{"id":390,"date":"2013-05-20T10:00:55","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T14:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=390"},"modified":"2026-04-16T11:17:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T15:17:41","slug":"recollections-of-a-doc-savage-fan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2013\/05\/20\/recollections-of-a-doc-savage-fan\/","title":{"rendered":"Recollections of a Doc Savage fan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DocOne thing I’ve been thinking about of late has been how I got into reading Doc Savage<\/a><\/strong> and my experiences finding and reading the stories. It was reading Doc that led me to other pulp heroes. Before that, I was mainly a reader of science fiction.<\/p>\n

As best I can recall, I first came across one of the Bantam paperback reprints of Doc in a hospital waiting room while in middle school. It was “King Maker.” The cover, despite not being a James Bama<\/strong> cover, grabbed me. The logo was intriguing; the back cover info as well. And there has always been something about the Doc titles that got me: Land of Always-Night<\/em>, He Could Stop the World<\/em>, etc.<\/p>\n

From then on, I worked to find and read other Docs. I hit used bookstores. New copies I got from the few sources of books in my hometown (this was before the advent of giant bookstores like Borders or Barnes & Noble, and way before Amazon). One was the local K-Mart (back in the days when K-Mart actually carried a lot of books).<\/p>\n

Another source was the only bookstore in town at the time: Little Professor Books. We soon got a used bookstore, which I haunted as well. (And how I soon found and started reading The Avenger<\/a><\/strong> and then on to others).<\/p>\n

I got the new Docs as they came out. At this point, it was the tail-end of the single novels. I recall getting Magic Island<\/em>\u00a0at the local K-Mart. The Bob Larkin<\/a><\/strong> cover grabbed me, his first. I always felt that Bob’s earlier Doc covers were the best and most impactful. I recalled wondering if the cover was a photo or not.<\/p>\n

At some point, I got a copy of Philip Jos\u00e9 Farmer<\/a><\/strong>‘s Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life<\/em> (the first paperback edition from Bantam). This made me briefly rearrange my Doc collection from original publication order to Farmer’s order \u2014 until I realized that was silly, and changed it back.\u00a0 And that cover was my first, if not clear, exposure to the pulp Doc.<\/p>\n

I kept buying the Docs as they came out: the doubles and then the omnibus editions. Though for some reason I didn’t read the stories in them, I think because I preferred the early pre-WWII adventure stories. When Will Murray<\/strong> came out with new ones, I got those and<\/em> read them. I’d figure I’d go back to the ones I skipped, but haven’t yet.<\/p>\n

So at this point I had a complete set. It took me awhile. My last one was finding He Could Stop the World<\/em>\u00a0at the World SF Convention in 1992 in Orlando.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, from Doc, I got into other pulp heroes: The Avenger, The Shadow<\/a><\/strong>, and others. All paperback reprints of them. As access to original pulp heroes became harder (I never got into collecting the original pulps, couldn’t afford that), plus I had read most of what was available, I got into techno-thrillers and then New Pulp<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Anthony Tollin<\/a><\/strong> started the Doc reprints, at first I didn’t get them, as I had the stories. But when I found out about the additional articles and the restored text, I started to get them. I haven’t started re-reading any yet (though I do read the articles). Hopefully some day I’ll have the time to go back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One thing I’ve been thinking about of late has been how I got into reading Doc Savage and my experiences finding and reading the stories. It was reading Doc that led me to other pulp heroes. Before that, I was mainly a reader of science fiction. As best I can recall, I first came across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":{"highlight_sharing":"default","image_sharing":"default","headline_sharing":"default"},"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[58,7,1],"tags":[110,3,226,109],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-new-pulp","category-pulps","tag-doc-savage","tag-hero-pulps","tag-the-avenger","tag-the-shadow"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2013\/05\/doc-savage-magic-island.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-6i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22925,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions\/22925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}