Ironically, the 1930s pulp superhero Doc Savage had a major influence on comic books, but a negligible impact on them.
The very nature of the media had something to do with that. Seeing is believing, so superhero stories are often more fantastic in panels than they are in prose. Doc Savage created several of the conventions of superhero comics, but the comic books swiftly amplified them.
“As a merchandising property, Doc Savage didn’t equal the Shadow,” noted comics and pulp historian Ron Goulart, “There were no movies, no serials. There was a radio show, but it ran only in the East during one wartime summer. The Doc Savage comic book never did well either… As with many of their later characters, Street & Smith’s timing was off. They didn’t think of using him as a comic book hero until 1940, and by then,n there was Superman.
“It’s obvious Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had recognized Doc Savage’s potential much earlier. Dedicated pulp readers, the two young Cleveland boys borrowed considerably from (author Lester) Dent’s superhero for their own character. It isn’t because of coincidence that Superman’s name is Clark Kent and that he was … billed as the Man of Steel.”
I started buying the Man of Bronze’s adventures in Bantam paperback reprint form in the mid-1960s, drawn in by those eerie and exotic James Bama covers that spotlighted an austere, torn-shirted champion.
My favorite stories were Doc’s most outlandish, comic-book-like exploits, such as The Monsters (originally published in 1934), in which the Man of Bronze fought a reign of terror created by scientifically engineered giants.
“The scientific discovery of a pituitary growth hormone in 1933 supplied the motive power for the plot,” noted pulp author and historian Will Murray. “Of course, the idea can be traced back to H.G. Wells’ seminal 1904 novel, The Food of the Gods, wherein two scientists develop a chemical accelerator that induces fantastic growth in animals, insects,s and children — the latter of whom ultimately reach 40 feet in height. By 1933, this premise had become a staple of the science fiction pulps.”
“The origins of The Monsters are fairly easy to deduce. RKO’s King Kong had broken box office records earlier that year, lodging the terrifying proto-giant ape firmly in the public consciousness. Since Kong ultimately fell from his perch atop Doc Savage’s Empire State Building Headquarters, Doc fans — perhaps even Lester Dent himself — have speculated about a clash between the Man of Bronze and the Eighth Wonder of the World.”
Murray himself answered those speculations in his 2013 Doc Savage novel Skull Island. Doc’s 1934 adventure inspired Batman’s battle with Prof. Hugo Strange’s criminal giants in Batman 1 (Spring 1940),
Marvel and DC both tried publishing Doc Savage comic books, and it made sense that The Monsters would be one of Doc’s earliest adventures, adapted for the medium (Marvel’s Doc Savage 5 and 6, June and August 1973).
Despite creditable work by cover artist Gil Kane, writers Steve Englehart and Gardner Fox, penciller Ross Andru, and inker Tom Palmer, this would also be one of the last adventures adapted for Marvel’s Doc Savage title, which ended two issues later.
Marvel tried another run at the character in a larger magazine format from 1975 to 1977.
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