I’ve been working on a project for this year’s Doc Con XVI, which naturally will be celebrating the 80th anniversary of the first appearance of Doc Savage Magazine on newsstands.
As a result, I’ve been looking through all 181 pulp covers. One thing jumped out at me: the logo color. The magazine’s logo is yellow most often (67 times), while a white logo appears 37 times and a red one shows up 27 times. Okay, I stopped counting after that. Enough of the minutia.
The 1940s covers aren’t as familiar to me as those from the ’30s. And while they aren’t as heroic as the earlier Walter Baumhofer covers, the 1940s covers are actually pretty good on their own.
Some thoughts on some covers:
“The Green Eagle” (July 1941): On this Emery Clarke cover, Doc moved from a more conservative style of dress (white button-down shirts, an occasional suit — when he wasn’t in swim trunks) of the 1930s pulps to a “preppy” fashion that was just coming into vogue in the early 1940s. You could easily see someone dressed in these clothes in the 1980s, or more recently. It’s possible that the preppy look first appeared on a Doc Savage cover with “Devils of the Deep” (October 1940), but I’m thinking that’s more of sailor-like. Of course, I’m no style expert, unlike Ham.
“The Lost Giant” (December 1944): The faces of World War II look down upon a crashed B-17 bomber on this cover by Modest Stein. You see (clockwise from lower left) a grotesquely stereotypical Japanese officer, a Josef Stalin-like Russian, Uncle Sam, Britain’s Winston Churchill and a Nazi officer. Two hats run off the cover at the bottom: what looks like a French hat, and a G.I. helmet. Incidentally, Hitler himself would show up the next month on the cover of “Violent Night” (January 1945).
“Strange Fish” (February 1945): Hanging bodies in this cover by makes me wonder if the cover and title are a riff on “Strange Fruit,” based on a poem by Abel Meeropol and first recorded by the great Billie Holiday in 1939. The poem and song were a protest against lynchings in the South. It’s uncertain who painted this cover.
“The Pure Evil” (March-April 1948): Curiously, the Doc Savage novel doesn’t even earn a mention on the digest’s cover (Edd Cartier‘s sole contribution as a Doc Savage cover artist). Instead, Robert A. Nichols‘ “Revolt” gets the only cover mention. What’s up with that? Things started going down hill with the May-June 1947 number. That cover featured art for a secondary story, “The Coffin Cult” by William Lindsay Gresham, but the Doc Savage story at least got a mention. This was a bad sign. Clearly, Street & Smith’s confidence in the Doc Savage franchise was waning and remained low until the last-gasp final three pulps. By then it was too late for the Man of Bronze and the other S&S pulps.
