He was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L. Nanovic at Street & Smith Publications, with additional material contributed by the series' main writer, Lester Dent.

Longtime Marvel Comics editor Stan Lee credited Doc Savage as being the forerunner to modern superheroes.

[3] Doc Savage became known to more contemporary readers when Bantam Books began reprinting the individual magazine novels in 1964, this time with covers by artist James Bama that featured a bronze-haired, bronze-skinned Doc Savage with an exaggerated widows' peak, usually wearing a torn khaki shirt and under the by-line "Kenneth Robeson".

Bantam also published a novel by Philip José Farmer, Escape From Loki (1991), which told the story of how in World War I Doc met the men who would become his five comrades.

Unlike the Shadow, Clark Savage, "Doc" to his friends, had no special powers but was raised from birth by his father and other scientists to become one of the most perfect human beings in terms of strength, intelligence, and physical abilities.

[citation needed] Doc Savage has appeared in comics and a movie, on radio, and as a character in numerous other works, and continues to inspire authors and artists in the realm of fantastic adventure.

Ralston and Nanovic wrote a short premise establishing the broad outlines of the character they envisioned, but Doc Savage was only fully realized by the author chosen to write the series, Lester Dent.

[8] A team of scientists assembled by his father deliberately trained his mind and body to near-superhuman abilities almost from birth, giving him great strength and endurance, a photographic memory, a mastery of the martial arts, and vast knowledge of the sciences.

[10] Savage is accompanied on his adventures by up to five other regular characters (referred to in the 1975 movie and in marketing materials from the Bantam Books republication as "The Fabulous Five"), all highly accomplished individuals in their own right.

Doc owns a fleet of cars, trucks, aircraft, and boats which he stores at a secret hangar on the Hudson River, under the name The Hidalgo Trading Company, which is linked to his office by a pneumatic-tube system nicknamed the "flea run".

The entire operation is funded with gold from a Central American mine given to him by the local descendants of the Maya people in the first Doc Savage story.

(Doc and his assistants learned the little-known Mayan language of this people at the same time, allowing them to communicate privately when others might be listening.

Doc's greatest foe, and the only enemy to appear in two of the original pulp stories, was the Russian-born John Sunlight, introduced in October 1938 in the Fortress of Solitude.

For example, a giant mountain-walking spider is revealed as a blimp, a scorching death comes from super-charged electric batteries, a "sea angel" is a mechanical construct towed by a submarine, Navy ships sunk by a mysterious force are actually sabotaged, and so on.

The operation is mentioned in Truman Capote's novel In Cold Blood, as an older Kansan recalls Doc's "fixing" of the criminals he had caught.

[citation needed] Comics historian Jim Steranko revealed that Dent used a formula[15] to write his Doc Savage stories, so that his heroes were continually, and methodically, getting in and out of trouble.

The next 15 paperbacks (consisting of stories 97 through 126 in the Bantam reissue series) were "doubles", reprinting two novels each (these were actually shorter novellas written during paper shortages of World War II).

[citation needed] The Red Spider was a Doc Savage novel written by Dent in April 1948, about the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

[citation needed] When the original pulp stories were exhausted, Bantam Books hired Philip José Farmer to pen the tale of how Doc and his men met in World War I.

It was followed by seven traditional Doc Savage stories written by novelist Will Murray, working from unpublished Lester Dent outlines, beginning with Python Isle.

In 1985, National Public Radio aired The Adventures of Doc Savage, as 13 half-hour episodes,[20] based on the pulps and adapted by Will Murray and Roger Rittner.

[23] Originally, these stories were based on the pulp version, but with Doc Savage Comics #5 (1941), he was turned into a genuine superhero when he crashed in Tibet and was given a blue hood with a sacred ruby in the forehead that deflected bullets and hypnotized anyone who gazed into its mystical red light.

A 1965 house ad for a poster, "The Arch-Enemy of Evil", announces, "Tougher than Tarzan, braver than Bond, Doc is America's newest rage - with teenagers, college students, and the 'in' groups all over the country.

"[31] In 1967, a TV Guide article reported talks were underway to have Chuck Connors play Doc Savage in a movie adaptation of The Thousand-Headed Man.

An original soundtrack for the film was also commissioned, but when Pal lost his funding, he resorted to a patriotic march from John Philip Sousa, which was in the public domain.

[citation needed] According to the screenplay by Joe Morhaim that was posted on the Internet, as well as other archival and news accounts, Doc Savage: The Arch Enemy of Evil was based very loosely on the October 1934 pulp novel Death in Silver.

Finally, in anticipation of a proposed Doc Savage TV series, George Pal commissioned a two-part teleplay by Alvin Sapinsley based on the May 1935 pulp novel The Secret in the Sky.

[38] It included a potential Wold Newton Universe cross-over involving a meeting between Doc Savage and a retired Sherlock Holmes in 1936.

[39][40] In 1966, the basic premise of Doc Savage's origin was an obvious influence on the Mexican lucha libre film character Mil Mascaras (1966), which was released at the height of the popularity of the Doc Savage paperback book series in the U.S.[citation needed] In 1999, there was an announcement[41] that a possible remake featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger was in the works, with the involvement of Frank Darabont and Chuck Russell, but it and several other Schwarzenegger projects (Sgt.

[42] In late 2006, Sam Raimi was rumoured to be making a film involving several Street and Smith pulp heroes, including The Shadow, The Avenger, and Doc Savage.