Back in the late 1970s, a twelve-year-old discovered Bantam Books’ Doc Savage paperbacks in a used bookstore. Starting with Doc Savage #68 — Quest of the Spider, Jennifer DiGiacomo (then known as Joel, DiG, and a host of other nicknames) was surprised to learn that the prose inside the book matched the hype on its covers, and was hooked for a lifetime.
Although Jen tried to convince friends to give The Man of Bronze a try, none of them came close to sharing the enthusiasm for the character and his adventures that readers of this post, undoubtedly, share.
After contacting some of the fans listed in Marvel Comics’ Doc Savage magazine, Jen hatched a plan:
What if I published a Doc Savage fanzine, filled with artwork, articles, and the addresses of its members, where subscribers shared profiles of their love for Doc Savage? And what if I called that ‘zine The Savage Society of Bronze?
So at the age of sixteen and having never published anything before, Jen borrowed the family’s IBM Selectric typewriter and gave birth to a 24-page fanzine — including its cardstock cover — called The Savage Society of Bronze.
Running for seven issues from 1982 to 1985, it was the only fanzine being published at the time that was devoted to Doc Savage. In The Collector’s Handbook of Bronze, author Jay Ryan calls it the best fanzine of its time.
We hope you’ll join PulpFest 50 as we not only celebrate “A Half-Century of Pulp Cons,” the centennial of pulp magazine and comic book publisher Fiction House, and the ninetieth anniversary of Popular Publications’ “Dime” line of pulp magazines, but also the 40th anniversary of Jennifer Joel DiGiacomo’s historic Doc Savage fanzine, The Savage Society of Bronze. Our salute to this classic fanzine will begin at 1:30 PM on Friday afternoon, August 5. Popular culture scholar and regular contributor to the ‘zine, Will Murray, and publisher Jen DiGiacomo will discuss the history of The Savage Society of Bronze and its importance to the pulp community.
Jennifer DiGiacomo is a digital technologist, having created the first online reality series (AOL’s The Startup), and a writer, winning the Silver Telly Award for The P.O.B. Conspiracy. More recently, she worked on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul for AMC, and Cerebus in Hell? with Dave Sim. Currently, she resides in New York City and has several more writing and publishing efforts planned.
Author and essayist Will Murray has written extensively about Lester Dent’s Doc Savage, as well as countless other pulp and pop culture topics. He was the only contributor to appear in all seven issues of The Savage Society of Bronze.
The literary agent for the Lester Dent properties, Will Murray has written over twenty adventures of Doc Savage, a solo adventure featuring Pat Savage, three novels about the Popular Publications hero, The Spider, as well as new adventures of King Kong, Sherlock Holmes, and Tarzan. His non-fiction books include Master of Mystery: The Rise of The Shadow, Wordslingers: An Epitaph for the Western, and Writings in Bronze. His most recent book is The Spider: Scourge of the Scorpion. To learn more about Will and his work, please visit his website at adventuresinbronze.com.
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Kenneth Grant is a writer and popular culture enthusiast who has volunteered to help the PulpFest organizing committee. He’s looking forward to writing more for our website and The Pulpster.
The Savage Society of Bronze #4, published in the Summer of 1983 by Jennifer Joel DiGiacomo, featured front cover art by Frank Hamilton. Jen considers it “the high water mark” of the fanzine’s run. “It represented, for the first time, what I wanted The Savage Society of Bronze to be: a bevy of top-notch articles by an array of fandom’s best, fronted by a brilliant Doc Savage cover by Frank Hamilton.”
Doc Savage #68 — Quest of the Spider was first released by Bantam Books in May 1972. The cover art was by Fred Pfeiffer, who took over the Bantam Doc Savage covers after James Bama left the series. Pfeiffer painted 13 covers for the series, from #68 through #81. Originally published by Street & Smith in 1933 in the third issue of Doc Savage Magazine, Lester Dent’s “Quest of the Spider” got Jen DiGiacomo hooked on The Man of Bronze.
Jennifer DiGiacomo’s “The Savage Society of Bronze Remembered,” published in The Bronze Gazette #84 (Summer 2019), helped greatly in the writing of this article.
