![\"Doc](\"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2013\/04\/doc-ardan.jpg\")
There seems to be a phenomenon with popular characters. People start to look for other characters that inspired that character. Sometimes authors are forthcoming about the influences in creating their characters, sometimes not. Sometimes the influence may be unseen by the authors.<\/p>\n
But too often fans go a little overboard, latching onto very early and often very obscure characters that preceded the popular character that are unlikely to have been an influence. Or sometimes they go in the opposite direction and claim characters who were published almost at the same time and which couldn’t have been an influence (for example, the Black Bat<\/strong> and Batman<\/strong>).<\/p>\n In a previous posting<\/a>, I touched on a character that preceded The Shadow<\/strong>, Judex<\/strong>, who despite the numerous similarities, probably had no influence on the creation of The Shadow. This time we will look at a similar character that preceded Doc Savage<\/strong>: Doc Ardan<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Doc Ardan (or probably more proper, Doctor Ardan or Doctor Francis Ardan, as it’s doubtful he was referred to as “Doc Ardan” in the original stories) appeared in a trio of French sf-adventure novels by Guy d’Armen<\/strong>: “The City of Gold and Lepers”<\/a> (1928), “The Troglodytes of Mount Everest”<\/a> (1929) and “The Giants of Dark Lake” (1931). The first novel has been translated and adapted by Jean-Marc<\/strong> and Randy Lofficier<\/strong> and published by Black Coat Press<\/a>, with the other two promised soon. It is due to Black Coat Press that we know about this character.<\/p>\n The first novel introduces the character, a young doctor traveling in Asia who comes up against a Fu Manchu-like villain, Dr. Natas<\/strong>. Some of the physical characteristics of Doctor Ardan are similar to Doc Savage, and the Lofficiers have actually tweaked this in adapting the work to make that more obvious. The Doc Ardan stories are very similar to what we expect from the early Doc Savage stories: a scientist-adventurer looking for lost cities and defeating mad scientists armed with deadly super-science weapons. But frankly, it’s doubtful that this obscure French sf series, which wasn’t translated into English, could have had an influence on the creation of Doc Savage, who came out in 1933.<\/p>\n We know from interviews with Lester Dent<\/strong> and the editors at Street & Smith what influenced the development of Doc Savage: Nick Carter<\/strong> (the original character was trained from birth by his father and turned into a physical and mental superman), adventurer Col. Richard Henry Savage<\/strong>, science-detective Craig Kennedy<\/strong>, and the gadget heroes of Dent, among others.<\/p>\n![\"Tales](\"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2013\/04\/tales-of-the-shadowmen-1.jpg\")
That said, Black Coat Press has used this character to create new<\/em> “Doc Savage” stories cloaked as “Doc Ardan” stories. The idea being that Doc Ardan is<\/em> Doc Savage, that before he started on his crusade against evil and was traveling the world as a young doctor, he took the alias of “Francis Ardan”, based on distant French relatives. So the trio of Doc Ardan novels are meant to be adventures he had before the events of “The Man of Bronze.”<\/p>\n