Ominous Octopus Omnibus: Renny Renwick

Thursday, December 9, 2021

Doc Savage And His Amazing Crew

A

Who is Doc Savage?

An introduction from the back of one of the books:

WHO IS DOC SAVAGE?

To the world at large, Doc Savage is a strange, mysterious figure of
glistening bronze skin and golden eyes. To his amazing co-adventurers,
the five greatest brains ever assembled in one group, he is a man of
superhuman strength and protean genius whose life is dedicated to the
destruction of evil-doers. To his fans he is the greatest adventure hero
of all time, whose fantastic exploits are unequaled for hair-raising
thrills, breathtaking escapes and bloodcurdling excitement.

HIS AMAZING CREW—

WILLIAM HARPER "JOHNNY" LITTLEJOHN -- the bespectacled scientist
who was the world's greatest living expert on geology and archaeology.

COLONEL JOHN "RENNY" RENWICK -- the favorite sport of this
engineering genius was pounding his massive fists through heavy paneled doors.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL ANDREW BLODGETT "MONK" MAYFAIR –
only a few inches over 5 feet tall and yet over 260 pounds. His brutish
exterior concealed the mind of a world-renowned chemist.

MAJOR THOMAS J. "LONG TOM" ROBERTS was the physical weakling
of the crowd but a wizard at electricity and radio.

BRIGADIER GENERAL THEODORE MARLEY "HAM" BROOKS -- slender and waspy and the
greatest lawyer Harvard ever produced -- was never without
his ominous, black sword-cane.

PAT SAVAGE is Doc’s cousin from Canada with the same bronze hair and skin
and the same thirst for justice.

With their leader, they would go anywhere, fight anyone, dare everything –
all-the-while seeking excitement and perilous adventure!

* * *

They didn't used to list Pat Savage along with the guys on the back of the bantam reprints although she was in some of the stories, the description of Pat comes from one of the later books where they did list her with the others.

And here's an illustration of Pat Savage with the team from one of the later books:

Actually Pat Savage probably turns up more often in the new books by Will Murray than she did in the original series. She was the most important female character in Doc Savage adventures. Two other recurring female characters are Monja, the Mayan Princess who first appeared in THE MAN OF BRONZE and returned in THE GOLDEN PERIL and THEY DIED TWICE,

and Monk's pretty secretary Lea Aster, who was the main girl character in THE RED SKULL and occasionally mentioned in other stories afterwards.

Pat Savage was shown on the cover with Doc on the issue with FEAR CAY:

Here we have Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude

The Fortress of Solitude was Doc Savage's secret arctic base, which usually was only mentioned in the stories as somewhere Doc went. His usual base of operations was a skyscraper office building in New York, which is usually thought of as being the Empire State Building. Something which is not actually stated in the stories themselves.

Friday, April 26, 2019

Pat Savage

Pat Savage is Doc Savage's cousin and the most important female character in Doc Savage adventures.

FROM WIKIPEDIA

Patricia Savage

First appearance	Doc Savage Magazine vol 2, #5 (January 1934)
Created by	Lester Dent

Patricia Savage is a recurring supporting character in the Doc Savage pulps outside of "The Fabulous Five".
The character is presented as Doc Savage's cousin and sole living relative,^[5] sharing the bronze hair color and skin tone with him as well as strikingly beautiful. The stories also note her as being an accomplished marksman, pilot, and hand-to-hand combatant.
She is also shown to love Doc's adventures to the point of joining them on occasion.
She uses a Colt Frontier Single Action .44 as her signature weapon, a family heirloom handed down from her grandfather^{[citation needed]} and modified with a filed trigger and fanning spur. The gun was used as an important plot element in "Violent Night". In that story, a disguised Hitler thinks he's left his fingerprints on it, so Nazis keep trying to get the gun in order to protect his subterfuge.^[6]
In "I died Yesterday", she is the main character as the story is told as a first person narrative.
She has also appeared or been mentioned in stories and novels that have been based on the pulps. These include:

Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life by Philip José Farmer.
Lin Carter's Prince Zarkon novels.
Doc Savage comics published by DC Comics, Millennium Publications, Marvel Comics, and Moonstone Books.

* * *

I wrote part of that wikipedia article myself. Actually I wrote the wikipedia entry on Pat Savage in the first place, but it's been added to since then. Farmer's book on Doc Savage is mentioned.
Farmer is frequently guilty of misrepresenting the characters he wrote about in this and other books.

Pat Savage first appeared in the Doc Savage story BRAND OF THE WEREWOLF, as a cousin living in Canada. The werewolf business in the story seems to be a serious threat for much of the story, but turns out to be a hoax, something that frequently happens in Doc Savage adventures

Doc Savage's regular assistants, "the fabulous five", all like Pat Savage, but frequently try to keep her from getting involved in their adventures just as Doc himself does. Renny Renwick says Pat is "Excitopsychic" - pyschic to excitement - in the Doc Savage adventure WINGS OF DEATH. In the same story Pat invents a muffler for an airplane motor that makes it sound like a car motor, so she evidently shares Doc Savage's brilliance, even if it is not always as obvious.

According to Lester Dent, Pat Savage is Five foot seven inches tall. This is the same height given for Blondie by Chic Young*. And it would have been unusually tall for a woman in the thirties. Blondie was said to be about the same height as Dagwood, as a matter of fact.

Will Murray, who is still writing new Doc Savage books, continues to use the character of Pat Savage and she seems to be important in his stories.

BRAND OF THE WEREWOLF is said to have been the best-selling of Bantam reprint, selling over 185,000 copies.