda 2" and "Addenda 3" of Tarzan Alive.)

Monk's father probably was a professional man with good connections and from a high social class. Otherwise, it's doubtful that he would have met the daughter of a British baron and married her. The evidence is strong that the Mayfairs had intermarried with the Rutherfords for several centuries. He seems to have been related to the Canadian Mayfairs who were in line for the British earldom of "Chester, Essex, and Cornwall". (Dent used these titles to cover up the real ones of the "Mayfair" family. Chester and Cornwall are ducal titles and belong to the heir apparent of the British king. The earls of Essex are Capells.)

Mr. Mayfair was probably a chemist working for one of the American oil companies. Whatever his profession, he sent Monk to a high school which had classes specializing in ancient Greek and Roman mythology. It is doubtful that Tulsa had such a school. Possibly, Monk was sent off to attend an English institution such as Rugby. He must have had a hard time there since he was not one to submit gracefully or quietly to the relentless hazing of upperclass boys.

How anybody with his abominable substandard speech could have been admitted to Rugby (let alone graduate) is puzzling. My theory is that Monk was well aware of correct grammatical and vocabulary niceties and could use them when the situation demanded. He adopted his low-class highly-American language to bug his schoolmates and perhaps occasionally his professors. When examination time came, he spoke and wrote with the best of them.

When he met Ham Brooks, he discovered that the elegant Harvard lawyer was irritated by his "ain'ts", double negatives, and slang. Since he was with Ham so much, the sloppiness of speech became a habit.

His parents probably had a comfortable (though not large) income. We know that Monk drove a truck in his early years. He probably did this during the summers for one of the Tulsa oil companies.

Something happened when he graduated from high school. Either his parents died and left him little or they lost their money. Monk was forced to put himself through a New York City college by working as a messenger boy at Grand Central Station. After graduation, he got his Ph.D. in chemistry at Columbia or Fordham. He then went to Peipzig to do some postgraduate work. Dent never says anything of his doctorate. But it's safe to presume that one of the world's foremost industrial chemists would have had a Ph.D.

His first love, however, was not his profession. It was fighting. When the outbreak of World War I caught him in Italy while overlooking the setup of a new chemical factory, he at once signed up with the Italian Army. It was while battling the Austrians that he met an American volunteer ambulance drive. This man later talked to Ernest Hemingway about Monk. The description of Monk left a lasting impression on Hemingway. In later years, he was to use some aspects of Monk's character (both physical and emotional) for his hero Harry Morgan in To Have and Have Not.

Monk was severely wounded. This -- plus weakening caused by malaria -- led him to resign his Italian captaincy. He went to England to recuperate and to offer his services to the English when he recovered. He was accepted and served several months as a captain in the Royal Engineers. Sometime after the United States declared war on the Central Powers, Monk transferred to the American Army as a lieutenant colonel in the infantry.

He encountered Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks on the front in France. The two were inseparable. Monk didn't know French at that time. This enabled Brooks to play the first of his tricks on Monk.

He coached Monk in a number of Gallic comments which the latter was to deliver to a French general during a ceremony. The phrases, however, were actually the most obscene and insulting to be found in a language noted for its vigor in these areas. The enraged general clapped Monk in jail. It took several days for the U.S. authorities to get him out of the guardhouse.

A week later, Brooks endured a great humiliation. He was arrested for having stolen a truckload of hams. Brooks was able to prove himself innocent although he was never able to nail Monk for the frame-up. And worse still, he was stuck with the nickname of "Ham".

It was after this that Monk became an authority on hogs. He carried a manual of Sus domesticus in his pocket and would often read aloud from it just to tee-off Ham.

After the War, Monk resumed his profession. He seems to have traveled over the World as a consultant chemist. During the time he learned some Finnish. He also took time off for explorations. And it was while swimming naked in a South American jungle river that a naturalist mistook for a member of an undiscovered species of ape and tried to capture him.

Ham seems to have been along on this trip since Monk wouldn't tell this story on himself. Whenever they were both in New York, they palled around insulting each other and trying to cut each other out of the current chorus girl or waitress. According to Ham (albeit not a reliable witness), Monk's tastes in women ran to tramps. This may have been so. But Monk was always chasing the high-class heroines of the supersagas. And more often than not, he won over Ham.

Doc himself thought that Monk was the world's homeliest man. Monk had once been offered fame and fortune if he would star in a series of horror films. But he had a quality that appealed to dogs, little children, old ladies, and long-legged bosomy pippins of every class. Pat Savage said that he was a sucker for any female. But this didn't keep him from describing the ugly Miss Bridges in Fire and Ice (#161) as looking "like 7 miles of bad road".

Monk thinks of women even when sleeping. While escaping from the Nazis in The Black, Black Witch (#121), Monk is asked by Doc why he's so cheerful. Monk tells him of his dream. He was chased by a dazzling blonde witch riding not a broomstick but a motorcycle. When he got a good look at her, he turned around and chased her. He and the witch raced at 100 mph up-and-down the French country roads. Finally he was able to outrun the cycle.

He doesn't tell Doc what happened thereafter. But he is obviously pleased with it. He asks Doc what he thought of a dream like that. Doc doesn't reply. But he thinks it is a typical Monk Mayfair dream since it had a blonde it int.

Shortly thereafter, Monk is astonished when a girl looking much like the one in his dream and owning a motorcycle appears. This is Monk's first psychic experience and probably his last unless the insulting thought transference between him and Ham in The Headless Men (#100) is counted. That telepathic communication seems more likely to be one of Dent's inventions.

Monks says that he and Ham never fall in love with the dames they chase. They are just wolves and that is all. As usual, Monk is lying.

Princess Gusta -- rejected by Doc in The King Maker (#016) -- falls for Monk on the rebound. Monk stays in the kingdom of Calbia for a few weeks to woo her. But the affair peters out. In The Roar Devil (#028), Monk proposes to Retta Kenn but is turned down.

And Monk is more in love with his secretary ("the prettiest in New York") than he cares to admit. However, after the frightening episodes of The Red Skull (#006), Lea may have gone to a lower-paying but much safer employment.

Monk has a passion for Doc's cousin Pat. And there are certain suggestions (explored in Chapter 16) that the two may have had more going on than either Doc or Dent suspected.

Monk is very serious in his proposal of marriage to Princess Amen-Amen of Egypt in The Awful Dynasty (#093). But his pals send her a telegram purporting to be from Monk's wife. That cools things off fast.

One of Monk's techniques for "breaking the ice" with a girl is to propose marriage in the first half-hour of a date. The above cases are not examples of this because Monk sincerely meant it. But a blonde named Hester accepts in Mystery Island (#102) and Monk has to run for it. After this, he drops that particular attack.

He is, though, an incurable skirt-chaser to the last. According to Sammy Wales, he looks as if he "didn't have brains enough to run a test on anything unless it was to run his eyes up-and-down a pretty leg". In The Freckled Shark (#073), Rhoda Haven tells Monk he's "robin-eyed". When Monk asks what that means, she says "Eyes that are always resting on limbs".

Monk's judgment of and memory for female legs is accurate. He exposes the identity of a disguised villainess in The Death Lady (#168) when he remembers having seen her legs from behind once before.

Monk has many successes in his Don Juan-ing. But this is because he is always trying. His failures are many also. Often, the girl that he is after rejects him for the handsome Doc Savage. Sometimes he loses out to Ham.

And every once in a while, a woman is more impressed by his ugliness than the peculiar charm he radiates. Thus in Once Over Lightly (#172), he ask Miss Trunnels if she's hunting for something. And she replies "Stuffed bison. I suppose you'll do for a substitute."

But Monk doesn't care. He goes on to the next peach. And he uses another icebreaking technique. This is his pet pig Habeas Corpus.

The pig often startles young dames by addressing them with the most outlandish (but cornily poetic) compliments. After the initial shock, the beautiful broad is intrigued to find that the voice is actually Monk's. He is a superb ventriloquist. Maybe even better than Doc because he practices more. The pig then becomes a conversation piece and quite often leads to a "piece" of another kind.

Though he looks like a racetrack tout, Monk is a famous chemist. Outside of his specialty, his knowledge is not too extensive. Electronics (except for radio) is a closed field to him. He knows even less than the average person about History, Archaeology, and Paleontology. He has no appreciation of fine music. He loathes orchids (a feeling which would not go down well with his cousin Nero Wolfe). He tips generously to good-looking waitresses, of course. But he never gives a male waiter money. "Tipping undermines a man's character," he says, though failing to specify if it is the waiter's character or his own character that he worries about.

His command of languages is limited and peculiar. He speaks Italian passably well. But he has somewhere sometime picked up enough Yaqui Indian speech to make out with the Yaqui girls. He is supposed to be fluent in Spanish. But in one story, he doesn't know the commonly used word for ape (mono). In The Black, Black Witch (#121), he speaks German perfectly although in a later adventure he has to brush up on it. And in Violent Night (#143), he understands it but can't speak it.

He's been taught to speak Mayan fluently because all of Doc's group use it when they don't want anybody else to know what they're talking about. But Monk "murders" it.

Aside from chemical terms, he is ignorant of (or has forgotten) Latin and Greek.

He reads the daily comic strips devotedly. He is a fanatic sports follower. He can tell you the records of the baseball and football players and the scores of the big games for the past 20 years.

He doesn't drink. But he must have tried liquor at one time. He admits that champagne tastes like vinegar to him.

In the early supersagas, he smokes cigarettes which he hand-rolls. He is so addicted that he risks his life to grab a can of tobacco before abandoning a falling plane. He gives up this habit for many adventures. But then he starts to smoke cigars. Later, he quits again but then -- given his temperament -- he probably takes up the habit a dozen times and quits as often.

He has a powerful fear of shotguns since he saw a man blown apart by one in his youth. He also shares with Doc a strong fear (not irrational) of sharp penknives in the hands of murderers.

When he is hit hard on the head, he sees not "stars" but a green waterfall. And several times coming out of unconsciousness, he mumbles about "Mabel".

All of the group -- Doc, Pat, and the 5 aides -- are knocked senseless many times. Monk seems to have held the record. He was whammed unconscious at least 54 times during the 181 supersagas. In The Seven Agate Devils (#039), he is knocked out 3 times. A rock between the eyes; a blow on the head from some unspecified weapon; and a rifle butt on the head send him down for a long count. In The Phantom City (#010), an accidental flow on the jaw from Doc; from a gun butt; and a flying brick put him to sleep 3 times.

In 8 other stories, he is knocked unconscious twice. On an average of about every 3 exploits, he suffers a blow which makes him senseless. These last from 10 minutes to half-an-hour or even for hours. At least 60 times he is struck dazed or semiconscious.

These severe head traumas do not seem to have impaired his physical or mental abilities at all. This may be attributed to an atavistic bony structure much thicker than most men's. Still, it does seem reasonable to assume a certain amount of brain damage. He admits in a late tale that he isn't the man he used to be. Missing a good night's sleep weakens him.

In The Pure Evil (#175), he describes himself as "a broken-down old chemist that has been associated with Doc for quite a while". At another time, he laments that doesn't half of Doc's memory. He can remember faces but not names. Still, in No Light to Die By #170 (a 1947 issue), he displays a Sherlock Holmes ability of which Doc himself would not have been ashamed.

When we first meet Monk, he lives in a penthouse of a building some 60 stories high in lower Manhattan just off Wall Street. In fact, Monk owns the building. The penthouse is furnished with ultra-modern metal and glass in a style that makes it look like "an overdone movie set". It contains Monk's apartments, a private room for his pet pig, and a big laboratory. Doc and the others use this lab when they're on the run from crooks or the police (which is quite often). Outside on the roof is a court where Monk and his secretary play tennis.

Monk's fees are high. In Poison Island (#079), he collects $10,000 for 2 days' work as consultant for a large chemical plant. But despite his fees and ownership of the building, he is broke several times a year (Doc says once a month). To quote a phrase which would be offensive to Ham, Monk lives "too high off the hog".

Also now and then, he is forced to make expensive repairs to the penthouse. In Death in Silver (#020), the blast that kills Paine L. Winthrop and wrecks the Seven Seas office also blows out Monk's windows, ruins his laboratory, and knocks him down.

During repairs, Monk uses a secret laboratory on the 2nd floor of an unimpressive building in Queens. Doc and gang use this when neither Doc's nor Monk's laboratory is available (usually because the police are watching both of those places).

In The Men Who Smiled No More (#038), Monk has moved to Long Island to get the peace and solitude needed to carry out some chemical experiments. He lives in a cottage in the Shinnecock Hills. But his expenses there are higher than anticipated. He has to dig into his pocket to pay for the ducks that his pet pig is killing on the neighboring farm. The only woman around is his fat housekeeper Mrs. Malatkas.

But this rural retreat is only a temporary place. In the next tale he is back at the penthouse.

By the time of The Ten-Ton Snakes (#145) (March 1945), he has left the penthouse for an apartment in a fashionable building near Radio City. The apartment is expensive. But still much less so than the penthouse. He is evicted from the apartment because he can't pay the rent.

Dent doesn't say where Monk went to live after this. But in Trouble on Parade (#153) (November 1945), his telephone number is Central 0-9000.

In Se-Pah-Poo (#156) (February 1946), Monk is living in a hotel on Forty-First Street which is extending him credit. Even Doc and his 4 buddies refuse to lend him money. The "incendiary blondes" he pursues are giving him the cold shoulder.

He is still broke in the last adventure Up From Earth's Center (#181). And no wonder. Of the 5 aides, he and Ham are in the great majority of exploits. They've not only spent twice what they earn but they can't earn much because they've been too busy helping Doc. When he calls, they drop whatever they're handling (test tube, lawsuit, or peroxide blonde) and rush off joyously.

Whatever is going on, Monk is in it up to his nauseating bright-green tie. And he doesn't pay much attention to Doc's orders to avoid killing enemies unless absolutely necessary. Monk is the bloodthirstiest of the lot and his actions draw reprimands when Doc catches him.

In The Red Skull (#006), Monk deliberately allows the villainous Buttons Zortell to escape to his death. He lies, telling Doc that Zortell hit him in the left eye and thus managed to get away from him. Doc doesn't say anything that time. But Monk feels that Doc knows the eye was injured when he ran into an outcropping in a tunnel.

It is Monk who complains at the end of The Sea Magician (#021) that not a "dang soul" has been killed. (This, by the way, is the only of the 181 supersagas that has this feature.) However, Monk did his best to come as close to killing as he could.

In The Majii (#031), Monk -- an accomplished thrower of knives -- hurls one into a gunman's heart. This saves the lives of Long Tom and Ham. But Doc grimly accuses him of purposely breaking his rule. Doc says that Monk should have tried to cripple him instead. Sheepishly, Monk pleads overexcitement.

Doc was in a bad situation in The Midas Man (#042). The villainous Hando Lancaster is about to throw a jug of deadly hydrocyanic acid at him. Doc is about 50 feet away and weaponless. He removes his shoes, holding one in each hand and hoping to hit the jug with one or the other (he's ambidextrous) and break it in midair.

But Monk enters and shoots from behind Doc, so close to his ear that he deafens Doc. The jug breaks above Lancaster's head as he raises it to throw. Lancaster dies horribly.

Doc asked Monk why he didn't wait until the jug was thrown so nobody would be hurt. Monk protests that he's no Annie Oakley. And he was lucky to hit the jug while it was still in Lancaster's hands. Knowing the futility of it, Doc says no more. In my opinion, Monk was using good judgment. He could have missed the jug. Under the unnerving psychological circumstances, even a superb marksman could.

In Poison Island (#079), Monk shot a crook in the leg. Doc praised him for his humanitarianism. What Doc didn't know is that Monk had aimed between the man's eyes!

Monk's slickest trick is pulled off under Doc's eyes. In The Laugh of Death (#116), the chief villain Mathis escapes during a wild melee in an airplane. Wearing a parachute, he runs to the cabin door; opens it; and laughing triumphantly, jumps out through the door. Monk had taken a long knife from a minor villain and is standing by the door. He could have stopped Mathis easily but did nothing until Mathis launched himself. Then he stuck the knife deep into the parachute pack.

Later, Monk told Doc: "He made quite a splash."

"Who?" Doc asked.

Monk replies: "Mathis. For some reason or other, his parachute didn't open."

Monk is always the practical joker. The tricks he played on Ham were many. Perhaps the ultimate is when he taught Ham's pet monkey Chemistry to chew tobacco and spit it in the pocket of anyone it's near. Monk makes sure that it's usually nearest Ham.

Monk doesn't limit his jokes to Ham. In Danger Lies East (#169), he intends to ship the corpse of a murdered man in a trunk to a guy in New York City who gave him trouble over a chorus girl.

Monk's ego is large and powerful. Modesty, he says, is not one of his vices. He brags to a girl that he is one of the World's greatest chemists (though some in his profession deny this). He doesn't mind what they say; they're just jealous.

He boasts of his fighting abilities with all the gusto of a 19th Century Mississippi flatboatman. There are, however, 2 fights which he never mentions. One is with the ponderous Captain Ben O'Gard in The Polar Treasure (#004) who slugs him into senselessness. The second (and by far the most humiliating) is when the little, feeble-looking Butch in The Talking Devil (#123) takes him "to the cleaner's". Fortunately for Monk, Ham is unconscious during both of these shameful defeats.

Despite his boasting, he readily admits that Doc is the better man by far. "Second fiddle is the instrument he[Monk] plays best." And he is only "a spear-carrier for Doc."

This is true. But Monk was the one I enjoyed and loved the most among the six.

Realistically, though, he could not have taken all those massive blows to the jaw and head without becoming "punch-drunk". He has to be undergoing some traumatic changes. In the last of the supersagas, his final words are "I won't argue".

And that isn't the Monk Mayfair of old speaking.

11 -- Ham, the Eagle with a Cane

Brigadier General Theodore Marley "Ham" Brooks is "slender, waspish, quick-moving" and "one of the 10 best-dressed men in America". He is Harvard's most astute law graduate. His voice has "a deep-throated chest-driven quality" with "pear-shaped tones".

Lester Dent's notebook says that he has black eyes, is 5'10" tall, and weighs 155 pounds. One of the first-person accounts that Dent was fortunate enough to obtain (Let's Kill Ames #172) contains an eyewitness description of Ham.

Miss Ames says that he isn't tall. His hips are thin but his shoulders wide. His hair is straight and as black as anthracite coal. He has a large eagle-like nose and a large-but-mobile mouth. To this, we can add a high forehead (The Freckled Shark #073).

Ames also says that he looks as if he were somewhere between 40-and-50 years old. Very few men under 30 years of age were brigadier-generals in World War I. So Ham must have been born -- at the latest -- in 1988 or earlier. Since Let's Kill Ames took place in 1947, Ham would have been about 60 years old. However as noted in Chapter 3, Doc's group was using silphium or Kavuru pills and so was not aging as swiftly as normal mortals.

Miss Ames comments in a later passage that his hair is now brown. This change in color is presumably caused by a hair dye. He was disguised as a "Mr. Futch" at that time.

Ham has an International reputation as a high-flying "legal eagle". This must have been gained after World War I before he joined Doc for the first great adventure. From 1931 on, he had little time to practice Law. When he did take a case, he must have commanded tremendous fees.

In The Man Who Shook The Earth (#012), he lives in a top-floor 6-room suite as a member of the Midas Club. The club is so ritzy that "even the bellhops are ex-dukes". To be a member, a man must have at least 5 million dollars in the bank. (This resembles the English club the Blades which James Bond visited as a guest of 'M'. The Blades' requirement was much smaller, however. A mere 100,000 pounds in cash or securities.) In addition, the money has to be earned and not inherited. Ham -- like Monk, Johnny, and Long Tom -- started out poor.

Like Doc and Monk, Ham has one parent born in England. Ham's doesn't seem to have come from nobility. But he has least one distinguished ancestor. The portrait of Colonel Blackstone Brooks, a famous soldier and jurist, hangs on the wall of Ham's apartment. It's not until The Too-Wise Owl (#109) that we find out much about Ham's family.

Because his parents wanted him to become a banker, he started college with that goal. Sometime during his early years at Harvard, he changed his mind and switched to Law. Monk would have said that happened because Ham had the soul of a shyster.

Ham has an elder half-brother Oliver Brooks. He was an Englishman who has always lived in South Africa. He was a professional actor, which is not surprising since the Stage and the Bar have much in common. He was murdered in New York City as a result of a complicated plot by the chief villain.

Ham and Oliver's father is dead and Ham's mother is dead. Oliver's insurance policy left his money to his mother. But it goes to Ham if she dies. Apparently after divorcing Oliver's mother, Ham's father moved from South Africa to the States. There he married a Bostonian named Marley.

Ham's favorite oath was "By Jove!" -- a peculiar one for an American. He must have picked it up from his English father.

At Harvard, Ham worked to put himself through. But he found time to participate in amateur boxing. And his later skill with his sword-cane indicates that he was an intercollegiate champion in fencing. His roommate was Carl John Grunow. He made friends with Eric Danielsen whom he would meet again years later in Quest of the Spider (#003).

In 1913, he graduated from the Harvard Law School summa cum laude. But instead of going into practice, he joined the French Army in 1914. Only this could have gotten him enough experience and a high enough French rank to be given a brigadier general's commission on transfer to the U.S. Army. Dent says a number of times that it was Ham's quick thinking that saved several regiments. Possibly, the regiments were French and not American.

Ham is a fop, changing his clothes according to appropriate place and time, sometimes every 2 hours. Tailors follow him down the street just to enjoy the greatest in sartorial art. Whatever the occasion, he carries his long black cane with its concealed sword. The tip is coated with a drug which sends its victims into an immediate stupor. However, Ham (at least in the beginning) has no compunctions about running the blade completely through the villains.

Despite his eagle beak, Ham is handsome. So much so that Captain McCluskey in The Polar Treasure (#004) calls him "pretty boy". But in the eternal competition between himself and Monk, the ugly Monk wins most of the time. This galls Ham and he does his best to turn the girls against Monk. The ploy most often used it to tell the girl that Monk has a wife and 13 half-witted children.

Ham is husky enough to give most professional boxers a drubbing according to Dent. If this is so, he is very humiliated when encounters the pretty-but-fiery Kateen MacRoy in The Seven Agate Devils (#039). The first time, he is knocked flat by her fist and is doubly humiliated because Monk Mayfair witnesses it. The second time, Kateen knocks Ham out with a haymaker right.

Another injury to his pride was in Fortress of Solitude (#068) when he and Long Tom are beaten up by the 2 giant women Titania and Gigantia. This time, Monk was not around the sight.

Ham often flips coins with Monk to determine who is going to take a nifty dame out or get the most exciting task in an exploit. Ham almost always calls 'heads'. Monk -- finding this out after some time -- made a coin with 2 tails.

Then once Monk accidentally dropped the fake coin through a hole in his pocket after cheating Ham for the hundredth time. Ham picks it up ... looks at it ... and then knocks Monk out with a monkey wrench.

That he actually did this is doubtful. Dent probably inserted this for comic relief. A wrench brought down hard on the skull can result in a fracture, days of coma, subdural leakage of blood, nausea, vomiting, a reduction of intelligence, insanity, and often death. Ham may, however, have rapped Monk just hard enough to cause him a little pain.

An astonishing event occurs in The Sea Angel (#111). Monk swindles Ham out of 3 million dollars. Evidently, Ham has lost his membership in the Midas Club because this pauperizes him. He is so depressed that he tries to commit suicide. The grand jury fails to indict Monk which causes the D.A. to tell the newspapers that it's an awful miscarriage of Justice. Doc kicks Monk out of the group.

Is Monk defrocked? Is the great love affair between Monk and Ham over? It seems incredible ...

... and so it is. The whole business is a setup to trap the men behind the horrendous thing known as the "Sea Angel".

Ham's reactions on being knocked out are as unique as Monk's. Instead of "stars", he sees curtains of colored lights. On several occasion when awakening from unconsciousness, he mumbles about a woman named "Nola". Dent fails to tell us her identity just as he fails to tell us who Monk's "Mabel" was.

In the strange exploit of The Stone Man (#080), Ham's position as leader of male fashion in America is threatened by the crooked lawyer Herman Locatella. Ham is worried by this although in the end, Locatella is literally frozen out of the competition.

If Ham is upset by Locatella, he can at least enjoy the trick he's played on Renny and Monk. They have bet Ham that Harvard will lose its Saturday football game with Princeton. They lose and so have to submit for a week to getting down on all fours and barking like a dog whenever ordered to do so by Ham.

Monk is furious. He accuses Ham of going out of his way to catch them on the street or at important meetings. He has forced Monk to act like a dog in the middle of a lecture that he was giving to professors and big-shots at the Chemical Institute.

Monk and Renny then discover how Ham tricked them. He connected a microphone in another room to a radio which was broadcasting the game. During it, he switched the mike into the circuit. Imitating the announcer's voice, he described a game in which Harvard loses. He then walks into the room and eggs Monk and Renny into betting that Harvard will win. He doesn't seem to know that the game is over.

The two can't resist a sure thing. The bet is made and they call up the local radio station to prove to Ham that he lost. They're flabbergasted at the news. But they must obey the terms of the bet.

Having found out how the monkey business was arranged, they plan revenge. They will put Ham to sleep with anesthetic gas; remove his clothes; and let him wake up dressed only in a fig leaf on top of Columbus' statue at the corner of Central Park.

Unfortunately, they accidently not only put Ham to sleep but also Doc Savage. And they screw up Doc's plan to catch the crooks.

No wonder Doc gets disgusted with the juvenile horseplay of his associates. It's all right playing the "Rover Boys" when there is time for it. But these guys never stop.

Ham Brooks -- global traveler, explorer of jungles and mountains -- has never been to Rockaway Beach. But then, Ham wouldn't be caught dead in such an unfashionable place.

From the first exploit until The Awful Egg #088 (June 1940), we're frequently told that Ham doesn't smoke. But in this story, he is smoking cigars. At the end, he complains to Monk that the beautiful but dimwitted and gold-digging Nancy is trying to make him stop smoking.

The unsympathetic Monk says that it's a good idea. Indignantly, Ham replies that he won't stop smoking until he dies. This is too good an opening for Monk to pass up. He says: "What makes you think you'll stop then?"

And in Mystery Island (#102), Monk makes an acutely perceptive remark about Ham's near-paranoid suspiciousness. "A guy like you would look for bones in animal crackers."

None of the group drinks liquor until Three Times A Corpse (#162) (August 1946). In the supersaga, Ham asks for sherry. It may be that Dent did not consider the consumption of sherry to be "drinking".

Though he must be at least 59 years old in No Light To Die By (#170), Ham is still a "wolf". Doc has assigned him to shadow Miss Fenison which Monk says "is about as practical as posting a hound dog to watch a beefsteak".

The last supersaga finds Ham and Monk still at their old tricks. Monk has caught Ham swindling him in a card game and is about to take physical revenge when Doc interrupts with business. Doc tells them that they have promised to quiet down their quarreling. Virtuously, Ham replies that they have. Not a blow has been struck for days although the Heavens are witness that Monk has provoked him enough. Doc sighs wearily.

Good old Monk and Ham. In character: retarded youths; boys at heart; and lovers of women, of Doc Savage, and of each other. But in the final battle, Ham is separated from Monk. He lies unconscious until Doc and Monk return from the campaign against the forces of Hell itself in Up From Earth's Center (#181).

Questioning a police sergeant, Ham's last words are "Where'd you get that idea?"

A lawyer to the end. And of the two, he has the last word. Monk's final speech is 3 paragraphs before Ham's. It's too bad that the two Gold Dust twins of the group could not have left the supersagas as they entered (insulting each other lovingly). It would have been esthetically more appropriate.

But that's life for you. No attention to art.

[StealthSkater note: Probably Lester Dent didn't know that #181 was going to be his last Doc Savage work, else he might have ended it differently.]

12 -- Habeas Corpus and Chemistry

Of the 9 continuing characters in the supersagas, six are men and one is a woman. Two are animals.

Habeas Corpus is Monk's pet pig. And Chemistry (a runt ape of some kind) is Ham Brooks' pet.

Monk originally obtained the pig just to get Ham's goat. As Chapter 10 says, Monk had framed Ham during World War I into being charged with stealing hams. Ever since, Monk takes every chance that comes along to remind Ham of pork.

In The Phantom City (#010), the intrepid Six take their submarine the Helldiver on its second trip. Pursuing the villainous Arab Mohallet, they venture into the Red Sea and stop off at the little town of Bustan.

Monk sees a strange-looking razorback with legs as long as a greyhound's and with ears so large that they look like wings. (They're so handy, in fact, that Monk often carries the pig by one ear.) Monk pays the owner one qirsh (4 cents American) and takes it along in the submarine.

The Arab from whom he bought it must have been a Christian. Moslems do not keep pigs. They are taboo, ritually unclean.

Monk names it 'Habeas Corpus' to enrage Ham and then dresses up the pig in Ham's necktie to drive the lawyer into a killing frenzy. Monk says: "Habeas Corpus likes corn. The necktie was corny yellow and Habeas was a bit seasick. So the tie made him work an appetite ..."

The tie isn't the only thing "corny" about this scene. But as long as Ham and Monk enjoy it, why should we object.

Laughing, Renny asks Monk where he got the missing link of the pig race. Monk says he found it chasing a dog big enough to fight a lion. Its owner was eager to sell it because it was killing hyenas and dragging their bodies home.

Doc doesn't say anything about this. It is just one more item of Monk's incessant tormenting of Ham. One more thing for Doc to endure silently from the 2 clowns. He has no idea that Monk will keep the pig or become so deeply attached to it. He soon becomes aware that although the pig looks as dumb as its master, it is like Monk in that it conceals a highly intelligent brain behind its utter homeliness.

Monk gets his first chance to put Ham in a bad spot by the use of Habeas. The group is captured and imprisoned in the submarine by Mohallet and his gang. Suddenly, the prisoners hear Mohallet's men wailing and cursing. Monk says that Habeas must be "doing his stuff".

He tricks Ham into swearing that the lawyer will kiss the one who rescues the group. He then tells Ham that he's put a very strong itching powder into the pig's bristles. One of the gang has brushed up against Habeas. When the others handle him to find out what's making him burn, they get the stuff of them also. Trying to wash it off will make the burning worse and blisters will develop.

The powder is so agonizing that the villains agree to release the prisoners if they'll prepare an antidote for them. Later, Monk tries to get Ham to fulfill his promise. The adventure ends, however, with the pig unkissed.

In Dust of Death (#032), the group is in South America fighting the insidious Inca in Gray. While lost in the jungle, Ham encounters a pack of monkeys. At least, Dent calls them "monkeys". They are actually apes. Their hair is rust-colored like Monk's. And they are larger than chimpanzees but smaller than gorillas.

Any primatologist will tell you that there have never been any apes in the Americas. However, scientists have scoffed at the reports of the gorilla, the okapi, and the pygmy hippopotamus much to their later embarrassment (if scientists can indeed be embarrassed).

And the late great Professor Challenger claimed to have found apes on that high Amazon hinterland plateau known as Maple White Land. There is no record that any zoologist ever put the lie to Challenger. If one had, he would have been lucky to escape with less than a broken leg and a fractured skull. (Challenger was as violent as his cousin Monk.)

I have the utmost faith in Challenger's veracity and do not doubt that there is indeed a species of native ape in South America. Nor do I doubt that those found by Ham Brooks had wandered down off the plateau into the jungle.

In any event, one of them saw in a Ham a soul brother. Whether it was a compulsive or elective affinity, it attached itself to the Harvard lawyer. Ham tried to drive it away. Then seeing its remarkable resemblance to Monk, he also saw his revenge for the homely chemist.

Very well ... Monk had his Habeas Corpus. Now Ham would have his "Chemistry". It would be Monk's turn to be tormented.

His decision was confirmed when hostilities broke out between the pig and ape on sight. Chemistry seized a stick and beat Habeas until the latter took off into the jungle.

The doubt about Chemistry's exact classification is never cleared up. Sometimes it's a monkey; sometimes it's called a chimpanzee. Other times it's a baboon (which is actually a monkey). Once he's an orangutan. Usually it's referred to as a "what-is-it"? Monk's label in The Magic Island (#054) seems the best to adopt. He calls Chemistry a "goriboon".

The same sort of zoological indecision seems to cling to Habeas Corpus. Several times, Dent says it came from Central America. Both Dent and Danberg call it an Australian bushog in several stories. Hathway says it's a South African warthog.

None of them seem as uncertain in primate classification as H.C. McNeile, author of Bulldog Drummond. In one page in that book, he calls a "simian" a monkey, a baboon, and a gorilla.

During Dust of Death, Chemistry saves Habeas' life. This forces Monk to like it at the same time he hates it. Habeas shows his gratitude by biting the ape's big toe. This puts Monk in a good humor again.

"Habeas," Ham said, "has about the same disposition as the guy who owns it."

Though the animals continue their feud, they become valuable to the group. They save the lives of Doc and his gang many times. They pitch into the battles to bite and tear the enemies. They carry messages.

When captured, Monk sometimes diverts his enemies for a saving moment by using his ventriloquism. As the villains stare in astonishment at the "talking pig", Monk goes into action. Once Chemistry -- dressed up to like Monk -- actually fools the villains and leads them on a chase.

The 2 pets not only accompany their masters in many exploits but also live with them. Monk's penthouse has a big marble-and-silver wallow with perfumed radioactive mud. Habeas wears a platinum collar studded with jewels. Ham dwells with Chemistry in the hoity-toity Midas Club apartments.

As the years go by, the pig and the ape participate in fewer-and-fewer adventures. Whether this was because they were growing old or because Monk and Ham were increasingly in situations where the animals would only have been fatal embarrassments, Dent does not say. They make their final appearance together in the strange They Died Twice (#117). Habeas Corpus is within its simian companion in the following issue The Devil's Black Rock (#118).

After that, we see neither of them again although the pig is mentioned as being in New York in The Pharaoh's Ghost (#136) (June 1944).

13 -- Renny, Door-buster and "Holy Cow"-er

A fist the size of a quart bottle of milk rams through the panels of a thick wooden door.

Sometimes the door has been locked by a villain who waits on the other side. Sometimes victims are inside tied up by the villains and awaiting death. More often the door is busted just for fun.

Following the lightning of the knuckles is a voice "like thunder gobbling out of a barrel".

Enter Colonel John Renwick.

"Renny" is 6'4" tall and 250 pounds of massive bone and muscle. (Sometimes he's nearly 7-feet tall. But most of the descriptions agree with the first above.) He has a head "of leonine proportions". He has dark, disapproving eyes and the facial features of a 17th Century English Puritan or of "an unhappy horse". He dresses well but has a habit of wearing his clothes for too long a time. His single foppish trait is smearing his dark uncontrollable hair with pomade.

He rarely smiles. And when he does, he is actually disapproving of whatever is presently going on. When he looks most unhappy, he is really having the most fun. According to The Thousand-Headed Man (#017), he has never been known to laugh. But in later supersagas, he does laugh occasionally.

His favorite expletive is "Holy cow!". This -- plus his huge fists (possibly the largest in the World) -- are his trademarks. His frequent use of this exclamation finally gets Doc, Monk, and Ham into the same habit near the end of the supersagas.

He is one of the World's most sought-after civil and mechanical engineers. In Hex (#081), he is called "the greatest engineering expert alive". His books are classics and used as texts in universities all over the world. He has built dams, tunnels, airfields, roads, railways, and submarines and ships everywhere. He helped Doc design the Empire State Building. When on a job, he makes $1,000 a day.

Renny is an accomplished boxer although -- surprisingly -- he is the least effective of the 5 assistant archenemies of Evil in a free-for-all. Still, his fists are as big as his head and man stuck by one of them is under the impression that a bank-vault door has fallen on him. As Monk says: "It takes a lot of guys to outnumber Renny."

(There is a discrepant statement in Mystery on Happy Bones (#125) (July 1943) that Monk and Renny are the two best of the five in a free-for-all. Perhaps Renny had improved in his later exploits.)

Unlike his 4 buddies, Renny was born wealthy. But near the end of the tales, he is almost broke. He has spent too much time and money aiding Doc Savage. Also, it must have cost him plenty to replace all those doors he busted just for fun.

Like the other aides, he prefers bachelorhood. But also like them, he can be strongly affected by beautiful women. He falls in love with Vida Carlow in The Derrick Devil (#048). Either she rejects him or he resists the temptation to propose marriage because we hear no more of her in succeeding stories. In The Three Devils (#135), Renny falls for Nell Grunow. These two, as far as we know, are the only ones he ever considered as lifemates.

Renny rarely smokes although in Pirate of the Pacific (#005), he does smoke a cigar. Unlike Doc, he is "a skilled cook".

Renny's grammar, like Monk's and Ham's, is not that of a college graduate. As in Ham's case, this can be attributed to report Renny's words verbatim to Dent.

Dent inserted his own words with a disastrous result. Or possibly, Monk was the one who wrote up the notes for Dent and deliberately made Ham and Renny use substandard English. It would be like him.

Renny seems to have been in the artillery or the Engineer Corps during World War I. From a comment in Resurrection Day (#045), we do know that he was at the Battle of the Marne. In post-War years, he became a very skilled flier, having been instructed by Doc himself.

Next to Doc, he is the most expert of the gang in the use of firearms and is a superb machine-gunner. But despite this, he accidentally shoots Doc in The Crimson Serpent (#078).

He is the slowest runner except for Ham (who's usually too worried about his clothes to run fast). But along with Monk, he is the most agile. In The Black Spot (#041), he climbs up 18 stories inside a dumbwaiter shaft to rescue Doc, Monk, Ham, and Pat.

Renny is not in many wartime (WWII) adventures. He is kept busy building roads for the U.S. military or airfields in China and elsewhere. Occasionally, he comes home for a rest (which he seldom gets).

In Satan Black (#141), he and Monk are leaving the skyscraper and discussing the future. Renny claims that skyscraper construction will be renewed after the War. Monk says that this won't be so. People will live out the country and fly in to work.

Renny silently disagrees. What will people use for money? The national debt is incredibly huge and he sees nothing but its increase in the future. But why should he argue with Monk Mayfair who "belonged to the live-today and worry-about-tomorrow-when-it's-here school".

About this time, 2 armed men try to take them for a ride. Alone, Renny wouldn't resist; he's sensible. But he knows Monk's character. Regardless of the consequences, Monk is going to tackle one of the gunmen. So Renny might as well tackle the other. Both men render the thugs hors de combat. But a 3rd man with a sawed-off rifle forces them to take refuge in a doorway.

Monk's excited state amuses Renny. He tells Monk to stick his head out and see if the men will shoot at it. Overstimulated by the fight, Monk starts to stick his head out but catches himself in time. Renny laughs.

"There was no humor in Renny's laugh. It was a king of uncaring, desperate feeling he got when there was intense excitement. Ordinarily he was a taciturn and somewhat sour fellow. But excitement seemed to make him drunk. Afterward he would look back on the emotional binge with pleasure."

As Dent says elsewhere, excitement was the glue that held the six together.

Renny's immediate reaction after losing the three in a chase down a subway tunnel is to become somewhat shaky. He has time to reflect on what happened.

"Fear, like the measles, took a little time to develop."

Despite his wealth in the beginning of the tales, Renny lives imply and in no one place for long. He seems to have resided with Johnny and Long Tom in a hotel near the Empire State Building in the early days.

In The Ten-Ton Snakes (#145) (March 1945), he lives in a sparsely furnished room adjoining his office. This is in a big old building on Fortieth Street 2 blocks from Grand Central Station. The walnut furniture of the office is just short of seedy. His "office girl" Mrs. Carter is middle-aged and seems to have absorbed the walnut hue of the furniture.

In this story, Renny is visited by a man he knew in China. The man wants help. When Renny find that it is not money he needs, he tells him that he knows nothing about women. Nor apparently does he want anything to do with them. In this, he resembles Johnny and Long Tom.

Renny is decorated by King George VI of Great Britain for his part in converting English wartime industries to peacetime work. He must have made good money for this. But by the time The Exploding Lake (#163) (September 1946), he is living in a shabby hotel on Twenty-Eighth Street. He doesn't appear again until Target for Death (#167) (January 1947).

Then he drops out of sight until The Pure Evil (#175) (March/April 1948) and he comes onto the scene very near the end. A free-for-all occurs. Renny strikes down the man who Monk has chosen to jump. Monk protests: "Dammit! Pick your own!"

One man gets away. Doc orders that he be let go rather than shot.

"One left for seed?" Renny says. "That won't do!"

He goes outside with a gun and one shot is heard. When Renny comes back in, Doc says disapprovingly: "We didn't want to kill anyone."

Renny only replies: "Didn't we?"

Doc knows that it's useless to chide. Renny at least doesn't try to lie his way out as Monk often does.

This is Renny's last action. He is seen no more although he is mentioned in Up From Earth's Center (#181) as being in the area on a surveying project.

14 -- Neoverbalist Johnny

William Harper Littlejohn was "named by his mother". By this, it may be inferred that his father was with dead or separated from Johnny's mother when he was born. Or possibly he was indifferent.

In any case, "Johnny" grew up in comparative poverty. No other relative of his is mentioned except for an "Uncle Ned" who was ill at the time of Mystery Island (#102).

Johnny became an extremely skinny man. One who (according to his friends looked like "an advance agent for a famine". He is also "a man as long as his words and only somewhat thicker than a rake handle".

In the very first story and in some later ones, he is 6-feet tall. Later stories describe him as being nearly 7-feet tall or so tall that he has to bend down when going through a doorway. He is "2 men tall and half-a-man wide" -- just the opposite of Monk Mayfair.

Johnny has a high forehead and brown eyes, one of which was injured in World War I. He is the only one of the six who has no military rank. Yet The Living-Fire Menace (#059) states that he was in the Army. The implications are that he was in the Intelligence department and did the kind of work which the government would just as soon not reveal.

If he was a spy, it seems strange that he was not shot when captured by the Germans. Probably he was in the uniform and carrying the papers of a dead Allied soldier when taken. He must have given his captors considerable trouble. Otherwise he would never have been sent to the secret POW camp where Doc and the others were being kept (Escape from Loki #183).

After the War, Johnny returned to college and eventually got a Ph.D. in Archaeology and perhaps another one in Geology. The scarecrow young man with the bulging forehead, prematurely gray at the temples is a striking figure. A monocle over his injured left eye added to his conspicuousness.

After Doc operated on the eye in The Man Who Shook The Earth (#012), Johnny still wears the monocle. It dangles from a ribbon attached to his lapel and is used as a magnifying glass in his professional work and his detectiving for Doc. The concave side of its framework is engraved: $50 Reward For Return Of This To Doc Savage. It is the finding of this on a New Jersey Road in The Midas Man (#042) that makes Doc aware that Johnny has been kidnapped.

Johnny's favorite exclamations are "I'll be superamalgamated!" and "Supermalagorgeous!" These are what you would expect from a man who continually obfuscates others with long neolatinisms synthesized on the locus.

Examples of the sort of things he casts at his victims are "A cabalistically obreptitious anagrammatism"; "an ultraeffectual cooluctation"; and "Is perlustration a potentiality?"

When he phones an airport to hire a plane, he says: "Would it be feasible to charter an aerial conveyance for an immediate peregrination?"

Johnny puzzles his colleagues with these and downright flabbergasts Monk. But when addressing Doc, he speaks directly and precisely in conventional English. He has too much respect to use his neoverbalisms on him. Besides, there wouldn't be any fun in it. Doc would know exactly what he was saying.

Johnny apparently did not always throw his long words around so recklessly. Until the 15th supersaga, he talks just as anybody else did (albeit in a little more exact and scholastic manner). Then in Mystery on the Snow (#015), he suddenly launches his Latin-studded sesquipedalian speech. It seems like that he does this mainly to bug his colleagues and especially Monk and Ham. The latter two are always irritating and angering the others of the group. Johnny invents his own irritation and applies it mercilessly.

The Awful Egg (#088) states that Johnny had started using big words early in his career when he was a young man. He began using them to draw attention to himself. They were "his vice, his hobby, and his source of secret amusement". If this is so, it seems strange that he abandoned the habit for 15 exploits.

Once, Johnny used "superamalgamated" when shouldn't have in The Man Who Fell Up (#113) and ruined a beautiful trick that Doc was playing on the Nazi villains.

Before joining Doc Savage in 1931, Johnny had headed the natural science department of a famous university. He had already gained recognition as one of the world's foremost authorities in the fields of Archaeology and Geology. In Mystery Island (#102), Mr. Lively says that Johnny is the greatest authority in stratigraphy. Doc says that Johnny is probably centuries ahead of his time. Doc has as broad a knowledge of Geology as Johnny has. But Johnny's is deeper.

Dent never says what institution it was which Johnny adorned. From certain oblique references and shadowy hints linked obscurely with vague shuddery intimations, it seems like that he taught at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. Indeed if we can put any trust in certain cryptic authorities, he was the man who led the Miskatonic expedition into the Antarctic in 1929. \\

His horrifying report was suppressed by the authorities. But a pulp-magazine writer named Howard Phillips Lovecraft managed to get a look at it. From what he remembered of his hasty reading, he wrote a fictional tale "At the Mountains of Madness" which was published in 1936 in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine. Except for some inaccuracies of memory and fictional names for the human characters, this story hews to reality.

The original unexpurgated document was once believed to be locked up in the archives of Miskatonic University. However, certain elusive suggestions and guarded comments (some bordering on the blasphemous) have led me to believe that Johnny has (or had) the manuscript. If this is so, it is very doubtful that it will be available for many years (if ever). No one seems to know where in 1972 Professor William Harper Littlejohn is.

Like Long Tom, Renny, and Doc, Johnny doesn't smile much. Nor does he much to do with women. He does, however, like Pat. And he is not the bitter misogynist that Long Tom is. He falls in love once in The Feathered Octopus (#055) with the same beauty (Lam Benbow) for whom Long Tom had a passion. But neither seems to have pursed his suit with much vigor. They preferred losing her hand to losing their place in the "Fabulous Five".

One of Johnny's characteristics was his appetite. The "long hank of a bone" could out-eat even the gluttonous Monk and still not gain an ounce. He devoured enough to keep two Doc Savages going.

Another characteristic was that he never bet on anything but a sure thing.

His endurance was second only to Doc's. He could go 3 days and nights without sleep or food. His peculiar metabolism, however, required more water than the average man's. Of the 5aides, he was also the faster runner.

His linguistic abilities -- while not equal to Doc's -- are not far behind. In The Screaming Man (#154), he is fluent enough in Japanese to pass for a native. This supersaga (December 1945) is the last in which Johnny personally appears. And even here, he comes onto the stage only at the last. It's revealed that he has been trailing the sinister Jonas Sown for 6 months from Europe through China, Japan, and the Philippine Islands. He is working for the U.S. Army but has no military rank. [StealthSkater note: Jonas Sown reappeared in the later saga The Frightened Fish (#186) by Will Murray].

The only reference to Johnny's residence is in The Too-Wise Owl (#109). In this story, he is living in a bad neighborhood in lower Max Street. The location and reputation of this area keep visitors from interfering with his studies. He thinks no one knows where he lives. But Doc (of course) knows all about it.

Johnny is last heard as a voice over the phone in The Devil is Jones (#165) (November 1946). Doc, who is in Jefferson, Missouri on a murder case, calls Johnny in New York. He asks Johnny to check out as quickly as possible all the employees of Sam Karen who was a private investigator killed in Jefferson City that day. Ham takes the return call from Johnny who has efficiently dug up all vital information.

And that is the ave anque vale of William Harper Littlejohn.

15 -- Long Tom, "Wizard of the Juice" and Misogynist

Lester Dent's notebook records that Major Thomas J. "Long Tom" Roberts is 5'4" tall and weighs 140 pounds. He has a gold tooth in front and a tremendously bulging "Steinmetz" forehead. In fact, in his youth this wizard of the electron, this "electricity shark" was an apprentice sorcerer for both the great Steinmetz and Thomas Alva Edison. [StealthSkater note: Charles Proteus Steinmetz was a successor to the famed Nikola Tesla => http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Proteus_Steinmetz ]

Of Doc's 5 aides, Long Tom is the "physical weakling" though he is such only in a relative sense. His skin looks as if he had been raised in a cellar. His too-big ears stick out like an owl's tufts and so thin that the light shines through them as if they were light bulbs. His hair is pale blond; his eyes pale blue. In Spook Hole (#030), he has 2 huge gold teeth in front and so would seem to have lost another tooth in one of many fracases.

In The South Pole Terror (#044), the beautiful but spoiled-rotten Velma Crale describes him as "a pale runt". On seeing him, undertakers glow with happiness and rub their hands together in anticipation of imminent business.

Yet Long Tom has never been sick a day in his life. He can lick 9 out of 10 men on the street without seeming fatigued. And the 10th would think he had been fighting an ocelot before it was over.

Long Tom neither drinks nor smokes and doesn't often swear. But his temperance does not extend to his temper which is awe-inspiring when he's aroused. So much so that even the giant Renny and the gorilloid Monk speak softly when his dander is up.

He owns a flashy racer which is equipped with every conceivable electrical device from a TV receiver to a shortwave radio set which emits bug and mosquito-killing frequencies. Generally, though, he drives a vehicle which looks as if it were on its way to the junkyard but which has a liquid-cooled airplane motor under its rusty hood.

He is a multimillionaire from his many patents but -- except for a brief stay in an expensive apartment -- lives in the slums of Amsterdam Avenue in a miserly room off a basement laboratory. This has a secret door for use in the battle against evil men and also when the police are looking Doc and the gang.

Despite his wealth, he is very tight-fisted. He grumbles in The Terror in the Navy (#050) when he has to pay a dollar for taxi fare. In The Too-Wise Owl (#109), he is displeased while doing detective work for Doc he has to pay $5 rent for use of a peanut wagon. Not only does he dislike its whistling (he can't stand whistling of any kind) but also the idea of losing $5 irritates him.

Yet he has compassion behind his sour face and disposition. As noted in The Golden Peril (#058), he can't resist giving money to beggars or to the poor.

He got his "Long Tom" nickname during the Great War (1914-18) when he stopped a German attack in a village by loading up an old "long tom" (i.e., a 17th Century cannon) standing in the square with scrap metal and firing it off. This would seem to indicate that he was in the artillery or perhaps the infantry.

But in Dust of Death (#032), he visits his old buddy Ace Jackson while he's in South America. Long Tom hasn't seen Ace since the latter was flying a Spad in the war. Could Long Tom have been an aviator in Ace's outfit? Dent definitely states that he was in the Army. But at that time, the Air Service was part of the Army.

He is described as being essentially humorless. Yet he has his light moments. In The Metal Master (#037), he is disguised as the crook "Punning Parker" who shows great aptitude for puns (though their quality is not Shakespearean). And in Devils of the Deep (#092), he grins when he sees Monk's pet pig Habeas Corpus dressed up by Monk with a small cane and a top hat in imitation of foppish Ham Brooks.

Of the many gadgets that Long Tom works on, his favorite is the shortwave bug killer. Perhaps this is because he hates mosquitoes (which he calls "Jersey canaries"). In many of the early novels, he is working on the insect-slayer and once lectures to a Congressional commission on its potentiality for use by farmers and cotton growers. It seems, however, to have been effective only at short ranges. There is no record that he ever patented it or made any money on it.

He invents a sonar device that is far ahead of anything else in that line. This is used on the Helldiver submarine in The Polar Treasure (#004).

In Men of Fear (#108), Long Tom develops 2 devices. One is for locating minerals by fluorescent activity. The other is based on an idea by Doc and is a paste that bursts into flames when subjected to certain frequencies from a shortwave radio set. It is Long Tom's idea during this story to set up shortwave sets at the subway exits and so identify some crooks whose clothing has been smeared with the paste. It is effective but hard on the crook. Which doesn't bother Long Tom (or any of the group) one bit.

Long Tom is a misogynist and generally acts like one. However in The Feathered Octopus (#055), he falls in love with the beautiful blonde Lam Benbow. The gang sees him blush for the first time when Pat kids him about this. And in The Awful Dynasty (#093), he reveals a secret crush on Pat.

He appears fewer times in the supersagas than anyone else in the group. Perhaps because he is always off on some big project halfway around the Globe. This may explain why he is knocked senseless fewer times than the others. His worst injuries during the adventures are the broken right wrist and hip caused by a rifle bullet in The Too-Wise Owl (#109).

On reason for his frequent absences is his disappearance during World War II. He dropped out of sight in 1942. According to Dent, he was "one of those few dozen men who had vanished mysteriously ... been heard of not at all during the whole course of the War and only reappeared a few weeks ago ..." This quotation is from Terror Wears No Shoes #176 (May/June 1948).

Dent also states that Long Tom had been confined in various laboratories "tinkering with cathodes and making electrons says 'Uncle' ..."

But several novels published in 1943, he is said to be in Russia and China. In Death Had Yellow Eyes (#132) (February 1944), he is called home from China by Doc. He is present in The Pharaoh's Ghost (#136) (June 1944). In Weird Valley (#139) (September 1944), he is back in China. Three 1945 issues state that he is still in China. Death in Little Houses (#164) (October 1946) says that he is "out of the Country at the moment". He is Europe in The Devil is Jones (#165) (November 1946).

When he appears on the stage again in Terror Wears No Shoes (#176), he is disguised as the villainous Karl Sundwi (the real Sundwi having been eaten up in an acid bath). His experiences in chasing the man who may have caused World War II have changed him. He is 20 pounds heavier, tanned, and looking fit enough to whip a 14-year-old kid (which makes him look fit indeed). He says that he has never felt worse in his life (and he is not kidding). He has a stomach ulcer.

Perhaps the ulcer was even more serious than Dent indicated. This -- the 176th supersaga -- is the last one in which Long Tom plays a role. He is not even mentioned (let alone appears) in the remaining 5 stories.

16 -- Patricia Savage, Lady Auxiliary and Bronze Knockout

Only one woman appears more than 3 times. She is Doc's cousin Patricia Savage. And she is as bronzely beautiful as he is handsome.

She is a real knockout. A pip, a peach. But she doesn't just stand around and wait to be rescued as so many heroines of fiction and the movies did and still do. She is as aggressive as Monk Mayfair although in a less noisy and in a very female way.

The first description of her note "a wealth of bronze hair very closely in hue to that of Doc Savage". She is tall and has a fabulous physique. "Her features were as perfect as though a magazine-cover artist had designed them."

When we first see her in Brand of the Werewolf (#011), she is wearing high-laced boots, breeches, and a serviceable gray shirt. A cartridge belt is draped around her waist and her holster contains an old family heirloom. This is a heavy Frontier Single-Action six-shooter revolver. Pat will use it frequently in the many battles to come and usually carries it in her handbag.

When she first appears, she is holding in the crook of her right arm an automatic big-game rifle. Pat is loaded for bigger game than "bear". Her father has been murdered by the mysterious "werewolf" and now she is threatened by it.

But Pat doesn't scare easily. As she herself will say a number of times, she has the same "taint" in her blood as her cousin Doc Savage has. That "taint" is a compulsive love of adventure, excitement, and Danger.

She is a "metallic tigress". Her small right fist swings with the timing and precision of a trained boxer's when she hits the obstreperous Boat Face in the eye and knocks him into the lake. Her feet are small as Doc notes when he is trailing her in the woods and sees her tracks.

Pat is not only just an accomplished boxer. She has also learned her fencing lessons well at the finishing school which she attended. She evades the blows and kicks of a villain (a husky young man) and throttles him from behind with a strong arm.

She seems to be rather modest, though. She turns her back so she won't see her Indian servant (the squaw Tiny) strip the villain of his clothes. Of course, she is young (18) then. After she moves to New York City, she loses much of this prudery.

Pat has a strong country streak which manifests itself at her first encounter with Doc. She questions his orders as they flee the villains, but Doc quickly straightens her out.

Then for one of the few times in her life, Pat becomes hysterical. She has been through much for the past few days and when she is then faced with crossing a deep abyss on a thin rope, she shrieks and hits out at Doc. After he carries her over on his back while he tightrope-walks the line over the abyss, she becomes ashamed. But she really had little to be ashamed of. Very few could go through what she did and not have a case of jitters.

Ham and Monk -- the wolves, the skirt-chasers -- are bowled over when they first see Pat. Monk exclaims over her bronze hair: "She might almost be Doc's sister!" Ham is so struck that breaks his long-established policy and agrees with Monk. She's a "knockout".

Notice one thing. Nothing is said in her first supersaga about her eyes. Indeed, there is no description of her eyes until her 5th adventure in The Fantastic Island (#034). Suddenly she has golden eyes (almost like Doc's).

This is strange. Golden eyes are rare and so outstanding that Dent would have commented on them if she really had them in Brand of the Werewolf and the 3 following supersagas in which she appeared. They are not features easily ignored; a writer would seize on them immediately.

The truth is that her eyes were not of the same color as her cousin's. But while writing The Fantastic Island, Dent thought it would be a good idea if they were. Golden eyes like her cousin's would make Pat more colorful.

Norman Danberg (aka "Laurence Donovan" who wrote the 6th story in which she appeared Murder Mirage (#035) also mentions her golden eyes. Undoubtedly, Dent inserted this description in the notes he gave Danberg. The latter, however, forgot to describe her eyes in Pat's 7th appearance The Men Who Smiled No More (#038).

Dent resumed with this description in the 8th appearance of Pat in The Black Spot (#041). In this, he notes the "golden intelligence of her eyes". And thereafter in the many stories in which she plays a role, she has eyes that greatly resemble Doc's.

There is good reason to go into such detail about the color of her eyes. If the genes for the eyes really came through Doc's father's side of the family as Dent states, then the genes did come to Doc through Wolf Larsen and Armand Chauvelin as claimed in Addenda A of this book. These are the forbearers of Arronaxe Larson (Doc's mother), the bearers of the yellow-eye genes.

Fortunately for this thesis, it is obvious that Pat did not have the golden eyes and that Dent only gave them to her as a fictional afterthought. Pat did, however, have Doc's bronze hair and skin. And so these must be Savage traits. (In reality, they are the traits of the Clark Wildman family - the real name of Doc's father.)

The bronzeness seems to have skipped Doc's father. Otherwise Watson surely would have commented on it when he described in The Adventure of the Priory School. Or perhaps Watson omitted this, feeling that too exact a description might give some readers an idea of the true identity of the sixth duke of Holdernesse's illegitimate son.

Pat may also have inherited bronze hair from an additional side of the family. Her mother was May Renfrew - the sister of a rather well-known policeman in Canada. If May resembled Inspector Douglas Renfrew, she would have had a skin burned brown by the elements and bronze hair that glinted with fiery particles of copper. His eyes were large and of a sea-gray color. And so it is likely that Pat's were either gray or blue.

In her second supersaga Fear Cay (#019), Pat makes her appearance by sliding out of Doc's sedan. It's been less than a year since Monk last saw her. But he doesn't recognize her at first. She has her back turned and not until he sees her face does he know her. Before this, he had been watching her legs and thinking that if the rest of her was like them then she has to be a real knockout.

It seems strange that Monk could not instantly identify her. For in The Death Lady (#168), Monk recognizes a villainess in disguise just by her legs. He even states that he never forgets them if they're worth remembering. Monk is often a liar. But in this case, he would seem to be telling the truth.

However, the last time that Monk had seen Pat, she had been wearing men's clothing and that probably kept Monk from getting a clear view of her legs. In any event, Monk is delighted to see her. Even Doc who generally doesn't like girls cluttering up the landscape and hampering him is pleased. She is the exception he's willing to make. She is a "2-fisted scrapper herself" and in her own way is almost as remarkable as Doc.

She knows how to handle her Doc. Instead of flinging herself on him and kissing him as a female relative has every right to do, she shakes Doc's hand (but warmly). Doc intends to drop her off before continuing his present investigation. He then gives in to Monk's plea that she be taken along.

A few moments later, crooks attack them. Pat pulls out the "enormous, much-worn single-action six-shooter". It has neither trigger not sight but a fanning spur welded to the hammer. Pat bangs away this, happy at finding Danger so swiftly after encountering Doc.

A short time later, she is abducted along with the movie star Maureen Darling. Pat pulls a fast one and convinces the villains that she is Maureen Darling (or Kel Avery, Darling's real name). Kel is thrown out of the car and Pat is taken away. Avery later says that Pat would "go great in the movies". She's a looker and a hell of a good actress. Kel Avery describes Pat as having hair like Doc's. But she says nothing of Pat's eyes.

When Pat is slapped on the mouth by a kidnapper, she bites him. Pat won't take anything from anybody even if it endangers her life. She comes very close to being killed a number of times in this supersaga. But she eagerly plunges into the next adventure Death in Silver (#020).

The attitudes of Monk and Ham toward her are surprising in one respect. They greatly admire her beauty and her ability to handle herself in dangerous situations. But there is no hint anywhere that they try to date her.

To these 2 wolves, she is off limits. She is Doc's cousin and thus not to be chased. Doc never said anything to the two of them about their incessant chasing down and bedding of women. But he would have been more than upset if either had made a pass at Pat.

Pat seems to understand this. She prefers to be treated as one of the boys. Undoubtedly -- though Monk and Ham suppress any sexual desire they feel for her -- other men are not so constrained. Yet we get no indication anywhere of the many dates she must have had or of the many proposals of marriage and otherwise that she must have received. Whatever the frequency of marriage proposals, she must have turned them down. Or if she did get married or engaged, she did not stay so very long.

As for the proposals of bed without matrimony, it is difficult to imagine Pat accepting any. No matter how attractive the man (physically or mentally), he would suffer by comparison with Doc. Even without her cousin as a standard, Pat would have been difficult to please. She is so much her own "man", so realistic and self-possessed, so touch. She is a better man than 9-out-f-10 she meets.

On the other hand, she is sensitive and far from lacking femininity. Nor does she give any indication that she is frigid. Would she have lived a life of self-denial or virginity all those years? It doesn't seem likely. But if she had lovers, she certainly kept them secret. Or at least Dent was silent about them.

After the almost-fatal encounter with the weird and ancient Dun Thunden and the villainous Santorini in Fear Cay (#019), Pat decides not to return to Canada. She will stay in New York City. With the money from her father's estate, she sets up a business -- the Park Avenue Beautician. This occupies most of the area of a very modernistic building in the most elite part of Park Avenue. Its 2 doormen wear very distinctive uniforms (no doubt designed by Pat).

It is into this posh place that Doc escorts Lorna Zane for safekeeping by Pat in Death in Silver (#020). Here in a waiting room which is "a bewildering resplendency of chromium, enamel, and colored rugs", they are greeted by Pat's staff. These include blondes, brunettes, and redheads of superb physique dressed in the best taste. The girls are beautiful enough to pop Lorna's eyes. But their employer's (Pat's) beauty surpasses theirs.

Pat comments that Doc has never been here before. Dent doesn't say what Pat's expression or tone is when she made this comment. But both are probably knowing. She is aware that Doc won't visit her place unless he has to. All that gorgeous beauty, all those long-legged and big-eyed women gazing at him with "frank admiration" would upset him no matter how little he shows it on his face. She knows that he is disturbed by their attractiveness. Which in turn means that he is tempted and that he fears that he might not be able to resist the temptation.

Undoubtedly, Pat likes to tease her cousin with visions of beautiful and sensual-looking women. She is aware that the visions wills stimulate sexual fantasies in Doc's mind. And she might hope that the fantasies will send him into the arms of some woman. She may even wish (and most probably does) that the woman be herself.

Whatever is going on in her mind and Doc's, she seems to be all business. She wants to show him the gymnasium upstairs. "It's a knockout." She also has over 30 of the best beauty operators in New York City. Her clientele includes all of the leaders of fashion in the city. She does not know how she's going to get the fat off her more obese customers. But she'll do her damnedest.

In any event, she's always paid in advance and no refunds are ever given. Some of her customers are men although she does not know if they come to the gym for workouts and the beauty treatments or just to make time with her "snappy assistants".

Doc asks her if she want to help. She laughs and says: "Sure. "Who is trying to kill you now?"

(It seems that Doc has denied her petition to become a permanent member of his group. But he will call on her many times in future exploits. And many times, Pat will insert herself into an adventure over his objections.)

She takes Lorna Zane into her protective custody and gives her the full beauty treatment. This includes Pat's own invention -- the very expensive Special Egyptian Clay Pack Facial. The treatment, however, is "on the house". Which makes Lorna unique. As Doc is to comment in other supersagas, Pat charges about 20 times what the treatments are worth. And he hints that highway robbers could take a lesson from her.

A silver-costumed villain uses her phone to call Lorna Zane into her office. Pat tricks him into making the call himself which results in his being rendered helpless. The phone's mouthpiece (one of Doc's inventions) ejects a small spray of tear gas to the user's face if Pat secretly activates the device.

Pat seizes the man's gun. But a second silver-clad man hits her on the head with a gun butt. This time, Pat is only half-unconscious. But she is to be able completely knocked out many times in the years to come (though the number is nowhere near Monk's record, of course).

The villains take Pat along to use as a lever against Doc. One of them asks her if Doc Savage doesn't think a lot of her. She replies that she suspects that Doc sometimes wishes she hadn't been born. He has had to waste too much of his time rescuing her.

Doc one more rescues her. But now he isn't wasting his time. He gets Pat out of the prison cell in the villain Ull's ship along with Lorna Zane, a man named Rapid Pace, Monk, and Ham. And he exposes Ull's real identity.

After she's safe, Pat looks "wan, a little exhausted by the whole grisly episode". But her color returns swiftly along with her enthusiasm for getting into trouble. In the mysterious case of The Annihilist (#022), Doc goes again to Pat's establishment to ask her for help. He sees some men in the "sumptuously furnished reception room" who sigh with ecstasy and frustration as Pat walks in. Pat's reply is the same as the last time. "Well, who's trying to kill you now?"

Doc sends here to Janko Sultman's Association of Physical Health scout around fro him. He tells her to use her own good judgment while she's being a detective.

Wearing dowdy clothes and glasses, Pat bribes the receptionist at the Association to let her take her place for the day. She listens in on the conversation between 2 villains -- Dr. Nandez and "Lizzie". The latter is a very effeminate young man, undoubtedly a "fairy" though Dent could not use this term or anything similarly suggestive to label him as a homosexual. The pulp-magazine tabus would not have permitted him to do this. (Neither would the slick-magazine tabus or even the hardcover book publishers' tabus of 1934.)

Lizzie is, however, not only a "fairy" but also a psychopathic killer. But Pat is no victim looking for a victimizer. She carries in her handbag one of Doc's small supermachine pistols, 2 extra magazines, a fountain-pen tear-gas gun, and a compact. (For some reason, she does not have six-shooter with her.)

When she sees Nandez leave his office, she makes a quick change of disguise (including a wig) and follows him. He lures her into a building and grabs her and then -- quickly and painfully -- realizes that he has no trembling mouse in his hands.

Pat's middle name is never given by Dent. But it could well have been "Roughhouse". Refusing to wrestle with a man who's obviously stronger, she kicks him in the shins; slams her little finger into his left nostril; and lifts savagely (no pun intended). Nandez retreats in agony and confusion, allowing Pat time to get her super-machine pistol out. He kicks that out of her hand ... only to get tear gas from her fountain-pen gun. She has a chance to get away then ...

... but the sinister Lizzie enters with an automatic pistol. With this, he knocks her half-unconscious and then binds and gags her. Nandez starts to cut Pat into little pieces with a razor-sharp pocketknife with results that surprise both him and Pat (bad for him, good for Pat).

Later, Pat goes with Doc, Monk, and Ham to investigate Sidney Lorrey's laboratory in a river barge. There she shoots from the hip and downs a villain. This feat causes Monk to remark that she is bloodthirsty. Monk is being facetious, of course. She explains that the man is only unconscious. Doc has made up some anesthetic "mercy" bullets for her six-shooter.

Pat is then kidnapped by Boke and held as hostage. Doc gets her loose and during the inevitable melee, Pat rabbit-punches a gangster, setting him up for Ham's uppercut to the chin.

Pat is tough. But even the deaths of criminals upsets her. When a large group of them are wiped out by the Crime Annihilist's weapon, she is horrified.

Pat enters her 5th appearance in Spook Hole (#030) holding a supermachine pistol. She threatens the 2 thugs Braske and Ropes with it. She is "tall and exquisitely beautiful". She has "hair of a certain remarkable bronze hue". Apparently, her eyes are not so remarkable. At least, no mention is made of them. And she is "too calm for the ease of mind".

She does lose her poise, however, when Doc dismisses her from the case. He had used her to pretend to be Nancy Law because he couldn't imitate a woman's voice very well. Pat flares up and walks out of the room. But she returns in a better mood after Braske and Ropes are spirited away by Captain Wapp. She thinks that now she will be permitted to rejoin the fun.

But despite her arguments, Doc drops her off at her beauty establishment. But she beats him to the 86th floor Headquarters and forces him to include her in this adventure. She has information which he very much needs. And if he won't take her along, she'll jump into the action on her own. Doc knows that she is capable of this, so he reluctantly signs her up. And he admits to himself: "In the final analysis, Pat was handy to have around." Indeed she was as he will have to concede time and again.

Pat goes with Doc to far-off Patagoia at the southern end of South America and almost loses her life. But she is in on the revealing of Hezemiah Law's secret: his sick whales and the precious stuff they carry in their bodies.

In Murder Mirage (#035), Doc gets his cousin to pose as Lady Sathyra Fotheran. Pat does so successfully. But she lames herself for a while by not using one of Doc's devices properly. He had put a chemical mixture in the heel of one of her shoes. If the heel is rubbed against something, it will explode with a blinding light.

Pat can't take the shoe off before her abduction and so has to rub one heel against the other. The resultant light and loud bang causes the car's driver to wreck and Pat gets away. She complains to Doc about his device, saying that he would certainly regret it the next time he puts a torpedo in her heel. Her whole shoe has been blown off; she can hardly walk.

"And this, "she says, "was supposed to be a quiet little job of playing chaperone. And I shot a man."

A moment later, she is objecting because Doc is going to send her home. She does not go, of course, and a little while afterward, she is in Doc's dirigible on its way to the Syrian Desert. She is dressed only in a filmy thorn-torn negligee and one shoe. But there isn't time for her to go home to change. Doc, however, has clothes for her on the dirigible. Obviously, he expects her to be with them on one caper or another and Doc is always prepared.

It's in this story that we find that Pat is one of the few who ever questioned Doc's decisions. Usually, only women do that.

Pat has been abducted in previous supersagas. But is this one, she is involuntarily carried off on 3 separate occasions. Each time, Mr. Kassan is the culprit. Pat tells Monk just as he is about to tear the man apart: "Mr. Kassan's been about the only fun I've had." Mr. Kassan acknowledges that she always seems to be around when he's in "a kidnapping mood".

Pat's last words in this story (spoken hopefully) were: "Oh, perhaps I shall be kidnapped again!" As we shall see and as Doc must have known, there will be no "perhaps".

Pat joins Doc and his merry men for her 8th adventure in The Men Who Smiled No More (#138). In this story, Danberg forgot that she was supposed to have golden eyes. Ham is angry at Monk (as usual). But he has to suppress his desire to swear because Pat is present. It's doubtful that Pat would have been offended. But Ham's reticence does show his respect for her.

It is said in this adventure that Pat Savage has one great asset. Like the others in Doc's gang, she has no fear. However, this is an exaggeration. Before this caper, during it, and many times thereafter, she is afraid. In later stories, Dent reveals that Doc and his men can be afraid. What all of the group (including Pat) possessed was courage. They can be afraid. But they conquer their fear and advance on whatever fearful enemy opposes them at the moment.

Pat narrowly escapes being crushed to death by the giant piston machine of Dr. Madren in The Men Who Smiled No More (#038). Her cousin (as usual) carries her off in time.

In The Black Spot (#041), Pat is a guest at the tragic party given by the tycoon Andrew Podrey Vandersleeve. She phones Doc to tell him of Vandersleeve's death and the "black spot". A man grabs her from behind and cuts off her call (as in The Laugh of Death #116). But he finds out he's got hold of a tornado in silk and high-heels.

She is mad enough to begin with. But when he calls her red-headed, she gets furious. Pat's hair is a dark reddish-bronze (in most of the stories) and definitely not red. She tangles with the man. Both fall down the steps into the basement where she fires a blank cartridge in his face. So much for the dangers of imprecise description.

Monk enters Headquarters and listens to Pat's chopped-off recorded message. He mutters that someday she's going to get into a jam that she can't get out of. This is unfair of Monk since Pat was not interfering in the group's affairs at that time. Monk is not really disgusted. Rather he's alarmed. He quickly calls up Ham to come help him go after Pat.

Later, Pat ignores Doc's command and messes things up so badly that she almost gets a punch in the face from her cousin. This is not because Doc intended to hit her. He thought that she was somebody else. He recognizes her just in time to keep from ruining that beautiful "kisser" and instead knocks her back down the stairs. Doc tells her to go home and adds insult to injury to telling her that her face is dirty.

Actually, Pat's happiest moments were when her face was dirty. This usually happened when she became involved in Doc's adventures.

In The Terror in the Navy (#050), Pat makes a striking entrance (as usual). Male hearts beat faster; male hormones surge through bloodstreams. Pat, though, in this as in so many supersagas commands attentions with more than her beauty. She points her old-fashioned revolver at the villains. Its barrel is so huge that any of them could easily put his little finger down it (not that any desire to try). Pat looks as if she is capable of blowing the finger off with no hesitation.

The villainous Fuzzy asks her who she is. She replies that she is Doc Savage's cousin. And she also says that she operates an uptown beauty parlor where she charges outrageous prices and makes her clientele love it.

Coming up from behind again (Pat seems to have an innate unguarded behind), a man knocks her half-senselessness. Fuzzy then uses Pat's own gun to knock her completely out. Anybody in Doc's group was bound to get hit over the head not once but many times. And young ladies were no exception.

In fact, in this caper Pat is struck unconscious twice. She gloomily admits to Doc that he might be right after all. Perhaps the little "parties" he gives are too rough for women.

But by the time of her next adventure, Pat is thoroughly recovered and raring to go. She's even ready to give away her very profitable business to the first person she meets if Doc should invite her to permanently join his group and make that the requisite for her admission. Doc only wants her to be Ann Garvin's companion-guard. In this caper He Could Stop the World (#053), Pat's hair is golden blonde. Perhaps she's dyed it. Her eyes are not described.

Pat happily receives the news that something very sinister is occurring. If a world catastrophe is coming, she hopes that she'll be able to get in on it. The initial adventures are so horrendous that she declines to join Doc in solving the mystery of the burning snow; Johnny's disappearance in a new stratospheric ship; and the vapor death. She wants to go home. This, however, is not the real Pat talking. Like Long Tom, she under the mind-bending influence of the villain's gadget.

Pat does not enter the amazing exploit of The Feathered Octopus (#055) until it is half over. She enters on her own in order to find Doc and get him out of a particularly sticky mess. She has what no other member of his group possesses -- female beauty. She uses this to get information from a stockbroker which should lead her to the right trail. The broker is bowled over; his toes curl at her smile. She is "the kind of girl who causes men to bump into telephone poles and fall over fire hydrants when she walks down the street."

She finds a communication from Doc in invisible chalk and tells the others they should go at once and rescue Doc. Renny tells her to go back to the "mud packs and rowing machines and electric vibrators". Pat agrees to do so. But not, however, she adds until the Sphinx turns handsprings.

Renny puts her to sleep with anesthetic gas and sends her home unconscious in a taxi. To make things worse, he tells the taxi driver that she's dead-drunk. On wakening in her beauty establishment, she is ready to blow her pretty lid.

(In this story, by the way, the business is said to be not on Park Avenue but on a side-street just off Park. It may be that Dent slipped up here and inadvertently gave the correct location.)

Pat tells off Renny over the phone and rushes in a cab toward Headquarters. You not only can't keep a good man down; you can't keep a good woman down either. But this time she's anesthetized by the villains and held hostage by them for the return of the Eurasian villainess Lo Lar. Doc offers a reward of $25,000 for any information leading him to Pat's whereabouts.

We know from this story that Pat's shoes are expensive custom-mades. Renny finds one of her high-heels in an abandoned farmhouse. Inside is a label: MADE EXPRESSLY FOR PATRICIA SAVAGE.

In Devil on the Moon (#061), Pat is disguised and helping Doc fight another band of villains. When Doc is through with her, he tells her to go home. Doc just never seems to learn. She flatly refuses and Doc permits himself to be buffaloed.

Pat informs a heroine (Lin Pretti) that there are 2 ways of curing hysteria. One is the doctors; the other, hers. Then she slaps Lin so hard on the face that she dazes her.

A little while later, it's Pat's turn to look foolish. She falls for a trick that any of the veterans of the group would see through at once. Renny gets his revenge by telling her that perhaps now she'll understand why Doc doesn't women mucking around in his business.

But Doc is more gentle with her. When she, Doc, and the Fabulous Five are prisoners on the Moon (or told they are), she tells Doc to chew her out for her mess-up. He only gives her a sweet and encouraging smile.

In her 14th supersaga The Motion Menace (#063), Pat is taking a vacation in Shanghai. She is disguised as Miss Enola Emmel. Spelled backwards, this comes out "Lemme Alone". Which is how Pat feels at this time.

She's fed up with the beauty business. But not with Doc. She phones him in Manhattan because she suspects that someone is out to kill her. Doc tells her that he knows that she's trying to find a certain Captain Wizer. The captain had been in New York a few months ago and had interested her in a device which electrically "cured" blackheads. It was this interest which led her along with Doc to become involved with some peculiar old men known as The Elders.

In her 15th adventure The Yellow Cloud (#072), Pat forces Doc to take her along. She sneaks into the Hidalgo Trading Company building and locks the exit of the pneumatic tube from the 86th floor to the Hudson River-front structure.

When Doc's gang arrives in the little car, they're trapped. She tells Doc that she'll let him out if she can join in the quest for Renny. Resignedly, Doc agrees. Monk reproaches her ...

... only to be reminded of the dirty trick he once played on her. He had given her a package and told her to take it to the mountains and guard it there with her life. After a week, she got suspicious and opened the package. Inside was a picture of a goat. Monk replied that it kept her out of danger.

By this time, Pat has changed the named of her establishment to Patricia, Incorporated (it's back on Park Avenue now). The latest addition to her business is Florenso, a political refugee and plastic surgeon from Vienna, Austria. His office is on the 7th floor of her establishment. No mention is ever made of the exact number of stories. But 7 floors is very impressive for a "beauty parlor".

Florenso's hair stands on end as if he were full of static electricity. He furthers this impression by his insulting manner. That is, he gives his customers a lot of "static". But far from hurting him, this overbearing attitude endears him to his rich patrons. Florenso is so good at his profession, however, that Monk Mayfair (of all people!) goes to him to have his face changed into something beautiful.

Shortly after this, Pat is kidnapped again. She does not get taken easily. The female Japanese jujitsu artists that she employs have taught her much. But as has happened before, despite her wildcat battling, she is knocked over the head with a revolver and carried out unconscious.

During the course of this supersaga, we learn that Pat has acquired a knowledge of the deaf-and-dumb sign language. Knowing that she may be watched by Doc over the secret TV transmitter in the plane in which she is a prisoner, she sends a message with her fingers 4 times. Because of this, Doc knows that his stolen plane is heading for a landing field 20 miles west of Caracas, Venezuela. Neither she nor Doc has any way of knowing, of course, that they are being fooled.

In Poison Island (#079), Pat is captain (not just owner) of her 3-master schooner named (what else?) Patricia. She becomes involved with Herb March and a sinister Hindu while she is picking up a shipload of gold for her cousin in the harbor of the only seaport of the little Central American nation of Hidalgo. Herb March is very much attracted to Pat and notes especially her bronze hair. Dent says nothing of March's noticing her golden eyes.

March finds out that although Pat is a woman, discipline aboard the schooner leaves nothing to be desired. Pat is chaperoned (or at least accompanied) by a French maid and a huge dark-skinned woman who could have gotten a job as a bouncer in any seaport beer hall. Pat spends some time during the voyage by popping 50 Portuguese men-o'-war with 50 shots from her family heirloom. Amazed, March asks her if she has ever missed. She admits that she did once 3 years ago which is why she's practicing so hard now.

That evening, Herb March dines with Pat. The dinner is delicious, cooked by a Frenchman who is probably the maid's husband. The wine is excellent. And Pat's quarters are very comfortable, spacious, and air-conditioned. Pat loves adventure and excitement. But she travels in style if it is all possible.

But the Patricia does not provide her captain with comfort for very long. Long another Nova Scotia-built ship the Mary Celeste, she would be found sailing along without a soul aboard.

Pat appears next in Hex (#081), though rather late in the story. Doc calls for Pat to help him and she flies into Boston with some truth serum that he needs. She does it so quickly that she has to wait for Doc to show up. As usual, Doc thanks her and then tries to send her home. And as usual, Pat doesn't go.

There is a curious incident in Hex. This hints that Dent might not have told us all that is going on between Pat and Monk. She finds Monk holding the lovely June Knight in his long hairy arms. Pat kids Monk about this and the very flustered chemist tries to explain.

Why should a well-known wolf -- the acknowledged stud of the group -- be so taken aback merely because he's embracing a girl? Is it because Pat and Monk have been having more than just a friendly relationship? And do Pat's seemingly jesting words conceal a bitterness or some trace of jealousy? We'll never know. Dent never tells us.

In The Spotted Men (#085), we learn that Pat is an aviator. Unknown to Doc, his aides have taught her to fly. She is a whiz at the stick. This is to be expected since Pat has many talents and since her instructors are among the world's best fliers.

Pat doesn't enter The Awful Dynasty (#093) until the 9th day of this supersaga. Dent describes her bronze hair but says nothing about her eyes. Here he reiterates that she is Doc's only living relative. This statement would seem to invalidate some that I've made about the Bronze Man's family tree. However, Dent not only did not reveal everything about Doc but he also often made certain distortions of the truth. Doc himself stated this in a memorandum to Dent (No Light To Die By #170).

In the case of the relatives, however, Dent was under orders to reveal only those family affiliations which were pertinent to his story. If he had disobeyed these and his editors had let certain information slip by, the publishing firm of Street&Smith would have been sued by Doc. That Dent did follow his orders is proved by the undeniable fact that Doc never sued Street&Smith. (Not to my knowledge, anyway.)

The truth is that Pat was far from being Doc's only living relative. As I have demonstrated in Tarzan Alive (Double Day, 972), Doc has a number of famous (and even infamous) cousins. Monk Mayfair was one.

Three more were operating in New York City at the same time as Doc. One was the great (in many senses) Nero Wolfe. He lived on West Thirty-Fifth Street, not very far from Doc's Headquarters. Wolfe's address is variously given as in the 500, 600, or 900 block. In any event, since the Empire State Building is in the 100 block on East Thirty-Fourth Street, it's a short walk north 1 block and only 5, 6, or 9 blocks west.

Too far for the hippopotamoid Mycroftesque Wolfe to go on foot. But no doubt that he has been disturbed many times by the underground rumblings of the pneumatic-tube "flea run" as Doc and pals shoot from the 86th floor and deep under Thirty-Fourth Street to the Hidalgo Trading Company.

The second relative in New York City (mostly at night) is (or was) Richard Wentworth. He was that great crimefighter "the Spider" and probably the world's best pilot. (Once he landed an airplane on a penthouse!)

The third was, of course, the Shadow.

It is during a tense and perilous moment in The Awful Dynasty (#093) that Dent shows us Long Tom's deep feelings for Pat. Long Tom is a misogynist (or pretends to be). But when he thinks that something "might happen to the lovely Pat", he almost has a heart attack. Though the group seems to have treated her on the surface as a kid sister, all of them may have been secretly in love with her. As for Monk, we can assume he was in love with Pat since he always fall in love with any "pip" he meets.

Pat, however, is not a Snow White taking care of the house for the Seven Dwarfs. She wouldn't have fallen for the old poisoned-apple trick. She would have slugged the evil stepmother.

In her 20th supersaga The Men Vanished (#094), we get a deeper glimpse into Pat's character. Pat distrusts the beautiful Junith Stage. She has no solid reason to do so. It is just that she has "an inner impulse to distrust all women".

We are not told why she has this compulsion. Nothing is said in any of the supersagas about her mother or her childhood. Her mother died before her father. But we do not know if it was shortly before or years before. Perhaps Pat distrusted all women because she distrusted herself.

In this adventure, Pat -- facing death -- says that if she can get out of the mess at this very moment, she'll take a vow never to be involved in another adventure with Doc. Then she adds: "Maybe."

Pat undoubtedly did not believe herself although it was a long time before she got back into action. Her next caper is Birds of Death (#104). Once again, she shows that she respects Doc but will take his orders only when it suits her.

By her 22nd adventure The Invisible-Box Murders (#105), Pat has learned to kip-read. It is this ability that Ham uses as feeble excuse to employ her even though Doc has forbidden her to get involved. Doc is too busy escaping the police and proving he's not a murderer to do anything about Pat.

In her 24th supersaga, Pat has evidently been deprived of her key to the 86th floor. Phoning in, Doc is surprised when she answers. He asks her how she got in and she says that she stole Monk's key out of his pocket. She tells Doc that the others are planning a birthday party for him. Doc -- who has a photographic memory -- has completely forgotten that it's his birthday.

But it makes no difference anyway. He's deeply entangled in a desperate case and he needs his aides at once. Forget the party; everybody come galloping. Except Pat. She has to go home.

Pat laughs scornfully and says that he should know her better than that. And so she should.

Pat disables one man with jujitsu techniques in Men of Fear (#108) and the breaks the chief villain's arm. Pat almost always pulled her own weight.

She shrewdly observes that Doc has been fooled a number of times by a pretty girl. Apparently, she has analyzed her cousin's character and knows that his appearance of stoicism is just that. Appearance.

The Man Who Fell Up (#113) -- Pat's 25th adventure -- is a story of a strange green fog in New York City and of men pulled up by the sky to some unknown doom. In this we find that although Pat distrusts women, she does have female friends. One is Susan Glaspell who lives in Westchester and has a maid.

Pat surprises Doc with her suddenly acquired ability to speak Mayan in this caper. She admits that she talked Monk into her the language. Monk is embarrassed. Though whether it is because he disobeyed Doc or he is remembering how she got him to teach her, Dent does not say.

It is disclosed in this supersaga that Pat is very hard to wake up once she's asleep. Renny says that she would sleep through the end of the World. We also learn that although Pat loves adventure, she hates parachute jumping.

And it is Pat who gives Monk's new chemical invention a name. She calls it "Compound Monk" because both the compound and Monk chase movement and warmth. Both have a compulsive affinity for "hot numbers".

In The Fiery Menace (#115), Pat owns an undistinguished-looking dark coupe which she calls "Clarence; 2 cars named "Tarzan" and "Adolph Hitler"; and a truck "Churchill". She also has a new experience in this story which is an old one for Doc and Long Tom. She is arrested on suspicion of murder.

The Laugh of Death (#116) is the first supersaga to tell us her exact height. She is 5'7" -- tall for a woman born in 1914.

In The Time Terror (#119), Monk announces that the circus is in town. None of the group ask him what he means by that. Only Doc comments (monosyllabically): "Pat." In this story, Dent slipped up and stated that Pat was "one of Doc's few living blood kin." (Implying that she was not a sole living relative.)

Pat is at Headquarters at 2:00 in the morning because a policeman friend had told her that Doc was offering a $500 reward for a certain skinny man in a gray suit. When Pat refuses to leave, she is locked in the Library by Doc.

But Doc should have known better. Pat picks the lock and gets to the Reception room just in time to witness its door being blown apart. The skinny guy in the gray suit enters and Pat is deep in the affair whether-or-not Doc likes it. At the moment, Pat does not like she it. She is scared.

In Waves of Death (#120), Johnny, Renny, and Long Tom are just about to dash out to investigate the tidal-wave mysteries in Lake Michigan. Johnny hears a noise and looks into the Reception room. He mutters "Guess who?" Long Tom gestures indicating such evens as Judgment Day, the Earth blowing up, and the like. Renny says "Right. Miss Patricia Savage in person."

Pat addresses Renny and Long Tom as "Grumpy" and "Grouchy". This is probably not for the first or the last time. Renny has his own label for her: excitopsychic. It means that has some 6th sense turned in to the possibility of adventure.

Pat takes off in her own plane which she keeps in an airport north of Westchester County. She disguises it by painting on it 'Norpen Lumber Company'. This is, unfortunately, the only reference we get to this concern. It is not destined to become as famous as the Hidalgo Trading Company.

It is in Waves of Death that we learn that Doc is not the only gadgeteer in the Savage family. Pat has designed and had installed on her plane an arrangement of vanes which intercepts the slipstream from the muffler. This alters the sound so that it resembles that of a car speeding on the highway at some distance. She uses it to fool some crooks.

Pat is touch. But she faints for the first (and the last) time when she learns that Doc is not really dead.

Pat is not in The Black, Black Witch (#121) until near the end. But she's in it long enough for us to find out she's added to her list of skills. She can "quack" like a flying duck.

The Mental Monster (#126) contains something puzzling about Pat. Doc calls her over the shortwave radio that she keeps tuned to the frequency which Doc uses to communicate with his aides. He can't get a reply from any of them so he uses several other frequencies. His group shifts the frequencies at certain times of the day to keep Pat from hearing the messages.

There is no answer. Thinking that perhaps (or most probably) Pat is on to their trick and has changed he frequency to match theirs, he calls her on several different wavelengths. She does not reply. Nor does she ever answer in this supersaga or even make an appearance.

We never learn what she was doing or why she wasn't around to answer. Yet she must have been in town. She wouldn't leave without notifying Doc. So what had kept her away from this adventure?

In Hell Below (#127), Pat gets mixed up with Nazis and submarines. She displays a new skill -- signaling with a flashlight in Morse code but using the Mayan language.

Pat is a modern young lady. But in The Secret of the Su (#129), we learn that she does not smoke.

Pat is mentioned in Weird Valley (#139). But only because she has "the family characteristic" flake-gold eyes.

According to Violent Night (#143), Pat was born in Canada. She is Doc's third or fourth cousin. More details are given about her six-shooter. It weighs more than 4 pounds and has large ivory grips. It was made before Jesse James' day and her grandfather fought Indians with it.

She tells Barney Cuadrado that she was raised in the Wild West except when she was being "educated to the eyebrows". Pat is in Lisbon, having tracked Doc there. She had been in London as a war correspondent. She got angry when she wasn't allowed to go to the front ... told off the authorities ... and had her correspondent's clearance voided. Her old six-shooter becomes a pivotal part of the adventure with the Nazis desperately trying to get hold of it for unknown reasons. Pat is in Switzerland at the end when Adolph Hitler is prevented from escaping from dying Germany. (Or was he really Der Fuehrer?) In this caper, Pat understands German very well but can't speak it fluently.

She does not enter Terror Takes Seven (#151) until it's two-thirds over. And she does so only then because Doc is on the run and has no one else to turn to. Pat comes through magnificently. She reminds Doc of the little man with the green suit. Doc is puzzled, then remembers the day he was out walking with Pat and she threw a snowball at a man in an atrocious green suit because she thought he was Monk. This was near the corner of Forty-Eighth Street and Ninth Avenue. This reminder by Pat tells him where they'll meet, thus puzzling anyone listening in on the tapped phone.

Pat drives a panel delivery truck with the legend 'Joe's Diaper Service'. She has borrowed the truck, she says, leaving Doc, Monk, and Ham to wonder if she really did of if she stole it. She is capable of doing anything if it will help them and they are not worried about the ethical implications of the theft. They themselves have broken the Law a thousand times in their battle against Evil.

They hide inside the truck and she drives them to a hideout. This is in the apartment of a friend (Thelia Van Zeltin) who is vacationing at Lake Placid. Pat says that she won't mind them using her place. But it's probably that Thelia will never know what's happening at her apartment.

Pat also has another friend (Paula Argus) who is much involved in this supersaga. Despite her stated distrust of women, Pat seems not to lack female friends. In this story, we learn that Pat speaks fluent French.

It is stated in Death is a Round Black Spot (#159) that Pat is a bronzy-blonde in her 20s. But this is 1945 and definitely after World War II. Pat must be about 31 years old. She is oval-faced and trim. She has light-brown eyes that are more golden than brown when not blanked by horror (which is often).

Pat is horror-stricken because she has seen a young man die terribly. In a few minutes, she is knocked over the head so hard (twice in fact) that she becomes unconscious. Pat has been knocked out since her meeting with Doc and pals. Her total is nowhere near Monk's. But then, she has a much thinner skull.

The next adventure for Pat is in Target for Death (#167) by William G. Bogart. Looking for help in finding her fiance, Lieutenant Sally Treat sees a familiar name in the Honolulu newspaper:

PAT SAVAGE VISITS CITY

Patricia Savage, lovely cousin of Clark Savage, Jr. (the famous international figure known as Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze) is now visiting in Honolulu ...

Treat remembers meeting Pat in a Manila hospital. Perhaps Pat has some of her cousin's abilities and can help her find Rick Randall.

Pat does help and is very busy in the dangerous affair until Doc tricks her into going to New York so he can get her out of his way. Pat fires off a telegram to him and his aides who are in a little town in Ohio:

I think you're a bunch of stinkers.

Love, Pat

Pat is out of the rest of the adventure. Doc, Ham, Monk, and Renny finish it up on a remove Philippine islet.

Pat's 37th adventure I Died Yesterday (#174) appeared in the January/February 1948 issue of Doc Savage, Science Detective magazine. This is the 174th supersaga. Of the 181, Pat has appeared in a little more than a fifth of them. It is thus fitting -- a sort of grand finale -- that Pat herself narrates her last exploit in first-person fashion.

This begins when a long-faced sack-suited young man enters Pat's establishment. He tells Pat's aide-de-camp Miss Colfax that he want the entire beauty treatment, the whole works. Pat overhears him but walks away. Miss Colfax will straighten him out and send him on his way. Nobody -- not even the extremely fat dowagers of New York City's "aristocracy" -- barged appointmentless into Pat's place. Certain ceremonies had to be gone through first.

But Miss Colfax (who could with a few words freeze a battleship with admiral included) has to ask Pat to take over for her. Miss Colfax can do nothing with the stubborn young man and she is eager to see how her boss handles him. She and the other ladies of the staff want very much to see if Pat lives up to her reputation.

Pat herself wonders if she'll be able to do it. It has been a long time since she's been in any dangerous situation other than crossing a New York City street at rush hour.

The young man is very complementary, telling Pat that she shines with more than a startling loveliness. That she has an electric quality, a vibrating force. He thinks that dating her would be about as unsettling as carrying a lighted candle through a gasoline refinery.

Pat asks him he'd like to be thrown out (by her!) head- or feet-first. And she is 100% able to carry out her threat since she is an expert judo fighter. The young man ignores this and after a few more compliments, asks if she would mind going to the entrance and finding out if they have come in yet to finish killing him.

It is then that Pat discovers that a snapped-off knife or icepick is buried in the young man's back. And she is then launched into her last recorded supersaga.

In this autobiographical story, Pat tells much about both herself and her cousin Doc. Her attitude toward money is different than Doc's. In the first place, she has very little of it compared to him. She "doesn't mind chipping if off those who were heavily planted with it".

But the big cause of trouble between her and Doc is this business of adventure. She is affected by Danger in an abnormal manner just as she is sure that Doc is affected. It's in the Savage blood. But Doc just won't let her take part in all of his adventures. He often won't let her know when he's in the city because he fears (justly) that she'll bull her way in.

Now the situation is reversed. Pat is in the case long before Doc. She initiates it (in a sense) and comes close to being killed a few minutes after meeting the young man with the icepick in his back. Only the best of surgeons can extract the pick without killing the patient. And who is better than Doc Savage?

Farrar --the doctor who X-rays the young man Thayer -- hesitates about asking Pat if Doc will take the case. He has heard that she and Doc are not on very good terms. Pat replies that this isn't so. They fight a lot; but they're very good friends. As for getting Doc in on this, don't worry. She can outfox him any day.

She uses Doc's unlisted number to bypass the private detective screening agency. Monk answers the phone. According to Pat, Monk isn't as dumb as he looks. He has "the manners and dignity of a 14-year-old hooligan from the wrong side of the tracks". Monk tells her that she is "the kitten who drags the big terrible rats into our parlor". He won't let her speak to Doc. The Bronze Man and his pals are "in the process of unofficially disowning you."

Pat tells him that Thayer is going to die if Doc doesn't do the surgery. She lays it on heavily with Monk. He's a sucker for any story told him by a woman.

Doc cuts in on the phone and tells her that it has been a long time "since you came skipping in on us with a little case of trouble that would scare a normal person. I knew it was too good to last."

Doc then says that he thinks she's being used by somebody in order to get him[Doc] involved. In any event, Pat is stay out of this from now on. She is to "return to the practice of that refined piracy you call a beauty salon."

Pat ignores this, of course. And she uses some of Doc's trick gadgets with great effectiveness during the course of I Died Yesterday. Doc has quit relying on gadgets lately. But Pat has collected a small museum of them. She has become -- unofficially -- the curator of his devices. She has several hundred of them, most of them acquired through the secret aid of Monk. A special room next to her office is jammed with them.

Wearing some of the gadgets under her clothes, Pat sallies forth. She expects the villains to attack her at once or at least to shadow her. But nothing much happens for a while.

And here she gives an analysis of the Savage character. One of its strong and enduring traits is impatience. Both she and Doc are cursed with it. Her father was impatient and so was her grandfather. The latter, she tells us, did not wait for the Indians to attack him in his log cabin. Rather, he went out looking for them. He was a "grand old guy. There were villages named for him all over the Northwest."

(A study of a map of western Canada fails to find any villages or towns named 'Savage' or 'Wildman' [Doc's real name]. But the grandfather could have been her mother's father.)

Pat soon gets into trouble. She and her car are ingeniously forced into a huge truck and carried off. She used her gadgets to get out of the locked truck. Then she discovers that it is none other than monk Mayfair who has kidnapped her. Doc told him to do it so that he can get her out of his hair.

Pat ties Monk up and threatens to put him to sleep for a week unless he'll take her into the case. Monk agrees. And they're both off on a rousing near-fatal supersaga.

Any reader who has regretted that Doc hasn't been using his gadgets lately will find great satisfaction in this story. Pat fires them off at every opportunity. But she does get scared in this story. At the end, she wonders if she isn't cured forever. Perhaps Doc has worked the miracle and she'll keep out of his affairs from now on.

Pat's last words are "It could be so destined as Lucia would say." (Lucia is a would-be psychic in this case.)

But nobody who knows Pat really believes this. Yet, she appears in no more supersagas. For me, this was -- and is -- sad. I fell in love with Patricia Savage when I was just 16. Rereading these stories at the age of 54, I'm still in love with her.

But all things good or bad come to an end. So it's goodbye to tall, lovely, bronze-haired, vivacious, stunning, deadly, courageous, exciting Pat Savage.

You'll be 58 years old this year of 1972, Pat. I wonder if you are still living in Manhattan. I can't see you as continuing unmarried though it would be difficult to find men who could equal Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, or Johnny. And of course to find anybody the equal of your cousin (excepting Lord Greystoke; but he's married).

But among your many suitors must have been at least a few of heroic stature. And perhaps you said 'yes' to one and settled down and became a good wife and all that.

Perhaps. But do you drive downtown now-and-then and look up at the Empire State Building? Or drive along the Hudson River and look at an old warehouse-type building and sigh for things that shall be no more?

I wonder ...

17 -- Doc the Gadgeteer

Doc Savage was the "Man of Tomorrow" according to Lester Dent. He was the Scientific Man. In his day, however, the faith in Science as out savior was strong. Today (which was Dent's tomorrow), the faith is considerably weakened.

Not Science but man using Science and compassion can be our only possible savior. Doc himself came to realize this later in his career and so tended to use his devices less-and-less. In the first phases of his battle against Evil, he did rely heavily on his gadgets. In a sense, he was an aggressive Great Wizard of Oz and Glinda the Good rolled into one.

One reason for his popularity in America was the confusion deep in the subconscious between magic and Science. A physical scientist knows that he's working within the limits of the natural Universe. But the layman still tends to think as his Old Stage Age ancestors did. The control of the natural Universe depends on involving the supernatural. And the supernatural can't be separated from the natural.

Thus, the Bronze Knight on an automobile running board was more than just a man equipped with the devices of Science. He was Merlin waging war on evil wizards. His magic was white; and theirs the blackest. The forces of Mordor might prevail for a time. But the Gandalf of the 86th floor will come to the rescue with his gnome king Monk Mayfair and the 4 hobbits. And he will be able to do this because of his sorcerer's weapons: the gadgets.

This chapter gives an account of a few of the gadgets unmentioned elsewhere. Some of these are not used in his campaigns but are the Wizard's gifts to Mankind.

In Quest of the Spider (#003), Doc is the developer of a "marvelous quick-growing lumber tree" which will revolutionize the lumber industry.

In The Polar Treasure (#004), Doc spreads some chemical compound resembling pale molasses on the floor outside the Reception room. When the blind Victor Vail is kidnapped, he and his captors step on the sticky stuff. Doc then sprays a vaporous substance on the stickiness. The result is an odor which would startle a skunk. Doc and Renny drive uptown and shoot the vapor into each subway exit. At the 8th exit, they detect the telltale stink and follow the odorous trail to its end.

In this same adventure, Doc reveals his collapsible canoe. This can also be reshaped to form the framework of a tent. Web paddles are attached to rifle barrels to propel the canoe. The silk waterproof sack in which the canoe is folded becomes the skin of the canoe or the tent fabric.

In The Red Skull (#006), Doc has a tiny apparatus which can instantly detect any poison gas. He uses it to make sure that Bandy Stevens has not died of poison gas.

During this crusade, Monk escapes from his abductors by using one of Doc's gadgets. Moistened with saliva, deposits of a chemical mixture under his fingernails release a powerful tear gas. Monk sticks his fingers under the eyes of his 2 guards and then dives out of the car.

Doc always carries firecrackers. With them, he can arrange to have a gunshot seem to occur at one place while's he's busy at another.

Sometimes if lacking a particular gadget, Doc improvises a pseudo one. During a chase in An Arizona desert, Doc throws his watch behind him. The villains -- having come to expect the glass-ball anesthetic-gas grenades and too far from the watch to see its true nature -- think that he's thrown a grenade. They wait for the supposed gas to evaporate and Doc is long gone.

Doc often hoists the villains with their own gadgets. Yuttal and Hadi-Mot in The Lost Oasis (#007) have trained large vampire bats to attack on signal. When they release the bats against Doc and cronies, they take refuge in their rattan cages ... only to find too late that Doc has weakened the bindings with an acid. The acid, of course, comes from one of the many vials in his vest.

In The Man Who Shook The Earth (#012), Doc literally tosses an earthquake back its maker The First Little White Brother. Doc has discovered that the White Brother's device uses the peculiar strata of quartz under the west coast of South America to affect his quakes. The piezoelectric phenomenon takes place in certain types of quartz when a certain electrical current is applied to them -- they bend. With the current off, the quartz unbends. And the earth shakes with the 2 curvings of the quartz strata.

To get his electrical power, the White Brother taps into a high-tension power line. 2 machines are used. These beam high-frequency waves at the intersection of which the underlying quartz reacts. Doc makes a high-frequency wave-beam projector ... puts in a plane ... and turns it on the hill where the villain's projectors are. His beam intersects one of the White Brother's and sets up oscillations in the quartz under the hill. The villain perishes in the resultant quake.

It isn't easy to outsmart Doc Savage as several thousand of evil men have found out.

Dent does not say so. But if Doc had power equivalent to that in a high-tension power line, he must have been carrying a big generator in his plane.

The King Maker (#016) has a villain who invents a flying torpedo (a 1934 anticipation of Hitler's V-1). It finds its target with a heat detector (similar to today's infrared-guided missiles). Doc and pals and sundry others are trapped in a house which is set afire by the villains so the flying torpedo can zero in on it.

But Doc has figured out the villains' gadget and has secretly hidden one of his own gadgets in the tail of the villains' plane. It emits an "atomic stream" which goes through solid matter. The ordinary senses of human beings can't detect it. But it offers a much "hotter" target than the flaming house. And so the evil ones are blown up by their own gadget. [StealthSkater note: sounds similar to the countermeasure cylinders deployed by modern military helicopters and made "hot" by blackbody radiation emitted from the chopper.]

When Doc and others are in the prison of The Mystic Mullah (#023), Doc tries to wrench out bars almost an inch thick and deeply socketed in stone. Even his Samsonian strength can't get them loose. He then takes off his necktie and tears open the large end. He removes the yellowish stuff lining the tie and rips off some buttons from his coat. He grinds the buttons into a brownish powder which he puts into the lining before rolling the lining up. After tearing the now cylindrical tie into 4 pieces, he binds them around the lower and upper ends of 2 bars. A match applied to the yellow rolls results in a loud hiss, a blinding light, and a great heat.

The necktie lining is impregnated with aluminum powder and the buttons are iron oxide. Some other chemicals are mixed with the stuff to make it burn even more efficiently. And so the thermite burns the bars apart.

The device of thermite disguised as pieces of clothing has been much used in James Bond-type movies and on TV (especially in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. series). But it was first used in the Doc Savage stories in the early 1930s.

A piece of wood ripped from a bench to make a handle and Doc's and Long Tom's belt buckles which are tipped with tiny diamonds make an ingenious drill in Dust of Death (#032). With these, Doc cuts out the lock of the dungeon door and the two of them escape.

In Murder Mirage (#035) by Norman Danberg (aka Laurence Donovan), Doc and Renny rescue a shadow so they can identify its owner. They do so by cutting it out of a plate-glass window on the front of a music store.

A woman has fallen victim to the villain's gadget which emits a greenish light that seems to disintegrate the woman. But her shadow (its arm upraised in horrified protest) is preserved on the glass. The silhouette is guarded by policemen until gangsters get rid of them and start to cut the shadow out. A masked Doc and Renny appear and blind the crooks with a new gas that Doc has invented.

The gas comes from sulphides combined with liquefied selenium. This, Danberg says, is the first time selenium has been liquefied in a usable form. Chalk one more up for Doc.

In the same story, Doc's car emits a smokescreen, the gummy particles of which stick to the pursuing car's headlights. The crooks have to clean them off before they can continue the chase.

Doc and gang land in their amphibian plane on a Norwegian fjord in Haunted Ocean (#040). 3 enemy planes promptly bomb the plane to smithereens. Before their craft is hit, Doc's group crowds into a tiny submarine which the plane carried. It's driven by compressed air and isn't big enough to hold submerging tanks. It can't expel water to gain buoyancy for a rise to the surface.

There is space between the outer and inner skins of the cylindrical vessel. This is occupied by a vacuum (if a vacuum can "occupy" anything). Doc fills the space with air generated chemically and the sub floats to the surface after the villains have left.

Dent must have misunderstood the notes that Doc gave him about the buoyancy mechanism. If the space between the skins was empty of air, the sub had all the buoyancy that it needed. More in fact because it would never had submerged. Releasing air into the vacuum would have made the sub less buoyant.

In The Midas Man (#042), Doc opens the locked door of Monk's car without a key or, seemingly, anything. He does this with an electromagnet hidden in the palm of his hand that pulls out a tiny iron bolt connected to a spring.

Doc deliberately lets a minor villain escape in The Mental Wizard (#049). He has given the man a large yellow pill to swallow. A few days later, the pill will cause the man to have an attack which seems to be appendicitis. By then, the man has led them to other villains and served his purpose. Undoubtedly, the crook will go the hospital where the police (having been warned by Doc) will pick him up.

In Land of Fear (#052), Doc escapes the "skeleton death" by covering his body with a paste which he's invented. This prevents the instantaneous dehydration usually affected by the villain's gadget. Once again Doc triumphs. And the villains -- as often happens -- are caught in their own trap.

Doc, Ham, and Monk are captured and bound with cloth strips in The Flying Goblin (#089). Soaked with what looks like sweat, Doc waits until his enemies have left. Then he tears the strips apart with a surge of arms and legs. Monk and Ham think that the strips act as if eaten by acid.

And they have been. Doc has broken a vial which he always carries in his coat pocket. It contains a fluid which "eats into anything except human flesh" and "spreads like kerosene". What Dent failed to mention in this episode is that the stuff would also have eaten Doc's clothes, gadgets, rings, and wristwatch.

All of Doc's rings were either communication sets or containers of spring-released knives. The watch had a small compass in addition to a calendar and other things.

Doc could get along without these. But the acid would have released so many different terrors in various vials and glass balls that Doc, Monk, and Ham would have been disintegrated and perhaps taken a whole city block with them.

That this didn't happen indicates that the acid must have worked faster on cloth than on glass or metal. Or else Doc had perhaps previously coated these with an especially acid-resistant paste.

Still, Doc must have often speculated on what would happen if a bullet made a lucky hit on one of the explosive gadgets in his vest or coat pocket. It may have been a continuing uneasiness -- an awareness that the odds against him were increasing in every encounter -- that made him decide to give up most of the gadgets.

There are about 350 devices that Doc and his pals used in the all of the supersagas. The reader should have some idea of their nature by now and so we'll go on to the final chapter.

18 -- Some of the Great Villains

and Their World-Threatening Gadgets

In there is a heaven for villains or a special place in Hell for only the most elite of villains, the surely Doc's chief enemies are there.

And in the center of this exclusive suburb would be a museum displaying their world-destroying or world-threatening devices. Since these and their owners would be about 70, describing them would make a chapter of almost book length. Therefore, only a few will be given here.

The curator of the museum would probably be John Sunlight. He is the only villain who ever escaped from Doc Savage in one adventure (Fortress of Solitude #069) for a return engagement (The Devil Genghis #070).

Like many of the villains, he is basically an idealist. He is using his terrible devices for the good of the World. To gain this good, he uses evil means. Moreover, the gadgets are not his creations. He has stolen them from Doc.

John Sunlight seems to have been put on this Earth so that men could be afraid of him. Those who know his true nature (such as the Russian official Serge Mafnof) believe that it would be a great boon for Mankind if Sunlight were shot at once. Don't wait for dawn.

Yet when he wishes to, Sunlight can look like a gentle poet. He is very tall and thin. His hair is dark and thick. His forehead remarkably high. And his eyes burn in deep hollows in a gaunt face.

His fingers are extraordinarily long and thin. The middle finger, in fact, is almost as long as the hand of an average man. Those spidery hands have a terrible power. Mafnof tells a Russian jury that Sunlight could grab a man with each hand and strangle them with no trouble at all. But the jury decides that Sunlight is only guilty of trying to advance too fast in the Soviet Army. And so off he goes to a prison camp in Siberia.

He waits patiently until he can arrange the correct setup. Then with his brutal ox-like lieutenant (Civan) and a number of other prisoners, he escapes on a ship. The crew are completely dominated by Sunlight. "Terror was the rope that John Sunlight kept around men's necks." He requires his people to get down on their knees when they approach him and they do it without protest.

Yet when the food is almost gone and there are not even any shoes to boil, Sunlight does without food for days. What little there is he gives to the crew. A man dead of starvation can't be dominated. And Sunlight wants domination more than anything.

Sunlight is superbly (or perhaps sickeningly) self-controlled (as Doc also was in his early career). The only emotional sound he makes is an occasional beastly growl. He utters this when he is vainly battering with a sledge-hammer at the strange Blue Dome that he has found on a rocky islet.

John Sunlight is startled and frightened when an Eskimo wanders onto the scene and denies that there is a strange Blue Dome in front of him. Perhaps Sunlight has finally gone insane. And insanity is the only thing he fears and fears it so intensely that his fear itself is insane.

He has one notable eccentricity. He wears only one color at a time. When he's in a purple mood, he dresses in all-purple pajamas, a purple robe, and his ring is a purple jewel. Even the chair he sits on when judging some of his gang who've failed in a mission is covered with a matching purple.

In a later episode, he wears a blood-red ensemble that makes him look like "a satanic alchemist".

John Sunlight is very thorough. Like Doc Savage, he knows that attention to detail ensures success in a venture. It is this characteristic plus his mad drive and hypnotic hold on his mob that almost give him victory over Doc. After getting inside Doc's Fortress of Solitude, he uses two of Doc's devices to get millions in an international bribery scheme.

He sells Doc's electron-stopping machine to a Balkan country for 11 million. Then he sells another machine (a project of blinding rays) to that nation's enemy for another 11 million. He is interested in the money, however, for only one reason. It will enable him to start on the second phase of his plan -- the domination of the entire World by himself!

It is not for his own pride that he wishes to rule the Globe. He has the same aims as Doc Savage himself, he explains to Doc in The Devil Genghis. He wants to "right the greatest wrong of all" -- the distinction between nationalities. National boundaries make for suspicion, greed, hate, and eventually wars. National languages encourage these because they make for lack of communication and for misunderstanding.

He intends to rectify this. After he conquers the World, he will do away with all national boundaries. There will then be only one flag -- Earth's. He will destroy every firearm of any kind and forbid their possession under penalty of death. "Mankind has advanced far enough that it does not need firearms."

There is silence for a moment after he explains his intentions to Doc ...

... then Doc tells him that many men have had this dream. But it isn't realistic. Moreover, to attain this end he must kill millions. And violence can't accomplish anything worthwhile and enduring. For example, look at World War I. It solved nothing and settled little. The countries that suffered and bled so much are regaining their strength and the World is headed toward another global conflict.

John Sunlight asks him if he insists on not the helping the World. Doc replies that he will help it but only the extent of eliminating John Sunlight.

Sunlight runs, bleating with terror of the only man he fears. And Doc, pursuing, is almost killed by one of Sunlight's traps (an exploding shrapnel-packed mattress). Sunlight did manage to wrench his leg free of Doc's iron grip -- the only normal (i.e., not drug-enhanced/mutated) person in all of the adventures to display such a maddening strength.

In Fortress of Solitude, Sunlight uses Doc's stolen device to pay off his old debt to Serge Mafnof. It projects a beam which causes Mafnof to turn black and then to disappear in black smoke. The gadget creates a "magnetic field of superlative intensity". This stops all orbital motion of the electrons in the target body. Doc had invented it while experimenting in the Fortress. But he had no intention of letting World know about it. (Actually, Sunlight had cheated Prince Karl when sold him the electron stopper. It doesn't work beyond a range of 20 feet.)

The second gadget causes men to go temporarily blind by paralyzing the operations of the rods and cones of the eyes.

Mo-Gwei -- the villain of Meteor Menace (#013) -- titters and cackles insanely. His face is covered with a purple mask and he wears purple gloves and yellow robes. His headquarters are in the Tibetan Himalayas. But he directs a worldwide organization. In fact, his agents are in Antofagasta, Chile when they encounter Doc and his assistant archenemies of Evil. Doc is there to dedicate the new hospital which he founded in The Man Who Shook The Earth (#012).

Mad Mo-Gwei's gadget is an aerial device that robs men of their minds. Usually it is summoned in the night and to a certain location by a Very pistol light. Then the sky takes on a weird, faintly blue color similar to that emitted by the arc of an electric welding torch. The radiance becomes brighter and, finally, blinding.

Then a distance and weak whistling is heard. Like the blue light, it increases in intensity. It gains an eerie piping quality. Soon it becomes so high and loud that it cuts the eardrums with "razor sharpness". The hearer's head aches. The shrieking becomes louder and louder. The victim cannot look at the light without going blind. Nor can he hear his own voice.

Then the glow fades and the shrieking dies. The meteor menace disappears in the opposite direction from which it came. Behind it, it leaves men and women in a vegetable state or with a homicidal or suicidal mania.

The mind-freezing radiation comes from a meteorite or slice of one, Doc finds out. But the accompanying phenomenon is the work of Mo-Gwei. The device responsible for the sound and light is quite possible for today 1972 science. (Meteor Menace is in the March 1934 issue).

The true identity of Mo-Gwei is revealed near the end of the exploit. He is not the typical Oriental villain of the pulp magazine but is a Caucasian masquerading as such. Perhaps he got the idea of his disguise from the pulps. In any event, he is quite mad.

Fear Cay (#019) has 2 competing chief villains. The gadget is not electromechanical but biological. It seems to be only beneficial in its effects. It is silphium -- a herb which was grown by the ancient Cyrenes of North Africa. The tea prepared from it gave people a long life. The plant apparently perished with the Cyrenes. But Doc and pals find out that it still grows on a West Indian islet. A Roman galley with a cargo of silphium was driven by storms into the western Atlantic and was shipwrecked on Fear Cay.

Cyrene was a city which was part of a larger group called Cyrenaica and was founded by Greek colonists. It was later incorporated into the Roman Empire. Since it was in present-day Libya next to Egypt, I wonder what the Roman galley was doing out of the Mediterranean. Perhaps it was carrying silphium to the province of Britain which would account for its presence in the Atlantic.

One of the villains (Santini) is a typical gangster. The other (Dan Thunden) is far more colorful. He is 131 years old; has a youthful physique; a thatch of white hair; and a long white beard. He is the quickest man that Doc has ever encountered. He even eludes Doc for a while in a grab-and-duck chase and then leaps head-first through a glass window. Doc has to go out a side door to pursue him because Doc's powerful physique is too big to get through the window frame. On the straightaway, Doc is on the verge of overhauling old Thunden. But the latter pulls a gun and gets away.

There is a mysterious menace of Fear Cay. A sinister thing which devours its victims alive, stripping them to the bone. It turns out to be no monster created in a laboratory but a horde of flesh-eating "army ants".

The main gadget -- the silphium -- is the real menace to Earth. What if it were released for public usage? What would happen then? The silphium not only prolongs live but also keeps its users healthy and vigorous. Women and men would not cease to be unfertile as they aged nor would their sexual drives diminish. They would continue to have children and the death rate would be lowered.

If silphium had been made available in 1934, we today would have a population twice as large as the present. Doc knew what he was doing when he suppressed it. He could not keep news of it from leaking out. But he made sure that everybody would think it was just another overrated medicinal herb. (Silphium has been discussed previously as a possible exclamation of how Ham and others seem to be so vigorous despite their age.)

As for villainous old Thunden, he came to a bad end, betrayed by his own double-crossing and eaten by his own trap.

The Mystic Mullah (#023) tells of pale-green shape-changing phantoms which float in the air. Their touch is painful and usual fatal. Gullets and knives pass through them without stopping them.

They are directed by "the green soul" of the Mystic Mullah who is master of all souls and has infinite power. When he kills with the green things (which are souls), he adds the souls of the murdered to the ranks. The Mystic Mullah has died a million years before time began. And even now though he moves and talks and kills, he is not really living.

Like most of the weird phenomena in the supersagas, the Mullah's green ghosts have a rational explanation. I will admit, however, that I could find no mention of the "neotropical rattlesnake" in Zoology books.

The villain of Spook Legion (#026) -- Telegraph Edmunds -- has a gadget which makes his gang invisible. He robs and murders until all of New York City is in a panic.

It's tough living in NYC nowadays. But it must have been far worse in the 1930s and 1940s. Doc tangled with one world-wrecker after another while the Gothamites ran around like blind mice. King Kong panicked Manhattan. The Shadow and the Spider ran up against dozens of great villains with hellish machines and diseases which threatened to wipe out New York. The wonder is that anybody but the great heroes and the great villains elected to remain in the city. However, your New York City aborigine has a not-too-secret belief that life is not worth living outside his birthplace. He would rather die than leave it. And if present conditions continue, he will.

The Fantastic Island (#034) is a tale which could have inspired the James Bond Doctor No. The sinister Count Ramadanoff admits: "The mortality rate among my guests has been regrettably high." And when he sits down to play the piano, no one laughs. Because it is "always a prelude of unpleasantness for somebody." He says: "I am impelled to unspeakable decisions when my fingers wander over the keys." His favorite method of killing is "the thumbhole death".

In The Men Who Smiled No More (#038), Dr. Madren gives Doc Savage the toughest moments of his life. Doc himself admits this (although at that time, he had not yet met John Sunlight). Who would have guessed that this pudgy little bald psychiatrist (a pillar of the community) was the inventor of the device that turned men into robots subject to Madren's slightest (and often fatal) whim?

In Haunted Ocean (#040), New York City at 8:00 in the morning comes to a standstill. All electricity ceases to flow. Again, the man responsible for this is an idealist. He wants to stop all wars. And a competing fiend in human form is trying to get his hands on the device for his personal profit and glory. The situation is so serious that the mystified and helpless authorities call in Doc.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself asks Doc to investigate. This is one of the wisest things that Roosevelt ever did. Only a man of Doc's caliber could track down the "'Man of Peace' and the villain who is after him. And who else -- having got his hands on the electricity-stopper -- could be trusted not to use it for selfish purposes?

It would be tedious for any but the most zealous Savageologists to describe even an eighth of the villains and their gadgets. But time-after time, month-after-month, often week-after-week, Doc and his group collided with, rebounded from, were captured by, almost killed by, but finally crushed villains with the most amazing and horrifying machines and monsters.

During World War II, these seemed to have been thinned out. Either the Depression years had been a sort of renaissance, a time of fruition of great villains and gadgets. Or else Doc had liquidated so many that the others had decided not to try their luck against him. Or they may have felt that they could not compete with the master villain Hitler.

Whatever the reasons, though there were some fabulous devices used by wicked men during World War II and after, the villains seem pale compared to those who went before them. Except for a few, Doc's enemies lack true apocalyptic stature.

But in the lat recorded supersaga Up From Earth's Center (#181), Doc may have finally run into somebody (or some thing) that even he could not win out against. He did escape from his antagonists. But the implications are that they had powers which did not depend upon gadgets and which no devices could successfully combat in the long run.

Up From Earth's Center is a very strange tale.

Doc, Ham, and Monk are the only one to play an active role in this exploit. No mention is made of Long Tom, Johnny, or Pat. Renny is in the area but never appears on stage.

Ham is knocked senseless and so doesn't accompany Doc into the deep enormous caverns in the Maine mountains. With the 2 intrepids are Dr. Karl Lenningen (an eminent psychiatrist), a Mr. Wail, and a Mr. Williams. The last two are devils. At least, they're inhabitants of the underground and claim to have at one time been living human beings.

Neither Williams nor Wail have horns or tails or hooves. They look quite Homo sapiens. Wail is an admitted escapee from Hell. He doesn't like it at all. In fact, he died in 1781; went to Hell (or the caverns); rose to the rank of assistant devil; and was sent outside to "take care" of Gilmore.

Gilmore had accidentally found the caverns which went to the Center of The Earth. He discovered that Dante and other infernologists were right. Hell is where they said it would be -- in Earth's center. At least, its heart is though its suburbs extend to the surface. Williams had gone after the defecting Wail.

Over 15 miles down but still only "in the outskirts of Hades," Doc encounters something that freezes him with the worst terror he's ever known (and he's known the worst!).

"The shape became a mass, formless and gibbous and evil. It had movement and body. But little else that seemed natural. It had no arms, no legs. It was headless and leathery with a sour gray color that shed the ugly purplish-green light with a skull-like sheen. It came towards him, lurching, rolling, so that he could actually tell how it progressed. There was some odor. Not the flowery one but the dead scent of lifelessness and emptiness."

Doc had seen the thing before but thought that it was a boulder. Now the thing attacks. And it must be dangerous because it scares even the demon (though junior-grade) Wail. Others of its kind join in the attack. Doc escapes only by throwing an explosive grenade. This does not hurt the things. But it does startle and confuse them.

Replying to Doc's angry questions, Wail says that Doc won't believe him even if tells the truth. The boulder-things are inmates. Sinners. For punishment, they have been transformed into stones (though mobile stones). They are doomed to stay in that shape forever. The things, Wail adds, are only a "mild sample of what it's like down in the Main area".

Later, Doc and Wail run into a forest of living trees. These hiss and try to catch them with springy-feeling tentacles. The powerful Doc is held helpless. A tentacle around his throat cuts off his air. If it were not for Monk's appearance on the scene, Doc might well have been dead in a few minutes. Monk throws a grenade. The things then drop Monk and Doc and become still and stone-hard. (Perhaps Dante was not fantasizing. He may have been in a similar cave in Italy.)

Explosives and flames are the only things that frighten these creatures. Indeed, earlier Mr. Wail has showed his fear of fire, even of a lighted match. Doc, Monk, Lenningen, and Wail escape. Dr. Lenningen comes up with an explanation for their experience. The caverns must contain a gas that causes hallucinations. But this theory won't hold up under analysis. Mr. Wail is locked in a storeroom from which he can't possibly escape. But he does. He just disappears from it.

So we come in the 181st supersaga to the ultimate in villains and gadgets. The villains are nonhuman (though there were once human). The gadget is non-electromechanical and non-biological. It is Evil itself powered by Evil itself.

Doc seems to have no intention of continuing this war. He closes the entrance to the caverns with explosives. Though how this will imprison beings who can pass through solid walls is something not mentioned.

Would Doc have abandoned the fight? Would a man dedicated to probing "the mysterious, the inexplicable" be able to ignore the challenge. Would not his rational approach have forced him to discard the supernatural explanation? After all, Mr. Wail and his kind may have been extraterrestrials who were hiding out in the deep earth under Der Tag arrived. However, if the denizens of the deep earth were not of Hell, they certainly had the powers of Hell.

After long meditation and a firm decision and much preparation, Doc would have led an expedition against the things. With him would have been his 5 aides and perhaps Pat. The expedition would have been loaded not for "bear" but for the Forebear of All Evil. And it would have expended all the hundreds of gadgets in a final apocalyptic onslaught.

Perhaps Doc invented some kind of magnetic field to keep the denizens from passing by teleportation through his defenses. The disadvantage of this, of course, is that he has to turn off the field if he is going to launch his weapons at them. And what happens during the momentary vulnerability?

We can be sure that he would have used as his most formidable weapon the one thing that Evil can't face -- Light.

If the cavern dwellers were indeed lost souls encased in strange forms, Doc may have lost and Hell is as strong as ever. If they were extraterrestrials subject to natural laws, they might have lost. If they had won, it seems like that they would have come out into the open by now in an all-out war.

But they haven't. So perhaps Doc won.

Or perhaps they are among us as reasonable facsimiles of human beings ...

Addendum-A: the Fabulous Family Tree of Doc Savage

Doc Savage not only has some distinguished ancestors. He also has a number of famous (and infamous) cousins. His forbears and relatives on his father's side are described in Addenda 2 and 3 of my Tarzan Alive (Doubleday, 1972). In that book, Doc's family tree was not traced on the maternal side beyond his mother's parents (Arronaxe Land and Wolf Larsen).

In the book at hand, this addendum and its accompanying genealogical chart are an extension of the addendum and end papers in the biography of Tarzan. The chart contains the full names of the most important persons and the initials of the lesser breed. The addendum, however, spells out the full names of everybody.

(Left part of Chart)

(Right part of Chart)

The genealogy of the end paper in Tarzan Alive is titled The World Newton Family, 1795-1901. Wold Newton is a small village in the East Riding of Yorkshire County, England. It is famous chiefly for a meteorite which struck near it in 1795, the exact location of impact being marked by a monument which tourists (or anybody else) may see now.

At the moment it struck, 2 large coaches with 14 passengers and 4 coachmen were within a few yards of it. All ere exposed to the ionization accompanying meteorites. The descendants of all those in-or-on the coaches include an extraordinary number of great crimefighters, scientists, and explorers. So many, in fact, that the only reasonable explanation is that the meteorite radiation caused a beneficial mutation of genes in those exposed.

The mutated genes were reinforced and kept from being lost by the inbreeding of the descendants of those present at Wold Newton. Marriages of cousins were, of course, common among the British nobility and gentry. Burke's Peerage records numerous instances of this. Moreover, most of the passengers came of stock which had been producing extraordinary men and women for many generations. Some of their descendants were more than extraordinary. They bordered on -- and in some cases attained -- the status of superman.

Note that the "supermen" in this family tree were mostly battlers against Evil. But every family barrel has its rotten apples. And this one produced two of the greatest evil men history. Both were geniuses in both Science and crime: Fu Manchu and Professor James Moriarty. Of a lower quality (though still geniuses) were John Clay (also known as Colonel Clay), Doctor Caber, and Carl Peterson. Arsene Lupin is an "amphibian"; i.e., operating sometimes as an outlaw and sometimes for the Law.

However as was pointed out in the text of this book and in Tarzan Alive, the great crimefighters of this family often paid no attention to laws. They were interested not in legality but in justice. To effect their goal, they often did things which would have put them in prison for years or caused them to be executed if they had been found out.

To trace the various trunks and branches that feed the genealogical sap (if this perm is permissible) begin with the 3 people in the chart's upper-left corner. The careers of these three are recounted in John Barth's The Sot Weed Factor (Doubleday). Its protagonist -- Ebenezer Cooke (1666-1732) -- led an adventurous life in the colony of Maryland. He was its poet laureate, creator of the well-known poem "The Sot Weed Factor" (meaning "The Tobacco Merchant") and of the unfinished epic the "Maylandiad".

Ebenezer's twin sisters Anna bore a child to Henry Burlingame (H.B.) who was a descendant of a colleague of Captain John Smith. He was a bold adventurer, a learned man, and a man of many disguises. His child by Anna was Andrew Cooke III.

His descendant Juno Cooke (J.C.) married John Bumppo (J.B.). John may have been descended from Natty Bumppo -- the Hawkeye, the Deerslayer of Cooper's novels of the middle-18th Century eastern-American wilderness. But more of him later.

Skipping for the moment the first viscount Castlewood, proceed on the chart to Captain Blood (second level). His biography has been written by Raphael Sabatini in 3 volumes: Captain Blood, Captain Blood Returns, and The Further Adventures of Captain Blood. It is appropriate that this famous scourge of the Spanish Main and medical doctor should be Doc Savage's forefather.

Doc was a great sailor who experienced some of his most splendid supersagas on the sea or under it. And as the reader knows by now, Doc was perhaps the most celebrated of all surgeons. It might be going too far from a strict scientific viewpoint to say that Doc inherited his seamanship and medical skill from Peter Blood. But these abilities were certainly not lost because of genetic dilution. Many other seamen and doctors were Doc's ancestors in other lines.

Peter Blood was the son of an Irish medicus and got his baccalaureus medicinae at the same institution from where his father graduated (Trinity College, Dublin). His mother was English, a native of the southern county of Somersetshire. This was the main theater of the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion; the decisive battle of Sedgemoor was fought there in 1685. The Bloody Assizes of the infamous Judge Jeffreys followed at Taunton Castle and Wells.

Blood's mother was a member of the seafaring family of Frobisher. Sabatini does not say that she was the daughter of the great navigator and discoverer Sir Martin Frobisher (1539?-1595). But she probably was his niece.

Peter Blood was arrested for treating the wounded Lord Gildoy after the battle of Segemoor. Gildoy escaped punishment as a rebel partly because of his position (but mostly because of his wealth). Blood had taken no part in the uprising. His only crime was obeying the Hippocratic Oath. He was held in jail along with the thousands of the lowly who had no money to buy their way out. It seemed certain that he would be of the hundreds hung by Jeffreys.

But the authorities put a stop to the waste of human-power. Why hang a man when he could be sold at a profit to West Indian plantation owners who would then work their slave to death?

And so Blood was shipped off to the island of Barbados. There he began that remarkable career which resulting in his marrying Arabella Bishop, the daughter of the governor of Barbados and himself becoming its governor.

Micah Clarke (next Blood on the chart) was a contemporary of the captain. His autobiography has been edited by A. Conan Doyle under the title of Micah Clarke. He was born in 1664 in the little village of Havant, Hampshire, a few miles from Portsmouth. He was the son of Mary Shepstone and "Ironside Joe" Clarke, a gray-eyed broad-chested rough-tempered Puritan who had served under Cromwell.

Micah's father Joseph Clarke was the descendant of Solomon Kane (1566-?). The dour fighting Puritan was with Sir Richard Grenville on the Revenge during its famous engagement of 1591. (Tennyson wrote a poem about this battle.) In a hand-to-hand fight lasting 15 hours against 15 Spanish ships and 5,000 Spaniards, the Revenge and its 190 men were defeated. Young Solomon Kane was carried off in chains to the terrors of the Inquisition in Spain. He later escaped and served for a while under the French in their war against Spain.

Like his future descendant Doc Savage, Kane traveled over the World to right wrongs. This tall rangy gray-eyed knight of the open road wandered through the Americas, Europe, and Africa. He penetrated deeper into the Dark Continent than any white man before him and there encountered many weird things and beings. Some of exploits were even stranger than those of his remote grandsons Tarzan and Doc Savage.

(Those interested in reading of Kane's life should go to the complete collection: Red Shadows, Robert E. Howard, Donald M. Grant [publisher] or the softcover versions The Moon of Skulls, The Hand of Kane, and Solomon Kane, Centaur Press.)

Kane's lover or wife Bess died after giving birth to another Bess. Young Bess married a Clarke. One of her descendants was Micah Clarke. He was even larger and stronger than his father (Ironside Joe) and much better-tempered. Unlike Blood, he took an active part in the rebellion. Like Blood, he was held prisoner for a while before his so-called trial.

Probably the young yeomen saw Peter Blood in prison. Perhaps he even exchanged a few words with him since Blood was saved from the gallows when he was sentenced to be transported to the West Indies as a slave.

Clarke, however, did not get there because his old friend -- the mercenary soldier Decimus Saxon -- rescued him. Micah later settled down in his native village and married a woman unnamed by Doyle. They had children and then grandchildren. There is, however, a little family cemetery near Havant with a tombstone which bears the name of Micah's wife (Sarah Frobisher Clarke). She was related to Peter Blood's mother through the Frobishers.

Another of her seafaring ancestors was a Raphael Hythloday (first level). The discoveries of this young Portuguese philosopher in the New World were related by him to Sir Thomas More who had written about them in his Utopia.

Utopia was a large island seemingly located off the Pacific coast of South America. Its Amerind inhabitants were in an early state of civilization comparable to that of the Olmecs of Mexico or the pre-Incans when they were conquered by men from an invading fleet. These seem to have been half-Persian and half-Greek. Probably soldiers and sailors who had fled Persia after the death of Alexander the Great.

The fleet had wandered through the East Indies and then sailed across the Pacific until it came to the island (then called Aabraxa). Their leader Utopus was a philosopher who put into practice his Platonian ideals. He was wise enough to adopt the best of the aboriginal culture and of the Greco-Persian culture and thus to form a hybrid civilization the like of which the World has not seen before or since.

Unfortunately, after Hythloday's departure for the Old World a great earthquake sank the island of Utopia and it became one with Atlantis. The World lost an example of what men could be if they allowed humanity and reason to govern them. On the other hand, the Spanish undoubtedly would have destroyed the Utopian civilization solely because it was pagan as they did the Central American and Incan societies. They would not have realized that the Utopians were, in effect, the only true Christian than (or now) existing.

Sarah Frobisher bore Micah Clarke many children of whom we consider here Reuben, Micah, and Gervas (3rd level).

Reuben was the ancestor of Eliza Shawnessy (E.S.) of whom more will be said later.

Micah was the forefather of Allan Quatermain (6th level). Quatermain was not descended from those exposed to the radiation at Wold Newton. But he is a member of that family in the sense of sharing some of its illustrious ancestors -- Micah Clarke (2nd level) and Solomon Kane, Sir Nigel Loring, and Raphael Hythloday (1st level) -- and in his phenomenally adventurous life.

Allan Quatermain (1817-1885) was a wiry little man with porcupine-quill hair and brown eyes. These eyes belonged to the best shot in England and Africa. His small chest contained a large heart swelling with courage, mysticism, and compassion. Like Sir Nigel, he was not giant in size but was tall in bravery and ability. And like Sir Nigel, he was verray parfit gentil knight.

Like Hythloday and Kane, he roamed far encountering exotic peoples and adventures. His main theater of action was South Africa. Here he made his living chiefly by hunting and trading with the natives whom he knew intimately and whom he generally liked. He was the friend and companion of the great Zulu hero Umslopogaas, the only surviving child of the black Napoleon Tchaka. (See H. Rider Haggard's Nada the Lily, She and Allan, and Allan Quatermain for his epic story.)

Quatermain discovered 3 civilizations: Walloo, Kor, and Zuvendis. His memoirs consist of 14 books and 4 short narratives (all edited by Haggard). The 2 best known are King Solomon's Mines and Allan Quatermain. These have been often reprinted. But I expect a revival of interest in the other Quatermain tales when their mysticism-shot qualities become known to younger generations.

Gervas Clarke (center, 3rd level) married a Joan Hurdle. She was a descendant of that brawling giant -- the ex-monk and soldier John of Hordle. He served under Sir Nigel Loring. The story of both may be read in A. Conan Doyle's Sir Nigel and The White Company.

Gervas had 2 daughters -- Tabitha (T.C.) and Monica (M.C.) Tabitha was the mother of Sir John Clarke Wildman (Sir J.C.W.) who married Matthiette de Pierson (M.d.P.). Monica had a daughter Alice Clarke Raffles (A.C.R.) who married Sir Percy Blakeney (the Scarlet Pimpernel).

Captain Blood's daughter Arabella (A.B.) married a second cousin (also named Blood). Their daughter Mercy (M.B.) married Matthew de Pierson (M.D.P., 4th level). He was the son of Lorna Esmond, a descendant of the first viscount of Castlewood. (For the sake of the Esmond family, read William Makepeace Thackeray's Henry Esmond and The Virginians.) Lorna Esmond was the wife of Lord Tiverton. He was a rather sinister person beheaded for treason in 1745. His ancestry may be traced in the Lineage of Lichfield section in The Cream of the Jest, James Branch Cabell (Ballantine Books, 1972).

Lord Tiverton's ancestry was very distinguished -- even phenomenal -- though his earliest recorded forefather began as a swineherd. Manuel, however, attained the title of Count of Poictesme (a sovereign area of medieval France). Manuel had many descendants through many women. But Tiverton's line came down from Niafer who may have been the daughter of the Soldan of Barbary.

Lord Tiverton's granddaughter Matthiette de Pierson (M.D.P., 5th level) married Sir John Clark (Sir (J.C.W.). On being created a baronet in 1785, Sir John added his mother's name to his father's. This coupling of paternal and maternal family names is common among the British nobility and gentry. Usually the names are hyphenated (as in Smythe-Jones). But a small number omit this typographical link.

The son of Sir John and Matthiette de Piereson, Sir Patrick Clark Wildman (Sir P.C.W.) married Mavice Blakeney (M.B.) who was the daughter of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Both Sir Patrick and his father were wealthy eccentrics, medical doctors whose hobby was alchemistry and the occult. Sir John was blown to bits in 1843 apparently while trying to transmute lead into gold.

His son Sir Patrick seems to have attempted experiments much like those attributed to Dr. Victor Frankenstein. It is claimed in Hendrik van Helsing's Hollow Dark Places (Zoondt, Amsterdam, 1885) that Sir Patrick had access to Frankenstein's notes. His evidence, however, is so slight that most scholars reject this theory.

What Sir Patrick was doing in his laboratory will never be known. His lab and its records were burned by the villagers of Upper Fogg Shaw in Derbyshire. Sir Patrick escaped their fury but was later arrested by the police. Though obviously mad, he was sentenced to death for the murder of the local vicar and for body-stealing. But before he could be hanged, he poisoned himself.

It was this well-publicized scandal which caused his daughter Patricia (P.C.W.) to refuse to marry the sixth duke of Greystoke even though she bore him a son. She was afraid that the marriage would ruin his career as a statesman.

It was this stigma which drove Patricia's older brother Alex (A.C.W.) to migrate to Canada. After becoming a wealthy landowner in his old age, he married May Renfrew, sister to a well-known Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman. Alex's and May's daughter Patricia Savage was named after Alex's beloved sister.

Alexander Clarke Wildman (A.C.W.) was the father of Patricia (Savage). Alexander's sister Patricia died after giving birth to Doc Savage's father (J.C.W.) (see Chapter 3). Alexander went to the New World. But the oldest brother Bruce Clarke Wildman (B.C.W.) decided to stay in England. He did, however, live very quietly there, burying himself in the more exotic sciences (notably time-travel). This gray-eyed member of the Wold Newton family succeeded in his experiments as the readers of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine know. Wells respected his desire for privacy and so refers to him only as 'The Time Traveller'.

The family background and story of the sixth duke's illegitimate son James Clarke Wildman (J.W.C.) is described in Chapter 4 of the book at hand. The Greystokes are fully blazoned in Addendum 3 of Tarzan Alive. For those in interested in heraldry, the arms of Clarke Wildman are:

ARMS -- Argent, a fesse chequy gules and azure, in chief an alchemical pelican between 2 fleams, in base a demisavage holding on his sinister shoulder a club.

Crest -- A demihunstman proper winding a horn gules.

Mottoes -- Free for a Blast; Inicissimus Malerficorum.

The latter motto means The Greatest Enemy of Evil-doers -- a very appropriate motto for Doc Savage.

Doc's mother was Arronaxe Larsen (A.L., 8th level). She was the daughter of Arronaxe Land (A.L., 7th level) and Wolf Larsen. The latter was a Danish-born Norwegian and the sinister amoral genius whose story was related to Humphrey van Weyden to Jack London. London novelized it as The Sea Wolf, first published in serial form in The Century Magazine, 1904.

Wolf Larsen was a very handsome man who could be as charming and as beguiling as Lucifer himself when he wished. His charisma was, however, of an alternating current quality. When he became angry, he was as frightening as a typhoon. He became not just a man in a fury but an elemental force. He was a human wolverine in strength and aggressiveness with a mentality which if developed in a different environment might have equaled Darwin's or Spencer's.

He was a genius who had never arrived. Though lacking even a day of formal education, he had taught himself so well that he knew as much (if not more) of philosophy than many college professors. He invented a star scale that was simple a child could use it to navigate a ship.

The genes of this extraordinary and mental specimen -- reinforced with the Wold Newton genes -- made Doc Savage the superman that he truly was.

And time and again, Van Weyden speaks of Larsen's protean gray eyes with the glints of gold. Both Larsen and his wife Arronaxe Land bequeathed the yellow flecks to Doc.

Wolf lacked most of the finer moral qualities (except courage and ambition) and married Arronaxe because that was the only way to get her to bed. Then he deserted her.

We may suppose that the outraged Ned Land made an extensive search for his daughter's betrayer. But that story was not written by Jules Verne (though it may be written someday by somebody else).

Immediately below Wolf Larsen is a broken line ending in Mr. Moto? This latter person was the little Japanese mystery-solver and champion jujitsu expert whose exploits were recorded by J.P. Marquand. The stories about him were very popular in pre-World War II days and several movies were made with actor Peter Lorre in the lead role. But when Pearl Harbor happened, Mr. Moto lost his appeal to American readers.

His inclusion in the chart is based on speculation, not documentation. But there is an incident in The Sea Wolf in which Wolf and his crew abducted, raped, and abandoned a group of pretty Japanese women. Possibly, Mr. Moto was the grandson of the women whom Wolf took for his own. His superior qualities indicate the likelihood of this.

The question mark(?) after Philip Marlowe's name indicates that he is on the same dubious footing as Mr. Moto. This private eye had the same keen detectival ability, compassion, and hard-boiled but poetical worldview as Lew Archer. (Elsewhere it has been suggested with a more solid foundation that that prepared for Marlowe that Archer was a member of the Wold Newton family. That he was, in fact, the grandson of Professor Challenger.)

Marlowe is put forth as a candidate for relationship because of his superior qualities and of the resemblance of his eyes to Doc's. He also had light-brown eyes with flecks of gold. (See Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler.) This indicates a possible descent from Larsen and Arronaxe Land.

In any event, it would be a shame to leave him out of the genealogy. We may suppose that Arronaxe married a Marlow in her later years and moved to California. (Readers who feel that the quality of genealogy is strained in this surmise are free to reject it.)

Arronaxe Land was the daughter of the Herculean French-Canadian harpooner Ned Land (6th level). His story has been told by Jules Verne in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Ned had married Marie Chauvelin (M.C.). His first daughter was Edwina Land (E.L.). His last child was named Arronaxe after his admired friend, the renowned natural historian Professor Arronaxe, author of the 2-volume Mysteries of the Great Ocean Depths.

Ned Land's wife Marie Chauvelin was the descendant of French immigrants who had settled in Quebec. Marie's father Jules had married his first cousin Jeanne. Her father Guy was the brother of Armand Chauvelin (4th level).

Armand had been the French ambassador to the English court. But during the Revolution, he was a secret agent. His life became dedicated to catching the elusive, deemed Scarlet Pimpernel. Fortunately he foiled. Otherwise, Doc Savage -- not to mention Tarzan and many other heroes -- would never have been born.

Citizen Chauvelin's peculiar yellow eyes are often described by Baroness Orczy in her somewhat fictionalized biographies of Sir Percy Blakeney. The yellow eyes were a Chauvelin characteristic, preserved by a number cousin-marriages. Wolf Larsen's genes strengthened the quality. And it was this double infusion which gave Doc's eyes their strange appearance.

Ned Land's other daughter Edwina (E.L., 7th level) married John Spade (J.S.). He was a Pinkerton detective and his father Samuel (S.S.) was a policeman. Samuel Spade's father Joshua (J.S.) had been in British naval intelligence before he resigned and moved to Indiana. Why he quit and went to the States is not known. But he seems to have been involved in some scandal with a Brigadier General Sir Harry Paget Flashman. At one time, such an involvement would have been unthinkable. But in view of the recently published Flashman papers, it becomes likely. (See Flashman, Royal Flash, Flash for Freedom, and Flashman at the Charge by George MacDonald Fraser.)

Whatever happened, Captain Joshua Spade left England under a cloud with his wife and 2 children. He had married in 1830 the beautiful Mary Brandon (M.B., who was a granddaughter of the fist duke of Greystoke and daughter of Sir George Brandon, baronet, of Brandon Abbas, Devonshire. Mary was a sweet and gentle girl. But two of her collateral descendants -- Sir Hector Brandon and Augustus Brandon -- were thorough rotters. (For the story of this family, see Percival Christopher Wren's Beau Geste. And for the story of another collateral descendant Sir Charles Brandon of Brandon Beeches, Oxfordshire, see George Bernard Shaw's An Unsocial Socialist.)

Joshua and Mary Spade's son Samuel (S.S.) married Faith Shawnessy (F.S.). Sam and Faith moved to San Francisco where John Spade (J.S.) was born. John married Edwina Land (E.L.), the daughter of Marie Chauvelin and Ned Land. John and Edwina's son was Sam Spade.

Sam followed in the footsteps of his fathers and became a detective. He was well-known in San Francisco as an exceedingly capable and occasionally flamboyant private eye. But it was not until Dashiell Hammett gave him some publicity (in the Maltese Falcon) that the world became aware of him.

Sam, be it noted, had yellow-gray eyes. These are what one would expect from the issue of a Clayton (whose family ran to gray eyes) and of a Chauvelin (whose family ran to yellow eyes).

Sam Spade's aunt Mary (M.S. married Englishman James Jorkens. Their son was Joseph Jorkens, possessor of a genius for stumbling into the most outlandish things, people, and situations. Many of his exploits were in Africa (which seems to have had a singular attraction for so many of the ancestors and relatives of Tarzan and Doc Savage).

In his later years, Mr. Jorkens became a habitue of the Billiards Club in London. Here a fellow member, Lord Dunsany, encouraged Jorkens to recount his adventures with a steady supply of tall scotches and then recorded them in 5 delightful books. These are Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens; Jorkens Remembers Africa; Jorkens Has A Large Whiskey; The Fourth Book of Jorkens; and Jorkens Borrows Another Whiskey.

Sam Spade's paternal grandmother was Faith Shawnessy (F.S., 6th level). Faith's younger brother was John Wickcliff Shawnessy. Johnny's poignant and tragic biography was novelized by Ross Lockridge in Raintree County (Houghton Mifflin, 1948). This book was a best-seller when it first came out. It has been reprinted a number of times since then and is now regarded as a minor classic which may someday become a major one. The movie from the book failed to capitalize on the philosophic, mythic, and dramatic qualities which -- in my opinion -- make the book great. Perhaps someday a director of genius will make a film that measures up to the book.

Johnny Shawnessy was born April 23, 1839 in the sphinx-haunted county of Raintree, mid-Indiana. He was a poet whose head (to put in a phrenological phrase) bore too large a bump o amativeness. He pursed truth and beauty all his life. His quest for the legendary Golden Raintree was as zealous (and as frustrated) as Sir Lancelot's for the Holy Grail. In fact, he failed for the same reason as did his knightly predecessor. Lancelot had his Guinevere. And Johnny, his Susannah Drake.

Johnny wanted to be a great writer, a great poet, a Hoosier Shakespeare. But he ended his days as an obscure schoolteacher with his epic of the American Republic never finished and his verse-drama Recumbent Sphinx never staged.

The desire to write ran through the Shawnessy family for generations. Johnny's father Thomas Duff Shawnessy (T.D.S.) was a preacher and a dispenser of folk medicine. His sole claim to literary fame was his Ode on the Evils of Tobacco which was known all over the county. Its most widely quoted line was:

Some do it chew and some it smoke

Whilst some it up their nose do poke

T.D. had his heart in the right place. But his bump of poetry was missing. He had always hoped that one of his sons would inherit the writing genius of his (T.D.'s) father. The only one came close was Johnny.

Johnny found out who his grandfather was shortly after he thought that he had made Susannah Drake pregnant. T.D. confessed that he (T.D.) was the illegitimate son of the great Scots author Thomas Carlyle. The latter was a world-famous essayist and historian who thought of himself as a moral prophet, a Celtic Moses. Author of such classics as Sartor Resartus; The French Revolution; On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, he also translated Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship into English and wrote a history of Frederick the Great.

Though a fanatical and harsh moralist, when a young man Thomas Carlyle had tumbled Eliza Shawnessy (E.S.) in the hay. She was the descendant of Micah Clarke's son Reuben (3rd level) who had settled in Scotland after years of wandering. The son of Thomas and Eliza was born in the village of Ecclefechan. A few years later, she and T.D. went to the "Land of Promise" -- America. She died in 1820, a year after the still-unknown Carlyle had quit teaching and begun studying Law.

Note, however, the question mark(?) after Thomas Carlyle. This indicates that there is some doubt about his being the father of T.D.S. Carlyle was born in 1795 and Eliza Shawnessy in 1774. This would make her 21 years old when Carlyle was born. Since their illegitimate son T.D.S. was born in 1807, Carlyle would have been only 12 when he impregnated Eliza.

This is possible. But then T.D.S. would have been only 13 when he married the 19-year-old Ellen. We're asked to believe that both father and son were extraordinarily attractive to older women even though they were only in the beginning of pubescence. The ability to copulate among 12- and 13-year-old males is common. Spermatogenesis begins with puberty. 12-yea-old males can be and have been fertile. And mature women have seduced (or allowed themselves to be seduced by) 12-year-old boys.

However, Carlyle himself seems to have been rather passionless. And if Rank Harris is to be believer, he was impotent. In his Contemporary Portraits (Brentano's, 1920), Harris relates that Carlyle himself told him that not once during his 40 years of marriage had he had intercourse with his wife although he deeply loved her. Carlyle attributed this to his own complete lack of sexual sensuality and his puritanical attitude toward sex.

Harris hints that it was actually a physical disability which caused this tragic neglect. He claimed to have talked with Mrs. Carlyle's doctor (a Sir Richard Quayne) who gave him her account of her sexual life (or rather lack of it). Harris did not give any details. He merely suggested that the doctor's account was specific; that Carlyle was impotent; and that sometime in the future he (Harris) would write about the conversation.

By the time that Harris talked to Quayne, both Carlyles had long been dead. And so the doctor was not being unethical in passing on confidentialities. On the other hand, Harris often stretched the truth or downright lied for the sake of sensationalism.

Even if Harris was being truthful, Carlyle at the age of 12 might have been potent and his sperm might have been motile. Possibly, the deep melancholia which afflicted Carlyle all of his adult life may have resulted from a feeling of guilt about the one time in his life when he left down his Calvinistic barriers.

We'll never know the truth. Harris did not get around to describing his conversation with Quayle. And all who may have cleared up the matter for us have been for over 100 years.

Eliza Shawnessy could not have told her illegitimate son that Carlyle was his father in order to make believe that at least had a famous father. Carlyle was a "nobody" when Eliza died. I incline to the theory that Thomas Duff Shawnessy fantasized that Carlyle was his progenitor. He knew that both his mother and Carlyle had come from the same village. And so he picked out Carlyle as the one who had beget him. He either did not know or ignored the discrepancy in ages between his mother and Carlyle. But I could be wrong.

Johnny Shawnessy's second marriage was to one of his students, Esther Root. Her father -- the terrible-tempered Gideon Root (G.R.) -- had a more than fatherly love for his youngest daughter and bitterly opposed her marriage to the much older Johnny. Esther's mother was a silent, dark woman whose name Lockridge does not mention.

However, my pokings around Raintree County (which is Lockridge's name for the actual Henry County) have turned up the tombstone of a Fern Bumppo Root (F.B., 5th level). Since Lockridge's account indicates that Mrs. Root was part-Indian, she could have been the granddaughter of Natty Bumppo. James Fenimore Cooper does not even hint in the Leatherstocking Tales that Natty ever gave way to any amativeness while amongst the Indians (unless it was toward Chingachgook).

But Cooper would never have mentioned this if he had known about it. And if highly moral Carlyle could succumb once to the sexual passion, there is no reason to suppose that highly moral Bumppo did not fall at least once. He surely must have got tired of chasing nothing but deer.

Fern's father was John Bumppo (J.B., 4th level) and her mother was June Cooke (J.C.) according to the above-mentioned grave marker. June was a descendant of Anna Cooke and Henry Burlingame (H.B.).

None of Esther Root's Indian darkness came out in her daughter Eva Alice Shawnessy. The latter had brown hair and blue eyes, the heritage of the blond Shawnessys. According to her father, she also had a scientific bent of mind. (He must have wondered if she got it from Carlyle who had an aptitude for mathematics.) Eva was possessed with a glowing imagination, a sense of wonder, and a great curiosity about the mysteries of life and time. It was she who got lost in the Great Swamp and who found (but lost) the Golden Raintree that her father had found but lost.

She was named after the heroine (little Eva) of Uncle Tom's Cabin and after the heroine (Alice) of Lewis Carroll's two classics. No wonder she found the fabled Raintree.

Little Eva Alice grew up and married Leo Cabell Trout (L.T.), a traveler from Salem, Virginia. He came of 2 distinguished Old Dominion families but had fallen on evil days. On his way to California to make his fortune, he was hurt in an accident on the National Road near the village of Waycross (Lockridge's name for New Castle). While convalescing, he met Eva Shawnessy and decided to stay in Raintree County.

His mother's family had given 2 writers to the World: James Branch Cabell, author of Figures of Earth, Jurgen, The Silver Stallion et al. And Prince Amelie Toubetzkoy, author of The Quick or the Dead? (a sensation in 1888) and daughter of William Cabel Rives, U.S. senator and minister to France.

Leo Trout tried his hand as a reporter-editor for The Free Enquirer. But he failed. Evidently, the journalistic genes were missing in him. After wandering around for a while with his wife, he got a job with the Royal Ornithological Society on the British island of Bermuda. His son Kilgore Trout was born there February 19, 1907.

After the unique species of eagle which he was supposed to keep safe became extinct, the Trouts went to the States. Kilgore attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Dayton, Ohio. But we may be sure that he visited his octogenarian grandfather in Raintree County. (Or if you hardheaded realists prefer, New Castle in Henry County.) He undoubtedly read Johnny Shawnessy's unpublished epic and drama. And these may have given a bent toward satire, irony, and pessimism in his own works.

In any event, being descended from such writers as Ebenezer Cooke (collaterally), Thomas Carlyle (perhaps), and John Wickcliff Shawnessy, Kilgore was almost destined to become a man of letters. He did become an author albeit one who struggled all his life against poverty and the neglect of the literary world. He was one of those peculiar writers who confine themselves to science-fiction because their imaginations are too big for this world. To them, this world -- the real World -- is like Mother Hubbard's cupboard. Bare.

Unfortunately, Trout mailed his manuscripts to publishers of pornography and so ensured that his works would not be available to the readers who would most appreciate them (i.e., the science-fiction fans). Nor was his career helped by his fly-by-night publishers and unethical agents who cheated him or went bankrupt or both.

According to the man (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.) who's made the closest of him, his prose style was awful. But his ideas were magnificent and his stories were on a Cosmic scale. And like his grandfather Johnny Shawnessy and his great-great-great-great-uncle Ebenezer Cooke, he always sought for the beautiful and true.

Vonnegut has brought this neglected genius to the attention of the World in his God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Slaughterhouse-Five and has given us more biographical details in his Breakfast of Champions. If some perceptive publisher of repute reprints Trout, the general public may get a chance to read such classics as The Big Board, The Gutless Wonder, Plague on Wheels, and Venus on the Half-shell.

Indeed, since the original edition of this biography came out, Dell Publications has announced that it will reprint Venus on the Half-shell in February 1975. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science-Fiction will precede this with an abridged serial version in its November-December issues of 1974. Dell is also negotiating to secure reprint rights for Trout's The Son of Jimmy Valentine.

Eva Alice Shawnessy's older brother Wesley married another Alice, the daughter of Finnish immigrant Nehemia Jalava and of Breton immigrant Lys Conan. Wesley's and Alice's daughter Allegra (B.S.) married freelance consulting engineer Frank Boom Tincrodor. One of their children (Leo Queequeg Tincrodor) was born in New Goshen, Indiana in 1918 while his parents were on the way to a Terre Haute hospital.

Leo's middle name comes from his father's fascination with the works of Herman Melville, especially Moby Dick. The Polynesian harpooner was Frank's favorite character, perhaps because Frank had spent so much time in the Southwest Pacific as a young man. This was in the company of Christopher "Smoke" Bellew who went to the South Seas after his adventures in the Yukon (which have been narrated by Jack London).

Leo has a master's degree in the History of Art. But his main support comes from the sale of his paintings and etchings. (These have been favorably compared to the works of William Blake and Robert Blake.) In the past few years, Leo has also written some science-fiction, most notable of which are Osiris on Crutches, The Vaccinators from Venus, and The Hole in the Cooth. At present he is working on a novel based on his great-grandfather Shawnessy's unpublished blank verse drama Sphinx Recumbent. Although Leo is not now as well known as his cousin Kilgore Trout, he has great promise as a science-fiction writer.

Part of the lineage of the third duke of Greystoke (5th level, center of chart) is described in Addenda 2 and 3 of Tarzan Alive. Addendum 3 also outlines the lives of his sons -- the fourth duke and Sir William Clayton, baronet.

Sir William's massive 3-volume memoirs Never Say Die (published in Paris in 1888) tells his adventurous life in detail. In fact, the details were unacceptable to the British Victorians who regarded his book as far too frank and -- indeed -- obscene. But the memoirs of this world-roaming seeker after gold, glory, and love are being edited by me for publication in America. Which is why I can speak with authority on his life.

Burke's Peerage notes that although married 13 times, Sir William had few surviving children. Burke speaks only of the legitimate unions and says nothing of the children from his numerous affairs. Yet three of these have become famous in history.

While in Southeast Asia during the Opium War (1839-1842), Sir William Clayton went to Hanoi. At this time, this part of the Southeast was called Annam and was an empire covering the present states of North and South Vietnam. Its ruler was killing off all the native Christians he could unearth. But Sir William -- as a Briton -- was theoretically safe. He was, however, in a dangerous situation if he were found out since he had been sent to investigate the disappearance of a wealthy half-Chinese merchant who was a British citizen.

Sir William succeeded in his mission, rescuing the merchant and his family including the beautiful green-eyed daughter Ling Ju Hai. She was descended from Manchurian mandarins on her mother's side. Her father was part-Scotch. Sir William's memoirs detail the thrilling escape and his brief-but-passionate affair with Ling Ju Hai. When her father discovered that she was pregnant, he spirited her away to China and sent assassins after Sir William. He killed them all in a battle on a junk which could have been a scene from the Douglas Fairbanks movie The Black Pirate.

Sir William tried to track Ling Ju Hai but gave up when he heard that she had died while giving birth. (As it turned out, this was a lie originated by the father.) Sir William married the daughter of a Dutch merchant on the rebound and then was ordered to South Africa.

Later, Ling Ju and her son returned with her father to Hanoi. The boy grew up to become a master criminal operating under the pseudonym of Hanoi Shan. According to H. Ashton-Wolfe in his Warped in the Making, Crimes of Love and Hate (Houghton Mifflin, 1928), Hanoi Shan did not begin his career as a criminal.

He had been a tall good-looking man with a kindly character who was governor of a province in Tonkin-China. While supervising the roundup of wild elephants, he was smashed against a tree by one of the beasts and almost died while in the Saigon hospital. He went to Paris hoping that the surgeons there could repair his twisted spine. But he found that they could do nothing for him.

From a likable and virtuous man, he changed into a bitter and evil person. He disappeared from the hospital and was not heard of again until the thieves and murderers which he hard organized began operating. Paris of 1906 was startled and terrified by a series of seemingly impossible homicides and thefts. In time, these were traced to the machinations of Hanoi Shan who the l'Araignee police called "the Spider".

Hanoi Shan's jobs were so brilliantly sinister and outre that some scholars have speculated that he may have been the real-life model for Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu.

At the time that I wrote Tarzan Alive, I did not know this. Thus I am retracting my statement in its Foreword that Fu Manchu was wholly fictional. (And by the way, also my statement that Fu Manchu's great enemy Sir Denis Nayland Smith had little foundation in reality.)

It is true that Rohmer himself claimed to have gotten the inspiration for Fu Manchu by a glimpse of a tall old Chinese gentleman and his beautiful young Arabian companion during a foggy Limehouse night. But it has been established that many authors have denied being influenced by or deriving their characters and plots from other writers. It is not beyond probability that Rohmer had read Ashton-Wolfe's popular accounts of Hanoi Shan and that an investigation on his own part turn up facts about Hanoi Shan which Ashton-Wolfe had missed. Rohmer knew far more about the tall Chinese gentleman than he let on.

For one thin, it would have been dangerous for him if Fu Manchu (or Hanoi Shan) had suspected that Rohmer had a secret source of information about him. Rohmer probably put forth the fiction about the genesis of his stories and proceeded to exaggerate and distort all of his novels about the evil Oriental geniuses. Reading these, Fu Manchu (or Hanoi Shan) must have laughed at their flamboyancy although he must also have been flattered.

The discrepancy between Ashton-Wolfe's crippled Hanoi Shan and Rohmer's straight-backed Fu Manchu is easily explained. In the 12 years between Hanoi Shan's adventures in Paris and Fu Manchu's appearance in London, Fu Manchu had found a surgeon who could repair his shattered body. Probably, Fu Manchu himself instructed the doctor how to proceed since this genius had studied the medical arts in the interim.

Ashton-Wolfe said that Hanoi Shan returned to the East from which a rumor years later claimed that Hanoi Shan had died. This rumor, of course, was originated by Hanoi Shan himself.

It cannot be proven that Fu Manchu (or Hanoi Shan) was indeed Sir William Clayton's son. But consider this. Sir William was 6'3" tall and Ling Ju Hai came from a tall family. Sir William had dark-gray eyes and Ling Ju had brilliant green eyes. There was no genetic bar preventing their son from having his mother's eyes. Especially since some of Sir William's ancestors had green eyes (notably his mother). And two of Sir William's sons by other women -- Professor Moriarty and John (Colonel) Clay -- were giants in their own crooked specialties. Moriarty, like Fu Manchu, was a great scientist who misused his genius.

Readers not acquainted with Rohmer's tales (if such exist) might well ask why a man born in 1840 should be alive and fiendishly active during the 20th Century. The explanation is that Fu Manchu had invented an elixir (the "Oil of Life") which considerably delayed aging.

Some scholars will object that there are hints by Rohmer that Fu Manchu was actually the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Seti I whose elixir had kept him alive since his supposed death in 1300 BC. However, Fu Manchu impressed people as being at least half-Chinese. And the ancient Egyptians were definitely Caucasians and not Mongolians.

Moreover, why would he have given up his pharaohship and faked his death? Perhaps he tired of the troublesome career and reigning and went off to study Science and magic in the Far East. But this does not seem likely. I think that the over-imaginative Rohmer was so struck by the accidental resemblance between Seti I's face and Fu Manchu's that he concocted this fusion of identities.

That Fu Manchu was an old man in 1913 is proved by the fact (according to Rohmer) that he was the governor of the province of Honan under the Empress Dowager Tz'u-his (1835-1908). Honan was a very important province covering the southwestern part of the great plain of north China. It was the main center for the spread of early Sinitic civilization over the rest of China. The empress dowager became a regent for he son in 1861. So it seems probably that Fu Manchu did not become a governor until about the late-1870s when he would have been over 30.

He was also a pretender to the throne of China since he was a member of the ruling family. This mitigates against his being Seti I since he would have had to be born a Manchu to be recognized as a prince by right of blood.

Sir William's marriage to Lady Jane Brandon (J.B., 6th level) of Brandon Beeches, Oxfordshire resulted in a daughter Ultima (U.C.). In 1898, she married a visiting American John T. McGee and went to his Ohio estate to live. Their son's first name is unknown as yet (hence the "-M"). -McGee had 2 sons, one of whom committed suicide. The other was Travis McGee, gray-eyed amateur detective and troublebuster. His autobiography is being edited by John D. MacDonald.

Travis may be a close relative of Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe's Boswell and right=hand man. Like McGee, Archie was born on an Ohio farm. The two have so many physical and mental characteristics in common that they could be first cousins. This possibility, however, will have to be explored at a later date.

Brigadier Gerard (5th level, enter) appears as a minor figure in A. Conan Doyle's Uncle Bernac and as the major figure in Doyle's The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard and The Adventures of Gerard. This dashing soldier of Napoleon married Sybille Bernac. One of their daughters married a French-speaking Swiss named Delacroix.

A descendant -- Monique Delacroix (M.D., 8th level) -- married a Scot from Glencoe, Andrew Bond (A.B.). Their son was James Bond who was immortalized in semi-fictional form by Ian Fleming. The mother of Andrew Bond was Angela Clayton (A.C.). She was the daughter of Angela O'Shaughnessy (A.O'S.) who was the half-Mexican, half-Irish daughter of a general. After her mother died, Angela Clayton was brought to England by Sir William and raised there.

James Bond, be it noted, could have been Sir James Bond. His rejection of a knighthood had a good precedent in Sherlock Holmes who also turned down this honor.

At the age of 33, Clayton took to wife Lorina (L.D.), the daughter of Lord Dacre by Jane Carfax (daughter of Lord Rufton). Both Lord Dacre and Lord Rufton are described in a chapter from Gerard's memoirs How He Triumphed in England. (Gerard was possibly the brother of Marie Gerard who married Amand Chauvelin.) Lord Rufton was also the grandfather of a major character in one of Holmes' cases The Disappearance of Lady Frances Fairfax. (See also my article "The Two Lord Ruftons", The Baker Street Journal [December 1971], or The Book of Philip Jose Farmer [Daw Books, Fall 1973].)

Lord Dacre was a descendant of the barons of Greystoke, Cumberland. (See Dacre, Burke's Dormant and Extinct Peerage.) One of his ancestors was Robert Rassendyll, the Earl of Burlesdom from whom Rudlop Rassendyll was also descended. (See Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau.)

The son of Sir William and Lorina was Phileas Fogg. 3 years after he was born (in 1832), his mother divorced Sir William. She remarried the eccentric and wealthy Sir Heraclitus Fogg, baronet, of Fogg Shaw, Derbyshire. The baronet adopted young Phileas and his sister Roxana and gave them his name. Adopted sons of baronets cannot inherit the title. But Phileas himself became a baronet in 1886 and so, in a sense, continued the line.

As almost everybody knows, at the age of 40 Phileas Fogg made and won a famous wager. During the 80-day dash around the World, he met the beautiful Parsee, Aouda Jejeebhoy, a relative of Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, third baronet. (See Jejeebhoy, Burke's Peerage.) Phileas rescued her from being cremated alive and married her. Their daughter Suzanne married a Captain Armand Jacot of the French Foreign Legion. He had been born le Prince de Cadrenet but had renounced his title.

Suzanne and Armand's daughter Jeanne Jacot married John Drummond Clayton, the adopted son and cousin of the present Lord Greystoke. As noted by the book in hand, he was the Flight Lieutenant Clayton whom Doc Savage met during the Argonne operation. (See also The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs for the story of John Clayton and Jeanne Jacot.)

Phileas' sister Roxana had 3 daughter: Wand (W.F)., Isis (I.F.), and Philea Jane (P.J.F.).

One of Wanda's husbands was a ne'er-do-well who claimed to be descended from an illegitimate son of the mystic, artist, poet William Blake. This is possible since like Johnny Shawnessy and Sir William Clayton, William Blake had a large bump of amativeness.

Wanda's husband William Blake II was such a rotter and liar, however, that his claim is doubtful. More likely, he was descended from Arthur Blake, one of the two English coachmen present at Wold Newton. This supposition is strengthened by the claim of William Blake that the famous detective Sexton Blake was his brother. But then, William lied a lot.

We do know that William Blake's mother was Jill Fagin, a woman of great beauty but low morals. She seems to have come from a long line of London criminals. One of her great-great-grandfathers was famous for training youths to become self-supporting. Not caring for the manner in which he ran his school or its intent, the authorities hung him.

After getting into trouble with the Law many times, William Blake fled with his wife to Chicago. Their son Robert Blake was born there on April 5, 1917. He early exhibited his genius by learning to read at the age of 4 and starting his studies of Greek and Latin at the age of 8. Though he had a high intelligence, his imagination was over-wild and he lacked mental stability. Like his (supposed) great-grandfather the poet, he once saw a great face staring through a window at him when he was 5. However, where William Blake saw God, Robert Blake saw a hideous monster, a thing from outer space.

Robert's parents disappeared under strange circumstances when he was 10. There is no proof, however, that he did away with them because they had not given him a promised bicycle for Christmas. What happened to him between the ages of 10 and 16 is not known. But he seems to have supported himself by a number of activities including street-dancing and pick-pocketing.

At the age of 17, he was fluent in many obscure languages, self-taught from books stolen from public libraries and private collections. He also had published short stories in Outre Tales magazine. Five of these are now classics in the genre. These are The Burrower Beneath; The Stairs in the Crypt; Shaggai; In the Vale of Pnath; and The Feaster from the Stars. His fiction and his remarkable paintings (the latter all studies of monsters and nonterrestrial landscapes) indicate his unhealthy (perhaps even perverted) interest in the sinister side of the occult.

His researches ended on a stormy night in an old abandoned church on Federal Hill in Providence, Rhode Island on August 8, 1936. Exactly how he met his horrible fate is unknown. But his diary (ending just before he died) shows that he had a large bump of curiosity. There was not enough left of his head to establish physical evidence for this, however.

Coincidentally, the same man who had written of William Harper Littlejohn's Antarctic expedition (see Chapter 14) also recorded Robert Blake's final exploit. Blake's paintings may be viewed today by certified scholars at Miskatonic University.

Like her sisters, Isis Fogg (I.F.) married an American (a rich one). Their son Richard Benson was another of the famous enemies of Crime which so distinguishes the Wold Newton family.

He was not a big man being only 5'8" tall and weighing only 160 pounds. But his muscles were of a superhuman quality. And these with his black hair, his cold gray eyes, his unflinching courage, his desire to solve crimes and too see justice done ensure his membership in the same genetic club as that to which Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Bulldog Drummond, Cordwainer Bird, and others belong.

He was an adventurer, a roving business man-engineer until he got married. He led a quiet life with his wife and young daughter until on a flight to Montreal, his family disappeared while he was in the lavatory. No one on the airliner admitted that his wife and child had been on it. The shock drove him temporarily insane, turned his hair white, and paralyzed his facial muscles.

When Benson recovered his sanity (but not the use of his facial muscles), he swore to avenge his family. Eventually he determined who the killers were and why they had plotted against him. While doing this, he picked up some aides and these became part of his Justice, Inc. organization. Benson also discovered that he could mold his dead-but-plastic flesh into new faces. He used this ability to assume a quick disguise.

Justice, Inc. continued to operate against other criminals. Benson finally got his black hair and mobile facial features back. Like Doc Savage, he always tried to take the crooks alive. His favorite weapons were a specially-designed pistol and knife (affectionately called 'Mike' and 'Ike'). The gun contained four .22 cartridges, the bullets of which unerringly creased the tops of the villains' skulls just enough to knock them out.

The Avenger pulp-lit series was popular. But the paper shortage of World War II forced the end of the magazine featuring his adventures after 24 episodes. A few shorter pieces about him did appear in other magazines.

In 1972, the reprinting of his exploits by a paperback company was begun. These proved just as popular as in 1939 and the 1940s. The original stories have been followed by new stories written by Ron Goulart under the Street&Smith housename of 'Kenneth Robeson'. (Paul Ernst wrote the originals under the same name.) Whether-or-not they are biographical or fictional has not yet been determined.

Roxana's third daughter Philea Jane (P.J.F.) was born when Roxana was 43 years old. Philea married wealthy farmer and businessman Park Joseph Finnegan and moved to North Terre Haute, Indiana. Park was a handsome and charming man. But he was also a heavy drinker, a compulsive gambler, and what they called in those days a "skirt-chaser". After losing all his money and property, he deserted his wife and their only child Paul Janus Finnegan.

Paul -- after his return from the battlefields of Europe in 1946 -- became a student at the University of Indiana. While there, he was drawn into that series of strange adventures which I have described in my Pocket Universes or Wolff-Kickaha series. These (so far) consist of The Maker of Universes, The Gates of Creation, A Private Cosmos, and Behind the Walls of Terra.

On one level of that ziggurat-planet in a universe next door to ours, Paul J. Finnegan is known as Kickaha. This means "The Trickster". And Kickaha has used this so long that has almost forgotten his natal name.

Secret agent and soldier Richard Hannay has narrated his adventures in books edited by John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir. These include the famous The 39 Steps, Mr. Standfast, Greenmantle, The Three Hostages, Island of Sheep, and The Runagates Club. Hannay was born in Scotland in 1874 but was taken at the age of 6 to South Africa. He did not return to his native island until 1914, a few months before the outbreak of World War I.

Richard Hannay's parents were Scots. His mother Colina Drummond had married Arthur Hannay when quite young. She was the sister of William Drummond whose lineage may be seen on the end-paper chart of Tarzan Alive. William was the father of Roger Drummond whose sons included Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond and John Drummond. The latter was adopted by Lord Greystoke and took the name of John Drummond Clayton.

Colina and William Drummond's father was John Drummond. Their mother was Oread Butler. She was a cousin of the Rhett Butler whose exploits have been narrated by Margaret Mitchell.

Richard Hannay's grandfather John Drummond was a son of Sir Hugh Drummond, baronet and Georgia Dewhurst. She was the sister of Lord Antony Dewhurst, a son of the duke of Exeter and a prominent member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. (The duke of Exeter is not to be confused with the marquess of Exeter which title is in possession of the family of Cecil. See Burke's Peerage.)

Sir Hugh Drummond and his wife were in the group exposed to the radiation from the meteorite at Wold Newton in 1795.

Having made his pile as a mining engineer, Richard Hannay took a trip to London. He had no intention of becoming involved in criminal and intelligence work.

But the events of his first adventure (The 39 Steps) revealed a flair for solving the unsolvable, roe establishing links between things that seemed to others entirely unconnected. Like Allan Quatermain whose early life was molded by South Africa, Hannay was distrustful of his own abilities and continually being pushed into dirty business that he would just as soon have stayed out of.

Hannay had a resourcefulness and pluck which -- with his reliance on his subconscious -- got him through perils which killed others. It is true that he would have failed if he had not had extraordinarily capable comrades such as "Sandy" Arbuthnot, the 16th Baron Clanroyden.

And in this dependence he also resembled Quatermain who would have come to grief many times if it had not been for various courageous and intelligent natives who pulled his "fat from the fire". Such were the crafty and brave Hottentot Hans and (in 2 of his adventures) Umslopopgass who was a black combination of Achilles and Beowulf.

That Hannay's government rated him higher than he did himself is demonstrated by its making him a general and a knight. Those acquainted with British history might object that these honors are not always given to those who deserve them. But the readers of Hannay's exploits know that his services were, in face, underrated. He should have got a peerage.

The career of Professor Moriarty (7th level, right-hand side) is too well known to be given in detail here. This sinister genius was born as a result of a brief liaison between a housemaid of Irish extraction, Morcar Moriarty (M.M.) and Sir William Clayton.

According to Clayton's memoirs, he supported Morcar and their son handsomely. She had 2 sons by other men who also did not marry her. One became a colonel in the Army and the other a stationmaster in the west of England. It is these 3 unions with different men that account for Professor James Moriarty having an older brother also named James.

Morcar may have passed on evil propensities to the Professor from ancestor Jonathan Wild (1682?-1725). Like his descendant the Professor, Wild founded and headed a vast organization for criminal purposes. He became wealthy by having his agents steal property and then claim a commission for "recovering" it. Those thieve who refuse to work for him were turned into the police by him. He provided an alibi with false evidence for his agents if they were arrested and forged evidence to convict those who would not join his organization. Despite all this, he was eventually hanged. A sketch of his life is in the Encyclopedia Britannica. He is also depicted in novels by Defore and Fielding.

When Sherlock Holmes mentioned Jonathan Wild in The Valley of Fear, he was thinking not only of the similarity of Moriarty's and Wild's methods and organizations. Moriarty's descent from Wild must also have been in his mind.

Some readers may be surprised to see the name of Captain Nemo in connection with that of Moriarty. After all, wasn't Nemo an Asiatic Indian prince named Dakkar? Didn't Jules Verne describe Nemo's death as an old man on a southwest Pacific island in The Mysterious Island? Didn't Moriarty fall to his death with Holmes at Reichenback Fall in Switzerland? So how could Nemo be Moriarty?

Professor H.W. Starr explains how this could be in the article "A Submersible Subterfuge" (Livingston Publishing Company, Narberth, Pennsylvania, 1959, 1972). In a few incontrovertible words, Starr demonstrates that The Mysterious Island was an entirely fictional sequel to the mostly true 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Readers may check out the original publication dates of these for themselves and determine that Nemo could not have died an old man in the situation and on the date that Verne indicates.

In many more words (not quite as disprovable), Starr shows that Moriarty did indeed operate in his pre-Holmesian career under the pseudonym of "Captain Nemo". This article is reprinted as an addendum to my The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (DAW Books, March 1973).

The book itself narrates some events of which Verne was not aware when he wrote Around the World in 80 Days. It also clears up the mystery of the ghost ship Mary Celeste; shows that Holmes was not the only Englishman who could defeat Moriarty; and explains why Nemo had black eyes and Moriarty had gray.

To those who object that Nemo was a hero and not a villain, I can only assert here that they are quite mistaken and have not read Verne's account carefully.

When Holmes met him, Moriarty was an old man afflicted with a nervous disease which caused his head to oscillate in a repulsive reptilian fashion. Holmes says that he was unmarried. But this does not mean that he had always been. Pierre Arronax in Leagues mentions the portrait of Nemo's wife and children hanging on a bulkhead of the Nautilus. And it was only natural that the author of the celebrated treatise The Dynamics of an Asteroid shoud name his daughter after the muse of astronomy, Urania.

Before considering Urania Moriarty's 2 sons, go to Count Cagliostro (4th level, right-hand side). Giuseppe Balsamo -- the self-styled Count of Cagliostro (1743-1795) -- was a Sicilian charlatan who gained a wide reputation in Europe. He claimed to be 2,000 years old and to have magical powers. His career flourished until 1786 when his involvement in the affair of Marie Antoinette's diamond necklace caused him to be banished by Louis XVI. In Rome, his wife denounced him to the Inquisition as a conjurer of demons, a heretic, and a Freemason. He died in prison.

If it were not for the Memoirs of Arsene Lupin by Maurice Le Blank, we would not be aware that Cagliostro had a love affair with and a child by Josephine de Beauharnais (J.d.B.). It was Lupin who found out why Josephine had suddenly and mysteriously fled from Fonainebleau.

Separated from her husband the Vicomte de Beaunharnais, the young girl had been living in this city not far from Cagliostro's residence. She visited him a number of times and -- like many -- fell prey to his hypnotic powers.

Cagliostro disappeared the day before he was to be arrested. The next day, Josephine left. A month later, a child named Josephine (or Josine) was born in Palermo, Cagliostro's birthplace. A birth register gives the child's name as Josephine Balsamo, daughter of Joseph Balsamo and of a Frenchwoman, Josephine de la P. (De Beauharnais' maiden name was de la Pagerie.)

Josephine de Beauharnais later married the Emperor Napoleon. In 1798, she brought to him a young girl whom she said was her goddaughter. When Napoleon fell, this Josephine Balsamo went to Czar Alexander II's court where she called herself the Countess Cagliostro.

Lupin's memoirs state that she still looked like a young woman in 1892. But this doesn't seem likely even though she did claim that her father's secret elixir had kept her youthful. On the other hand if Tarzan, Doc Savage, and Fu Manchu can have such elixirs (e.g., silphium), why not Josephine Balsamo?

Whether it was the original Josephine Balsamo or he daughter (J.B.), she met Sir William Clayton in his old (but very virile) age and had a child by him. Josephine was as likely as an alley cat to drop her progeny and in this case left her son Paul in the care of an English couple named Finglemore. When she did not return to claim him, the Finglemores adopted him.

Paul Finglemore's brilliant (if checkered) criminal career is told in the very amusing novel An African Millionaire (1898) by Grant Allen. In this book, Finglemore -- a master of disguises and of confidence tricks -- operates under many names. But he was known to the police of England and Europe as Colonel Clay.

As John Clay, he was apprehended by Sherlock Holmes in The Red-Headed League. He went to prison but must have escaped to resume his career as Colonel Clay. Once more he was jailed. But the prison wasn't built then (or now) that could hold the grandson of Count Cagliostro and the son of Sir William Clayton (who escaped his captors a dozen times according to his memoirs).

According to Sherlock Holmes, John Clay was the grandson of a royal duke. If this were true, his great-grandfather would have been George III of Great Britain. But recent evidence indicates that George III's sons were not as irresponsible and as horny as some have made them out to be. Probably, Clay (or Finglemore) lied about this as he lied about so many things. The weight of evidence indicates that Colonel John Clay (Paul Finglemore) was the son of Sir William Clayton and Josephine Balsamo.

One of Clay's beautiful young inamoratas and accomplices was Urania Moriarty. Her heredity and environment ensured that she too would be a master of disguise and confidence games. She and Clay (Finglemore) had 2 sons who were geniuses in their own dark professions: Doctor Caber and Carl Peterson. These used their true names no more than the parents had.

The Doctor took the maiden name of his grandmother (Moriarty's wife). Which may indicate that he was raised by her. (Some of Doctor Caber's exploits are described by Joseph Jorkens.) Like his grandfather, Caber was a scientist of genius. But he outsmarted himself when he found out he could affect the Moon's orbit and tried to extort money from the British government with this threat. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison on another charge. But the government intended to keep him locked up until he was dead. Whether-or-not he escaped is not known at present.

The readers of the Bulldog Drummond series by H.C. McNeile know that Carl Peterson was the greatest villain that Drummond ever encountered. Peterson was about 5 times as intelligent as Drummond. But he kept tripping himself up because he expected Drummond to do the sneaky and the devious.

Drummond wasn't bright enough for this. He always did the obvious. Besides, they had a mutual (if unconscious) liking for each other. Which may explain why they didn't the other when each had so many opportunities.

We readers were saddened when Carl Peterson seemed to have perished in a flaming dirigible, caught in his own trap. But Gerard Fairlie who continued the Drummond series revealed in the final one The Return of the Black Gang that Peterson was alive and well (though not good). Peterson failed once again to kill Drummond but escaped once more.

What happened thereafter has not been recorded. But both Bulldog Drummond and Carl Peterson were getting old and tired. It may be that both just decided to retire.

Irma (Carl's wife or mistress) was every bit as villainous and innovative as Carl. It was she who kept the feud going while Carl was convalescing from the dirigible disaster or else just engaged in his rotten (but colossal) projects elsewhere. She seems a fit candidate for the inclusion in the Wold Newton family.

Carl posed as Irma's father during some of their nefarious activities. So I wouldn't be surprised if she really was his daughter. Incest certainly would not have been below them. They tackled anything wicked with enthusiasm.

Simon Templar ("the Saint") seems another candidate for this family. But he, Sexton Blake, and Dr. Thorndyke will be dealt with elsewhere along with Arsene Lupin and M. Lecoq.

In Tarzan Alive, I speculated that Richard Wentworth ("the Spider), G-8 (the famous aviator-spy of World War I), and Kent Allard (the Shadow) were not 3 different people. My theory was that they were actually distinct personae/personalities of the same schizophrenic man Richard Wentworth. But so many people (letter-writers and telephoners from all over the country) were so disturbed by this theory that I decided to reconsider the evidence.

A minute inquiry into the chronologies of the terrible trio convinced me that my theory was invalid. Though G-8's career seems to have ended with World War I, the Shadow and the Spider operated at about the same time. Kent Allard (as the Shadow) started his career in early-1931 (or at least, this is when his deeds were first recorded). Actually, he had been fighting crime in New York at an undetermined time before this.

And we know from several references he dropped to his aides that he had been an aviator and spy during World War I. He had served the Czar of All the Russians as a mercenary during the first years of the War. He served so well that the Czar gave him a Romanov family heirloom -- a huge girasol (or fire-ring), an opal that gave out varying colors depending upon the angles at which it reflected light. This ring was one of Allard's character tags along with the big black broad-brimmed slouch hat, long black cloak, two .45 automatics, maniacal laugh, mastery at disguise, and super-stealthiness.

His best known (or most frequently recurring) disguise was that of wealthy playboy Lamont Cranston. Many people believe that that was the Shadow's real name. However, there was a Lamont Cranston who spent much time abroad and who had agreed to let Allard assume his identity when he wasn't in town. Sometimes, Allard disguised himself as Cranston when the latter was in town and so had an unbreakable alibi.

Allard (as Cranston) palled around a lot with beautiful Margo Lane (who may have been the sister of Lois Lane, objet d'amour of Clark Kent). In none of the Shadow stories is there even a hint that Allard was sexually interested in Margo (or for that matter, in any woman). If this was true, then Allard was either a homosexual, impotent, or both. Or a Roman Catholic priest. (This last suggestion can be immediately dismissed since the Shadow would have had to terminate his outlaw activities after his first confession of such.)

However, the writers of the Shadow's adventures (chiefly Walter Gibson) depended upon him for information and he saw no reason to let them know what was going on between him and Margo. Moreover, the readers of the Shadow stories did not (in the main) like their heroes to have a realistic love interest. And so the writers would have deleted any such interest from their stories.

It is true that the Spider (Richard Wentworth) and his female aide Nita Van Sloan were in love. But there is no indication by the writers that they ever exchanged more than a few kisses.

That Margo was more to Allard than just an aide is proved the birth of their son Kent Lane. (See my short story "Skinburn" in The Book of Philip Jose Farmer and my forthcoming novel Why Everybody Hates Me.) Kent Lane became a crime-fighter too. But he operated (mostly) within the requirements of the Law. Apparently, Margo Lane and Kent Allard never got married although they may have omitted getting a license because of security reasons. The Shadow wanted nothing to exist which might prove to some vengeful crook that he had more than a casual relationship with Margo.

The Spider (Richard Wentworth) had been an artillery officer during World War I. As a young man, he had visited India where he became in Hindu mysticism and fakiry. He became involved in battling evil-doers when he helped a college professor (Brownlee) who was in deep trouble with the Underworld.

Once launched on his career, Wentworth adopted the device of stamping the foreheads of criminals that he killed with the seal of a crimson spider. This seal was hidden within a specially-build cigarette lighter.

Wentworth was far more bloodthirsty than the Shadow. And he would have scorned Doc Savage's thesis that the best way to handle criminals was to capture and then rehabilitate them. "The only good crook was a dead crook" according to Wentworth. And he saw to it that the streets and backrooms of New York City were littered with "good" crooks.

From 1933 through 1943, he was engaged in 118 exploits. These kept him going night-and-day. So when one considers that in the same length of time the Shadow was putting in nigh 24 hours-a-day in 260 adventures, it's demonstrable that one man with 2 split personalities would have had some difficulties. More than some: insuperable.

I still however maintain that the genealogy given for Richard Wentworth in Tarzan Alive is the true one. He is a direct descendant of Lord Byron through the 12th Baron of Wentworth. His father was Lord John Roxton, the South-Americanomaniac and mighty hunter of A.C. Doyle's The Lost World et al.

The genealogy on the chart contains the results of my revised theory. Part of it was suggested to me by Mr. Stephen Kallis who theorized that the Spider and the Shadow were brothers. The kill-crazy Spider was somewhat mentally unbalanced because of his jealousy of his older brother the Shadow. This was a stimulating and somewhat valid idea. But I have adapted it to fit the facts.

Wentworth's mother was Rhoda Delagardie (R.D.), great-granddaughter of Sir Percy Blakeney (the Scarlet Pimpernel). [See Tarzan Alive for details.] She first married (briefly) Lord John Roxton and bore a son Richard Wentworth. (Lord John Roxton's family name was Wentworth.)

Then she divorced Lord John (whose main passion was hunting and exploring) and married Ralph Rassendyll. He was a cousin of Rudolf Rassendyll, the hero of The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau. Both were descended from Robert, Earl of Burlesdon (E.B.). (The main chart shows that the earl was also the ancestor of Lorina Dacre, mother of Phileas and Roxana Fogg.)

Some will object that Lorina, Rudolf, and Ralph could not have been descended from the Earl. The Prisoner of Zenda makes it clear that there was a scandal in the family of 1733 when George II ruled Great Britain. Prince Rudolf of the tiny Central European state of Ruritania visited England. He and Countess Amelia (wife of the fifth Earl of Burlesdon) had an affair. The fifth Earl fought a duel with Prince Rudolf and wounded him so severely that the Prince withdrew from the affair and the country.

Though unwounded, the Earl caught a severe cold during the damp and chilly dawn in which he crossed swords with the Prince. He died of complications 6 months later. His wife bore a boy who was unmistakably Rudolf's 2 months after her husband died.

This event would seem to break the Rassendyll lineage genetically (though not legally). But what Anthony Hope does not record in either of his 2 accounts of Rudolf Rassendyll is that Amelia was also descended from Robert, first earl of Burlesdon, 17th Baron Rassendyll. She was the fifth earl's second cousin, descended (like him) from the third earl.

Ralph Rassendyll took his wife and her son Richard to the States to manage the American affairs of a great British firm. While in New York, Rhoda bore him Allard Kent (A.K.R.), Bruce Hagin (B.H.R.), and Rhonda (R.R.). Along with Richard, these became American citizens after the death of Ralph. Whatever the reasons (genetics or sibling rivalry or both), all three grew up to become masters of disguise and hunters of men who deserved to be hunted.

Bruce was the only one who had a license to kill and used the code name of G-8. If Robert J. Hogan (who wrote about G-8's adventures) knew his true name, he did not reveal it.

The Shadow twice revealed to others his real name. He said that it was Kent Allard. But even then he was not being wholly truthful. Obviously, he rearranged the sequence of his first two names and dropped the third. He was not one to trust wholly anybody. Even if he had, he would not have wanted his enemies to torture his name from those who knew. As it was, though, he was supposed to have crashed years before in a Central American jungle and died there.

Rhonda did not engage in flamboyant outlawry. But she was a family black sheep. Despite her parents' objections, she married Jason Bird who was a part-Jewish acrobat and vaudeville nightclub comedian. Her father refused to see her again. Indeed, his death soon after she left home was attributed to shock and grief at her marriage.

Jason's father was Irish photographer Richard Cordwainer Bird. His mother was Millicent, daughter of a Dublin Jew, Leopold Bloom. (See James Joyce's Ulysses for a perhaps overly detailed account of Bloom. Also see Tarzan Alive for his relationship to the Greystokes of whom Tarzan is the most outstanding member.)

Jason and Rhonda's only child was Cordwainer Bird. He was born in 1934 in Painesville, Ohio in a rooming house near a theater. (And not as some maintain in the women's room of the theater.)

Cordwainer grew up in Ohio, though not very far. His growth stopped when he reached the height of 4-feet. Science-fiction scholar Sam Minostentor claims in Volume II of his massive Reachers for the Future that Bird's lack of physical stature accounts for his demonic drive to succeed. To lift himself by the bootstraps of fame and fortune above the heads of his fellow men.

"Cordwainer was extremely short like the Nome King of the Oz tales," Minostentor writes. "But like the Nome King, he had exceedingly great ambitions. He too sallied forth from the dark underground to conquer all. But unlike his Ozian counterpart, he wasn't afraid of eggs. He wasn't afraid of anything unless it was failure. It is this drive that has caused more than one person to describe him as 'an elemental force', 'a hurricane in hush puppies'.

When TV producers and directors ruined his scripts, he punched them in the mouth and went on to write science-fiction. He has gathered together more awards (Hugos and Nebulas) in that field than any other writer. He has won the Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America. He plans to cap his career with the Nobel Prize for Literature thought it's doubtful that this will happen since he's punched so many publishers in the mouth."

The above was published in 1972. Since then, Cordwainer Bird has become a mainstream novelist and a militant foe of Evil. Though he is nowhere near as tall as his ancestors and relatives (the Scarlet Pimpernel, Rudolph Rassendyll, the Shadow, Doc Savage et al), he has their heroic spirit and their dedication to fighting wickedness. But unlike these heroes of an earlier age who fight to preserve The Establishment, he fights to destroy it. (One of The Establishments, anyway.)

In The New York Review of Bird (see Weird Heroes or The New American Pulp Hero, Byron Preiss, editor, Pyramid, 1975), Harlan Ellison writes of Bird's first campaign in this war. When he decided to become a mainstream writers, he found himself up against that supervillain the New York Literary Establishment. This was dominated by writers and publishers who had made their fame and fortune by counterfeiting emotion and destroying the imagination. Though best-sellers, their books read as if written by a computer. A computer powered on hokum. Perhaps they were best-sellers for this very reason.

But Bird wanted to write books with genuine emotions, genuine people. He wanted to fire the public's imagination. Frustrated by The Establishment and balked at every turn by its subtle and sinister machinations, he became in effect a new pulp-age hero. Despite his tiny stature, he was well-equipped for this demanding role. He had exceptionally powerful muscles. He had learned the art of Jeet Junedo (one of his fellow students was Bruce Lee). And he had the genius of his uncles when it came to foiling evil people.

In a desire to emulate the ability of his uncle the Shadow to cloud men's minds, he had studied the White House statements regarding Watergate and the techniques of Billy Graham and Oral Roberts. Also, he had picked up a lot of pointers from reading Batman comics when he was a youth.

And so this man -- only 4-feet high with a face like a handsome eagle's, straight black hair, and eyes or robin's-egg blue which radiated the charisma of a Napoleon Bonaparte -- ripped off the rippers-off.

I should also mention that another science-fiction author -- Jonathan Swift Somers III (whose stories are described by Kilgore Trout in his Venus on the Half-Shell) -- intends to narrate some adventures of Cordwainer Bird.

After his conquest of the secret rulers of New York, Bird fell in with Ralph von Wau Wau. The latter was a German shepherd whose intelligence had been artificially raises in a Hamburg laboratory to the level of Homo sapiens. (About equal to Sherlock Homes' in fact.)

Tired of working for the Hamburg police, Ralph quit to become a private eye. And while in Venice (see The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight), Ralph and Bird became good friends. Later, they moved into the same apartment in Los Angeles and became colleagues in the incessant war against Evil.

In several of their cases, Bird -- because of his small smallness -- was able to ride Ralph out of grave peril. In one of their cases, it was vice versa.

Addendum-B: Chronology

A realistic chronology of Doc Savage's life does not correspond exactly with the sequence of the stories published in the Doc Savage magazines. A study of the supersagas and their interrelationships shows that Lester Dent (and his associates Danberg/Donovan, Hathway, and Bogart) did not attempt to write Doc's adventures in the order in which they actually occurred. Nor were all the adventures that Doc had experienced written by Dent and associates.

Doc must have engaged in a number of exploits before he teamed up with the "Fabulous Five". We know from The Purple Dragon (#091) that Doc's "college" was operated before the events related in the Man of Bronze (#001). Evidently his fight against Evil had started shortly after he got his M.D. This must have been as early as 1927 when Doc was only 26-27 years old.

Dent seems to have had little information about the pre-1927 years. He started his detailed stories of Doc with the supersaga that began 3 weeks after the Doc's father's death in February 1931. Only then did Doc really get going. And he could do this because he had Five near-supermen to assist him.

Dent adhered to a strict chronology only in the first 3 supersagas: The Man of Bronze (#001), The Land of Terror (#002), and Quest of the Spider (#003). After these, he wrote whatever supersaga struck his fancy at the moment.

He wrote these from rather sparse notes sent to him by Doc, Monk, or Ham. Monk seems to have done most of the note-taking. And the apish chemist never lacked flamboyancy. Dent was forced to fill in the large gaps with his imagination (which was considerable).

Dent was also forced by the pulp-magazine requirements to pour out the hot fluidity of the supersagas into certain cooling molds. Dent's high imagination plus the pulp-magazine format plus Monk's exaggerated accounts made for stories that sometimes border on the incredible (if indeed they do not sometimes step over the border!).

Nor did Dent mind writing completely fictional stories about Doc. The New York World's Fair of 1939 seemed like a good place for the Man of Bronze to have an adventure. So Dent wrote World's Fair Goblin (#074). This came out in the April 1939 issue. However, the World's Fair did not open until April 30, 1939.

Apparently, Doc did not object to entirely fictitious stories about him. If anything, he may have approved since these strengthened the idea that he was a fictional character. We know that Doc did not altogether approve of the stories written by Dent. No Light to Die By (#170) (May/June 1947) contains a unique item -- a memo from Doc himself. In it, he criticizes somewhat disparagingly Dent's "fictionalized versions". He felt that Dent exaggerated too much and too often. Neither he nor his aides were as superman-ish as Dent had portrayed them in the earlier stories.

The editorial page of the May/June 1947 issue also quotes from Dent's old notebook. "This thing started Nov. 12, 1932. This brusque notation, so it happens, was made the day the writing of the first Doc Savage novel began ..."

This notation would seem to be authentic. However, Dent did not have the notebook in front of him when he quoted the line to his editor. He was relying on his memory which (while phenomenally good) was not perfect. I have personally seen the old notebook and the entry reads: "This thing started December 10, 1932."

Dent was actually thinking of Doc's birthdate (November 12) when he told the editor about the first day of writing The Man of Bronze. In a sense, though, Dent was right. As a literary figure, Doc Savage was born on December 10, 1932.

In working out the chronology of a real-life person, it's axiomatic that an event must occur before it can be written about. Thus the events of the Man of Bronze had to take place before December 10, 1932. But when did they occur?

The Man of Bronze itself contains no date for reference. And the weather data is so unspecific that it could be any time of the year except the dead of winter.

It is raining and Doc and pals don't put on heavy coats when they venture out into New York City's night air. But anyone acquainted with the vagaries of New York City weather knows that it may rain there in early or late winter. That Doc's group doesn't put on warm clothing means little. Dent often fails to describe their doing so even when he's stated that it is coldest winter.

The Land of Terror (#002) (which immediately follows the first story) takes place in spring. So The Man of Bronze is set either in the spring or at the very tag-end of winter. Did these 2 supersagas take place in early-1932 or even before then? The way to find out -- the first step -- is to read the supersagas starting from The Man of Bronze until you come to a definite date.

The 35th story Murder Mirage (January 1936) is the first to give this. It is July 4 and the events of this story start a little while before midnight of July 5. (By the way, this was the first Savage story to be written by Norman A. Danberg aka Laurence Donovan.) Even then, the year is not specified. But this supersaga has to have occurred in 1935. It can't have occurred after January 1936.

Counting backwards for 17 stories to Fear Cay (#019) (September 1934) and 18 to The Squeaking Goblin (#018) (August 1934), we come to a definite date for a year. From the textual evidence, both of these stories had to have taken place in 1934. In The Squeaking Goblin, Renny comments that the publication of a book is 1834. Doc adds that that was 100 years ago. And in Fear Cay, old Dan Thunden (born in 1803) is 131 years old "to this day".

Since these 2 stories were published in August and September, respectively, of 1934, they must have actually taken place at least 3 months before those dates. The issues of the magazine were usually dated a month before they appeared on the stands. It took a minimum of a month-and-a-half to produce an issue after the manuscript was sent in.

The Squeaking Goblin starts out at Bar Harbor, Maine. It is a summer resort for yachtsman. The "summer resort" of Aquantania Hall is going full-blast. All indications are that it is well into summer. These include the many boats of the "summer visitors". Yet the supersaga must have occurred before July because of the above-stated publishing restrictions. It cannot have occurred in the "summer".

How can these contradictory data be reconciled? Or at least explained? It's reasonable to postulate that The Squeaking Goblin actually took place in warm weather. But it must have been in very early may. The "summer visitors" must have been the early birds, the very rich who can afford to take holidays before the beaches and hotels are spoiled by hoi polloi. Or perhaps, there were not so many people around at Bar Harbor at that time. Dent may have been adding some details just to make a lively, colorful, more "authentic" background.

After reworking the chronology 12 times, it suddenly became evident that the whole month of June was, after all, open in 1934. The 2 stories can be slipped into early June. This leaves barely enough time for them to be reported to Dent and for him to write them. Inasmuch as he could write a complete supersaga in 3-or-4 days, there was enough time.

One of the problems is finding enough time between a story and the previous one when it's stated that Doc has been away in the interim at the Fortress of Solitude. Thus between The Land of Terror (#002) and Quest of the Spider (#003), Doc was at the Fortress. The most time he can be allowed for his stay there is from May 12 to May 31. His usual 6-months' stay just won't fit into the allotted time. In fact, at no place in the series (except from October 1932 through April 1933 and after 1945) is there time for Doc to be absent for half a year.

However, he could have been at the Fortress during the 140 days I allotted to The Red Terrors (#067) in the original edition of this biography. Since then, I've reclassified this preposterous tale as fictional.

According to my chronology, only one supersaga occurred during 1933. This was Meteor Menace (#013). It begins with Doc's dedication of the hospital which had decided to build in The Man Who Shook The Earth (#012). The latter story was in the February 1934 issue. The former in the March 1934 issue.

The sequence of one immediately after the other gives the impression that the events of one followed the other. But obviously this could not have happened. It takes time to build a large hospital. Since The Man Who Shook The Earth probably occurred in December 1932, Meteor Menace is arbitrarily placed in July or August 1933. If this guess is correct, Doc could have been in the Fortress of Solitude from January through June 1933. And for the rest of the year after August, he might have been working in his 86th floor Laboratory or undertaken some adventures which Dent failed to narrate.

The Polar Treasure (#004) was published in the June 1933 issue. It contains reference to the Sharkey-Schmeling boxing match (June 1932) and New York City's new mayor. The latter would be John P. O'Brien, specially-elected in early 1933 to fill out Walker's unexpired term. These references thus place The Polar Treasure after these events. The only place that The Polar Treasure can be fitted into without violating chronological requirements is the 35-day period in June and July of 1932. Thus this supersaga -- though 4th in publication -- was actually 18th in occurrence.

Pirate of the Pacific (#005) states that it begins the same day that The Polar Treasure ends. And The Phantom City (#010) has to follow Pirate of the Pacific in actuality even if it follows The Czar of Fear (#009) in publication sequence.

Patricia Savage appears in both The Fantastic Island (#034) and The Feathered Octopus (#055). She is first met in Brand of the Werewolf (#011) so the two above have to follow this. The Fantastic Island was in the December 1935 issue. The Feathered Octopus was in the October 1937 issue.

In fitting these two into slots which agree in chronology and weather data, it's necessary to place The Feathered Octopus before The Fantastic Island. One of the datum requiring this is the reference in The Feathered Octopus to "occasional butterflies". This removed it from its original placement in September to a slot in early June.

The magazine versions in the early years ended with hints of the subject of the next issue and stated that the next issue was the immediate sequel in time. These are often just advertising blurbs inserted at the end of the supersagas by the editors. An examination of the chronological data of these stories indicates that this must have been the case. However, whenever possible I have accepted these blurbs.

Another problem is accounting for the time spent by members of the "Fabulous Five" when they are absent from a supersaga. Frequently, only 2 or 3 of Doc's pals are actively engaged in battling the current king of Crime. The location of the others is usually referred to, however. Thus Dent will remark that Renny is off in Africa or china building a road or dam; Long Tom is in England on a government electronic project; Johnny is in South America on an archaeological expedition.

The times for these absences have to be fitted into the chronology. It is obvious that none of The Five ever see any project through from beginning-to-end. There just is not enough time between the supersagas for them to do this.

So Renny does not actually build a railroad or a dam in foreign lands. Nor does Johnny personally supervise the digging of an Inca site from the first shovelful to the last. Nor does Monk see to the entire reconstruction of a chemical plant in post-World War II Germany.

All of The Five are on these projects as consultants for special problems. Like lightning, they fly in from the dark ... blaze briefly (but illuminatingly) ... and fly back into the dark. Often they must have flown halfway around the World to look over a situation ... clear up the trouble ... and fly back to New York City in time for the next adventure.

I hope that I have indicated enough to give the reader an idea of what is involved in constructing this chronology. The complexities of fitting 181 adventures into a span of time from 1931 through 1948 have caused me much trouble and time. The chronology that you see here is the 12th reworking. I believe that I can justify every placement of a supersaga. Btu to explain in detail would, however, take at least 20,000 words. And only the most zealous Savageologist would care to tackle an essay of that length.

The remarks in brackets indicate some of the data which I sued for chronologizing. Those in quotation marks are the words of Dent of the other authors. Those not in quotes are my own comments based on the work cited.

The Monsters (#014), Land of Always-Night (#025), Land of Long Juju (#047), The Red Terrors (#067), and World's Fair Goblin (#074) are not included in this chronology. They are entirely fictional.

[StealthSkater note: A newer chronology appears in Chronology of Bronze by Rick Lai (2010). This includes the adventures in radio shows that were not published in print. So I won't have to archive 2 chronologies, I am going to list Mr. Lai's here in place of Mr. Farmer's. However, I did note that the former does not include some of Doc's earlier non-adventures such as his birth and medical education that Mr. Farmer notes. So I will insert Mr. Farmer's to fill in the gaps in Mr. Lai's (noting that where there is a discrepancy, I will use Mr. Lai's.)

1901

May 18

Clark Savage, Sr. and his wife Arronaxe flee from England after the events described by Watson in his The Adventure of the Priory School.

July

On the way to western Canada to visit his uncle Alex Wildman, Clark Savage, Sr. met his cousin Edward Land and zoologist Hubert Robertson in Quebec. The four ostensibly go looking for rare fish in the Caribbean but actually are treasure hunting.

September

They find a sunken Spanish galleon which yields each of them $40,000 after the British Government takes its cut. They look for more treasure. But if they find it, they don't report it.

November 12

Clark Savage, Jr. (James Clark Wildman, Jr.) is born on the schooner Orion in a cove off the northern tip of Andros Island, Bahamas during a stormy night.

1902

Doc's mother drowns when the Orion sinks. Doc's father -- still guilt-ridden by Heidegeer's murder and the kidnapping of his young half-brother -- vows to make up for these deeds. He dedicates his son to a life of battling Evil.

He settles down in New York; invests his money; and plans his son's unique education. He also enters premedical school himself.

1903

March

Savage Jr.'s training begins at the age of 14 months.

1909

Savage Sr. gets his M.D.

1911

Savage Sr. and Hubert Robertson find the Valley of gold in Central America.

1913

Savage Jr.'s cousin Patricia Savage is born.

1917

Savage Jr. passes all entrance examinations and enters Johns Hopkins in midterm.

April 7

Lying about his age, 16-year-old Savage Jr. enlists in the Army Air Service.

1918

1

March

Escape from Loki (#183)

Savage Jr. is captured by the Germans after being shot down while balloon busting.

April

In the German prison camp Loki, he meets Mayfair, Brooks, Renwick, Littlejohn, and Roberts.

July

Savage Jr. (he got the nickname "Doc") and his 5 friends escape and rejoin their outfits.

September-November

Doc flies during the Argonne operation. He meets his cousin Flight Lieutenant John Drummond Clayton.

1919

February

Doc returns to college.

Summer

Doc has a reunion with his 5 friends and introduces them to his father (Savage Sr.) who is now a famous surgeon and explorer.

1926

Doc gets his M.D.

1927

Doc Savage discovers how to "cure" criminals with a brain operation.

1928

With his father's money, Doc establishes the secret upstate New York "college" for the curing and vocational rehabilitation of criminals.

2

1 day

"Monk Called It Justice" (radio play)

Doc and Monk stop a native revolt in Rhodesia that was prodded by a foreign power.

1929

Operating through figureheads, the elder Savage begins the building of the Empire State Building.

3

May

1 day

"The Box of Fear" (radio play)

Doc and Monk were accumulating evidence against gangsters based in New York and Chicago.

4

June

1 day

"The Phantom Terror" (radio play)

Do, Monk, and Ham fought a New York gangster who sought revenge on Doc.

5

December

1 day

"The Red Lake Quest" (radio play)

Doc, Monk, and Ham visit northern Canada during a blizzard.

1930

6

February

1 day

"Needle in a Chinese Haystack" (radio play)

Doc and Monk were in China searching for a corrupt American banker who had embezzled the money of his investors.

7

March

1 day

"Mantrap Mesa" (radio play)

Doc and Monk investigate counterfeiting along the American-Mexican border.

8

April

1 day

"The White-haired Devil" (radio play)

Doc and Monk were in Venezuela. The case was tied to lawsuits that begat at the start of the Great Depression.

9

May

1 day

"Poison Cargo" (radio play)

Doc and Monk were in Brazil concerning a poison plant called rotonne.

May 28

Doc made the Chrysler Building his headquarters before moving into the Empire State Building in 1931.

10

June

1 day

"The Evil Extortionists" (radio play)

(Doc and Monk)

11

June

1 day

"Death Had Blue Hands" (radio play)

Doc and Monk travel to Wyoming to investigate a murder victim who had been hoarding gold.

12

July

1 day

"Find Curly Morgan" (radio play)

(Doc and Monk)

13

July

1 day

"The Sinister Sleep" (radio play)

Doc and Monk investigate an "artificial sleep".

14

August

1 day

"Radium Scramble" (radio play)

(Doc and Monk)

15

August

1 day

"The Too-Talkative Parrot" (radio play)

Doc and Monk visit a "summer hotel" in Maine.

16

August

1 day

"The Growing Wizard" (radio play)

Monk and Doc investigate the growing of rubber plants that seem to transpire in the spring.

17

September

1 day

"The Blue Angel" (radio play)

(Doc and Monk)

18

September

1 day

"The Green Ghost" (radio play)

(Doc and Monk)

19

October

1 day

"The Impossible Bullet" (radio play)

Doc and Monk in the Ozark Mountains near the Oklahoma-Arkansas border.

20

October

1 day

"The Oilfield Ogres" (radio play)

(Doc and Monk)

December

Savage Sr. moves into the 86th floor before the building quite completed.

1931

February

The elder Savage is murdered in South America.

21

May

25 days

The Man of Bronze (#001)

22

June 12 - July 8

27 days

The Land of Terror (#002)

23

August

1 day

"The Sniper in the Sky" (radio play)

1932

24

Early-April

1 day

"The Southern Star Mystery" (radio play)

25

June

7 days

"Quest of the Spider (#003)

26

late-June to late-July

35 days

The Polar Treasure (#004)

27

very late-July to mid-August

22 days

Pirate of the Pacific (#005)

28

late-August

4 days

The Red Skull (#006)

29

September

13 days

The Lost Oasis (#007)

30

October

28 days

The Sargasso Ogre (#008)

31

late-October

4 days

The Czar of Fear (#009)

32

November to early-December

40 days

The Phantom City (#010)

33

December

9 days

Brand of the Werewolf (#011)

1933

34

early-January

6 days

The Man Who Shook The Earth (#012)

35

January-February

50 days

Meteor Menace (#013)

36

early-March

5 days

The Monsters (#014)

37

mid-March

8 days

The Mystery on the Snow (#015)

38

April

23 days

The King Maker (#016)

39

early-May

8 days

The Thousand-Headed Man (#017)

40

mid-May

4 days

Fear Cay (#019)

41

mid-May

2 days

Death in Silver (#020)

42

first half of June

10 days

Python Isle (#184)

43

late-June

3 days

The Sea Magician (#021)

44

August

1 day

"Black-Light Magic" (radio play)

Doc and Monk investigating more illegal gold hoarding.

45

August

7 days

The Squeaking Goblin (#018)

46

late-Sept. to October

32 days

Land of Always-Night (#025)

47

early-November

2 days

The Annihilist (#022)

48

November 7-21

15 days

The Mystic Mullah (#023)

49

December

10 days

Red Snow (#024)

1934

50

January

7 days

Dust of Death (#032)

51

February

27 days

The Spook Legion (#026)

52

early-March

4 days

The Secret in the Sky (#027)

53

March - early-April

15 days

Spook Hole (#030)

54

April

1 day

"Fast Workers" (radio play)

Doc and Monk became entangled in a jewel mystery.

55

April

1 day

"The Fainting Lady" (radio play)

Doc and Monk in Nazi Germany.

56

May

3 days

Cold Death (#043)

57

late-May

2 days

The Roar Devil (#028)

58

early-June

10 days

Quest of Qui (#029)

59

mid-June to

early-July

15 days

The Jade Ogre (#187)

60

July to

early-August

29 days

The Majii (#031)

61

August

10 days

The Fantastic Island (#034)

62

September 1 to

October 10

40 days

Mystery Under the Sea (#036)

63

October 15-18

4 days

The Seven Agate Devils (#039)

64

October 23-24

2 days

The Midas Man (#042)

65

November

3 days

The Metal Master (#037)

66

early-December

5 days

White Eyes (#185)

1935

67

Dec/1934 to March

82 days

The South Pole Terror (#044)

68

March

7 days

Haunted Ocean (#040)

69

late-March

3 days

Mad Eyes (#051)

70

April

19 days

He Could Stop The World (#053)

71

late-May

4 days

Land of Long Juju (#047)

72

first half of June

3 days

The Men Who Smiled No More (#038)

73

June 16-20

5 days

Murder Melody (#033)

74

July 4-13

10 days

Murder Mirage (#035)

75

August

3 days

The Black Spot (#041)

76

late-August

7 days

The Terror in the Navy (#050)

77

mid-September

6 days

The Derrick Devil (#048)

78

late-September

5 days

The Vanisher (#046)

79

October

5 days

The Land of Fear (#052)

80

December

8 days

The Mental Wizard (#049)

1936

81

January 3 to

February 28

57 days

Resurrection Day (#045)

82

March to

early-April

38 days

The Deadly Dwarf (#056)

83

mid- to late-April

15 days

The Motion Menace (#063)

84

April 30 to July 14

76 days

The Magic Island (#054)

85

July 23 to August 3

12 days

The Whistling Wraith (#189)

86

August

17 days

The Sea Angel (#057)

87

September-January

140 days

The Red Terrors (#067)

1937

88

February

13 days

Devil on the Moon (#061)

89

early-March

6 days

The Golden Peril (#058)

90

March 15-27

13 days

The Pirate's Ghost (#062)

91

May

15 days

The Munitions Master (#066)

92

May 25 to June 4

11 days

The Feathered Octopus (#055)

93

June

17 days

The Forgotten Realm (#190)

94

early-June

2 days

The Living-Fire Menace (#059)

95

July 12-14

3 days

The Mountain Monster (#060)

96

mid-July to August

42 days

Mad Mesa (#071)

97

October to

early-November

33 days

The Submarine Mystery (#064)

98

late-November

4 days

The Green Death (#069)

99

December to

early-January

31 days

Fortress of Solitude (#068)

1938

100

March

18 days

The Devil Genghis (#070)

101

late-March

4 days

The Yellow Cloud (#072)

102

April

18 days

The Giggling Ghosts (#065)

103

early-May

5 days

Merchants of Disaster (#077)

104

mid-May to

early-June

20 days

The Flaming Falcons (#076)

105

second half of June

5 days

The Freckled Shark (#073)

106

early-July

6 days

The Crimson Serpent (#078)

107

July

15 days

The Gold Ogre (#075)

108

July 30 to August 2

4 days

Tunnel Terror (#090)

109

August

5 days

The Angry Ghost (#084)

110

August 25-26

2 days

World's Fair Goblin (#074)

111

September 4

to October 2

51 days

Poison Island (#079)

112

early-November

7 days

The Stone Man (#080)

113

December 11

to January 13

34 days

The Dagger in the Sky (#082)

1939

114

first half of May

9 days

The Other World (#083)

115

second half of May

3 days

The Spotted Men (#085)

116

early-June

6 days

Hex (#081)

117

July

4 days

The Devil's Playground (#095)

118

late-July to

early-August

15 days

The Men Vanished (#094)

119

August 21 to

September 5

16 days

Bequest of Evil (#096)

120

mid-September

5 days

The Headless Men (#100)

121

September 21-23

3 days

The Evil Gnome (#086)

122

early-October

2 days

The Mindless Monsters (#103)

123

mid-October

3 days

The Boss of Terror (#087)

124

December to

early-January

36 days

Devils of the Deep (#092)

1940

125

January 23

to March 2

40 days

The Awful Dynasty (#093)

126

March 6-13

8 days

The Flying Goblin (#089)

127

second half of March

11 days

The Awful Egg (#088)

128

early-April

3 days

The All-White Elf (#097)

129

April (after 9th)

to July

109 days

The Golden Man (#098)

130

August 1-3

3 days

The Purple Dragon (#091)

131

early-August

3 days

The Pink Lady #(099)

132

late-August

5 days

The Green Eagle (#101)

133

early-September

3 days

Mystery Island (#102)

134

September 13-17

5 days

The Invisible-Box Murders (#105)

135

September 19-25

7 days

Birds of Death (#104)

136

October 9-13

5 days

Men of Fear (#108)

1941

137

March to April

47 days

The Magic Forest (#110)

138

May 10-11

2 days

The Rustling Death (#107)

139

late-May

3 days

Peril in the North (#106)

140

August

12 days

Pirate Isle (#111)

141

August

6 days

The Speaking Stone (#112)

142

early-September

6 days

The Man Who Fell Up (#113)

143

September 16-24

9 days

The Too-Wise Owl (#109)

1942

144

very late April

2 days

The Three Wild Men (#114)

145

early-May

3 days

The Fiery Menace (#115)

146

second half of June

12 days

The Laugh of Death (#116)

147

early-June

4 days

The Time Terror (#119)

148

July

7 days

The Talking Devil (#123)

149

early-August

4 days

The Goblins (#128)

150

August 12-14

3 days

Waves of Death (#120)

151

second half of August

2 days

The Mental Monster (#126)

152

September 23-24

2 days

Mystery on Happy Bones (#125)

153

October 6-16

11 days

They Died Twice (#117)

154

October 19-28

10 days

The Devil's Black Rock (#118)

155

November

6 days

The Black, Black Witch (#121)

1943

156

January 3-10

8 days

The King of Terror (#122)

157

early-March

4 days

The Running Skeletons (#124)

158

mid-March

9 days

Hell Below (##127)

159

late-March

5 days

The Secret of the Su (#129)

160

April 5-7

3 days

The Three Devils (#135)

161

April

8 days

Death Had Yellow Eyes (#132)

162

late-May

6 days

The Pharaoh's Ghost (#136)

163

June

7 days

The Man Who Was Scared (#137)

164

July 26-30

5 days

The Spook of Grandpa Eben (#130)

165

early-September

3 days

The Whisker of Hercules (#134)

166

mid- or late-

September

6 days

The Derelict of Skull Shoal (#133)

167

October 7-12

6 days

One-Eyed Mystic (#131)

168

December

5 days

The Shape of Terror (#138)

1944

169

January

4 days

The Lost Giant (#142)

170

March

27 days

Jiu San (#140)

171

April

4 days

Weird Valley (#139)

172

May

2 days

The Terrible Stork (#148)

173

June

3 days

Violent Night (#143)

174

early-July

9 days

Satan Black (#141)

175

September

2 days

Strange Fish (#144)

176

October

4 days

The Ten-Ton Snakes (#145)

177

November

5 days

Rock Sinister (#147)

1945

178

March

20 days

Cargo Unknown (#146)

179

May

3 days

The Thing That Pursued (#152)

180

early-June

3 days

The Wee Ones (#150)

181

June

16 days

The Screaming Man (#154)

182

early-June

6 days

King Joe Cay (#149)

183

mid-July

2 days

Terror Takes Seven (#151)

184

August 1-2

2 days

Trouble on Parade (#153)

185

August

5 days

Se-Pah-Poo (#156)

186

late-August

7 days

Terror and the Lonely Widow (#157)

187

mid-September

4 days

Colors for Murder (#160)

188

September 23-26

4 days

Fire and Ice (#161)

189

December 5-9

4 days

Measures for a Coffin (#155)

190

mid-December

2 days

Three Times A Corpse (#162)

1946

191

first half of January

12 days

The Exploding Lake (#163)

192

late-January

6 days

Danger Lies East (#169)

193

March

2 days

Death is a Round Black Spot (#159)

194

April 1-10

10 days

Five Fathoms Dead (#158)

195

May

2 days

The Devil is Jones (#165)

196

July

2 days

Death in Little Houses (#164)

197

September

8 days

Target for Death (#167)

198

late-October

2 days

The Disappearing Lady (#166)

1947

199

January

12 days

The Death Lady (#168)

200

February 1-2

2 days

No Light to Die By (#170)

201

April

2 days

The Monkey Suit (#171)

202

May

3 days

Let's Kill Ames (#172)

203

June

3 days

Once Over Lightly (#173)

204

July

1 day

I Died Yesterday (#174)

205

September

17 days

Terror Wears No Shoes (#176)

1948

206

late-January

2 days

The Pure Evil (#175)

207

March

13 days

The Red Spider (#182)

208

April

7 days

The Angry Canary (#177)

209

May

3 days

Return from Cormoral (#180)

210

June

1 day

The Swooning Lady (#178)

211

October

13 days

Flight into Fear (#188)

212

November 15-20

6 days

The Green Master (#179)

213

mid- to late- January

9 days

The Frightened Fish (#186)

1949

214

February

9 days

Up From Earth's Center (#181)

Addendum-C: List of Doc Savage Stories

The Doc Savage magazines are listed below in the order of publication. All but two of the original 181 supersagas appeared under the housename of 'Kenneth Robeson'.

The first -- The Man of Bronze -- had the byline of Kenneth Roberts. Then someone pointed out that Kenenth Roberts was the name of a well-known historical novelist, author of Oliver Wisewell, Northwest Passage, Rabble in Arms and others.

The second story -- The Land of Terror -- appeared under the name of Kenneth Robeson. This was used for all except The Derelict of Skull Shoal, March 1944 issue. An editor forgot to substitute Robeson for Dent and Lester realized his ambition to see his name on the magazine.

Lester Dent [LD] wrote most of the Savage tales. Those by others are accompanied by the abbreviations ND (Norman Danberg/Laurence Donovan); AH (Alan Hathway); and WB (William Bogart); HD (Harold Davis); RJ (Ryerson Johnson); WM (Will Murray); PJF (Philip Jose Farmer)

Street&Smith published the magazines. Bur Conde Nast Publications now owns the copyrights.

Addendum-B (above) listed the adventures in chronological order. The following lists them in date-of-publishing order.

1933

March

LD

The Man of Bronze

April

LD

The Land of Terror

May

LD

Quest of the Spider

June

LD

The Polar Treasure

July

LD

Pirate of the Pacific

August

LD

The Red Skull

September

LD

The Lost Oasis

October

LD

The Sargasso Ogre

November

LD

The Czar of Fear

December

LD

The Phantom City

1934

January

LD

Brand of the Werewolf

February

LD

The Man Who Shook the Earth

March

LD

Meteor Menace

April

LD

The Monsters

May

LD

The Mystery on the Snow

June

HD

The King Maker

July

LD

The Thousand-Headed Man

August

LD

The Squeaking Goblin

September

LD

Fear Cay

October

LD

Death in silver

November

LD

The Sea Magician

December

LD

The Annihilist

1935

January

LD

The Mystic Mullah

February

LD

Red Snow

March

RJ

Land of Always-Night

April

LD

The Spook Legion

May

LD

The Secret in the Sky

June

LD

The Roar Devil

July

LD

Quest of Qui

August

LD

Spook Hole

September

LD

The Majii

October

HD

Dust of Death

November

ND

Murder Melody

December

RJ

The Fantastic Island

1936

January

ND

Murder Mirage

February

LD

Mystery Under the Sea

March

LD

The Metal Master

April

ND

The Men Who Smiled No More

May

LD

The Seven Agate Devils

June

ND

The Haunted Ocean

July

ND

The Black Spot

August

LD

The Midas Man

September

ND

Cold Death

October

LD

The South Pole Terror

November

LD

Resurrection Day

December

LD

The Vanisher

1937

January

ND

Land of Long Juju

February

LD

The Derrick Devil

March

LD

The Mental Wizard

April

LD

The Terror in the Navy

May

ND

Mad Eyes

June

HD

The Land of Fear

July

ND

He Could Stop the World

August

LD

The Magic Island

September

LD

The Feathered Octopus

October

LD

The Deadly Dwarf

November

LD

The Sea Angel

December

HD

The Golden Peril

1938

January

HD

The Living-Fire Menace

February

HD

The Mountain Monster

March

LD

Devil on the Moon

April

LD

The Pirate's Ghost

May

RJ

The Motion Menace

June

LD

The Submarine Mystery

July

LD

The Giggling Ghosts

August

HD

The Munitions Master

September

HD

The Red Terrors

October

LD

Fortress of Solitude

November

HD

The Green Death

December

LD

The Devil Genghis

1939

January

LD

Mad Mesa

February

LD

The Yellow Cloud

March

LD

The Freckled Shark

April

WB

World's Fair Goblin

May

LD

The Gold Ogre

June

LD

The Flaming Falcons

July

HD

Merchants of Disaster

August

HD

The Crimson Serpent

September

LD

Poison Island

October

LD

The Stone Man

November

WB

Hex

December

LD

The Dagger in the Sky

1940

January

LD

The Other World

February

WB

The Angry Ghost

March

WB

The Spotted Men

April

LD

The Evil Gnome

May

LD

The Boss of Terror

June

LD

The Awful Egg

July

WB

The Flying Goblin

August

WB

Tunnel Terror

September

HD

The Purple Dragon

October

HD

Devils of the Deep

November

WB

The Awful Dynasty

December

LD

The Men Vanished

1941

January

AH

The Devil's Playground

February

WB

Bequest of Evil

March

LD

The All-White Elf

April

LD

The Golden Man

May

LD

The Pink Lady

June

AH

The Headless Men

July

LD

The Green Eagle

August

LD

Mystery Island

September

AH

The Mindless Monsters

October

LD

Birds of Death

November

LD

The Invisible-Box Murders

December

LD

Peril in the North

1942

January

AH

The Rustling Death

February

LD

Men of Fear

March

LD

The Too-Wise Owl

April

WB

The Magic Forest

May

LD

Pirate Isle

June

LD

The Speaking Stone

July

LD

The Man Who Fell Up

August

LD

The Three Wild Men

September

LD

The Fiery Menace

October

LD

The Laugh of Death

November

LD

They Died Twice

December

LD

The Devil's Black Rock

1943

January

LD

The Time Terror

February

LD

Waves of Death

March

LD

The Black, Black Witch

April

LD

The King of Terror

May

LD

The Talking Devil

June

LD

The Running skeletons

July

LD

Mystery on Happy Bones

August

LD

The Mental Monster

September

LD

Hell Below

October

LD

The Goblins

November

LD

The Secret of the Su

December

LD

The Spook of Grandpa Eben

1944

January

LD

One-Eyed Mystic

February

LD

Death Had Yellow Eyes

March

LD

The Derelict of Skull Shoal

April

LD

The Whisker of Hercules

May

LD

The Three Devils

June

LD

The Pharaoh's Ghost

July

LD

The Man Who Was Scared

August

LD

The Shape of Terror

September

LD

Weird Valley

October

LD

Jiu San

November

LD

Satan Black

December

LD

The Lost Giant

1945

January

LD

Violent Night

February

LD

Strange Fish

March

LD

The Ten-Ton Snakes

April

LD

Cargo Unknown

May

LD

Rock Sinister

June

LD

The Terrible Stork

July

LD

King Joe Cay

August

LD

The Wee Ones

September

LD

Terror Takes Seven

October

LD

The Thing That Pursued

November

LD

Trouble on Parade

December

LD

The Screaming Man

1946

January

LD

Measures for a Coffin

February

LD

Se-Pah-Poo

March

LD

Terror and the Lonely Widow

April

LD

Five Fathoms Dead

May

LD

Death is a Round Black Spot

June

LD

Colors for Murder

July

WB

Fire and Ice

August

LD

Three Times a Corpse

September

HD

The Exploding Lake

October

WB

Death in Little Houses

November

LD

The Devil is Jones

December

WB

The Disappearing Lady

1947

January

WB

Target for Death

February

WB

The Death Lady

March

LD

Danger Lies East

May

LD

No Light to Die By

July

LD

The Monkey Suit

September

LD

Let's Kill Ames

November

LD

Once Over Lightly

1948

January

LD

I Died Yesterday

March

LD

The Pure Evil

May

LD

Terror Wears No Shoes

July

LD

The Angry Canary

September

LD

The Swooning Lady

1949

Winter

LD

The Green Maater

Spring

LD

Return from Cormoral

Summer

LD

Up from Earth's Center

1979

July

(LD)/WM

The Red Spider

1991

August

PJF

Escape from Loki

October

WM

Python Isle

1992

March

WM

White Eyes

July

WM

The Frightened Fish

October

WM

The Jade Ogre

1993

March

WM

Flight into Fear

July

WM

The Whistling Wraith

November

WM

The Forgotten Realm

Table of Contents

The Fourfold Vision

Lester Dent, the Revelator from Missouri

Son of Storm and Child of Destiny

The Bronze Hero of Technopolis and Exotica

The Skyscraper

The 86th Floor

the Hidalgo Trading Company and Its Craft

the Crime College

the Fortress of Solitude

Monk, the Ape in Wolf's Clothing

Ham, the Eagle with a Cane

Habeas Corpus and Chemistry

Renny, Door-buster and "Holy Cow"-er

Neoverbalist Johnny

Long Tom, "Wizard of the Juice" and Misogynist

Patricia Savage, Lady Auxiliary and Bronze Knockout

Doc the Gadgeteer

Some of the Great Villains and Their World-Threatening Gadgets

The Fabulous Family Tree of Doc Savage

Chronology

List of Doc Savage Stories

doc

pdf

Figure 1

Figure 2

Chapter 3