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 |
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.
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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.
Interior illustration from DOC SAVAGE magazine
DOC SAVAGE #19 seems to be the only issue in the original run to show her on the cover, along with Doc Savage.
The height of Carole Landis was given as five foot six and a half, and I have sometimes thought that she would be a good Pat Savage.
Carole Landis with a revolver. This is a more modern type of gun than Pat Savage was supposed to use.
Susan Hayward with old type sixguns similar to what Pat Savage was said to use.
*BLONDIE, July 9, 1931.
BRAND OF THE WEREWOLF:
http://www.duskbeforethedawn.net/2009/06/brand-of-the-werewolf-doc-savage-5/
Pat Savage:
http://www.supremeadventurer.com/patricia.html
http://docsavage.wikia.com/wiki/Patricia_Savage
Pat Savage Fan Club On Yahoo:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Pat_Savage/
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