Pulp magazines have influenced writers, artists, film directors, software developers, and countless others over the years. Our “PulpFest Profiles” focus on contemporary creators who have drawn inspiration from these rough-paper fiction magazines.
Craig McDonald (CMC): Doc Savage has had a profound impact on your life on many levels. What keeps you in Doc’s corner, continuing to help cast a spotlight on this nearly century-old character?
Chuck Welch (CW): Dare I say inertia with the occasional bout of stubbornness and a dose of love? I’ve been immersed in the Doc Savage mythos for over 50 years. The first 25 years collecting and reading the novels. For the last 25 years, I’ve concentrated more on fandom and research.
With the advent of the internet, I wanted to help gather Doc Savage fans together. I created the Hidalgo Trading Company fansite to encourage fans to share their stories. It’s still active at DocSavage.org.
In 1998, I met my wife and some great friends at Pulpcon. A couple of years later, I started the Flearun discussion group to help fans gather in a spam-free, troll-free environment. We’re nearing 25 years of the Flearun and it is still active every day. To record everything said there would have filled over 100 fanzines.
To finally answer your question, I’m in the corner of the wonderful people I’ve met along the way.
CMC: Why Doc Savage though?
CW: I read The Phantom City and I loved the old-time adventure. But the fact it was a reprinted pulp really drew me in. I could imagine my mother and father reading Doc Savage in the 30s. He was of their time and I could immerse myself in that world. That’s why I’m glad Bantam didn’t update any of the references. I was reading the same stories that they read.
I guess I could have read The Shadow, but Doc Savage was a character that represented what I hoped was the best of humankind. That spoke to me. Doc Savage and his aides dedicated their lives to improving the world and protecting the vulnerable. How can you not put a spotlight on that?
CMC: Doc Savage and his team officially celebrate their 90th anniversary this year. How would you assess the state of the Doc Savage franchise, circa 2023?
CW: Damaged with a glimmer of hope? Condé Nast hasn’t treated the character well. The James Patterson reboot serves their bottom line, but Dr. Brandt Savage is Doc in name only. He’s a character for disaffected 21st-century men without the hope that Dr. Clark Savage, Jr. instilled.
On the fandom side, I confess to calling current Doc fans “The Last Generation.” We’re aging out. Most of our children didn’t inherit a love for the character. Nor did the general public pick up the novels these last 20 years. The younger generations see the flaws of the characters and their society. I don’t blame them. The flaws are there. And young people are just too far removed from the 1930s to feel the nostalgia. Their world has men who fly, gods, and wizards. A guy who exercises two hours each day, doesn’t date, and rarely speaks, just doesn’t grab their hearts.
There is a glimmer of hope though. There are those who are writing new pulp in a way that brings the heart of the 1930s hero into fiction written for the modern audience. Writers like Win Scott Eckert with his Doc Caliban novel The Monster on Hold; R. Paul Sardanas, who has actually brought Doc Savage into adulthood with his Doc Talos series; and Craig McDonald whose Zana O’Savin weaves through the world as Pat Savage unleashed. Let’s hope fans arrive at Doc Savage through their works and similar new pulp.
CMC: Would you play Nostradamus and hazard a guess as to where matters might stand for the character’s centennial?
CW: I don’t see a sudden reversal in Doc’s popularity. He’ll get his due from pulp fans though. My daughter, Juliette, is known to Pulpfest attendees and I daresay she’ll make sure that the Flearun and the Hidalgo Trading Company will celebrate the event. I expect Pulpfest and Windy City will also mark the occasion. I doubt what’s left of Condé Nast will do much. Maybe they’ll put out a pulp magazine facsimile? Let’s hope, like Nostradamus, I am wildly incorrect and the 2033 Doc Savage film is a huge hit.
CMC: With the exception of some experiments in various comic book series and in novel format, Doc Savage and his crew have remained stubbornly locked in the 1930s/40s. Characters of older or roughly the same vintage — Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Superman, and Batman — have changed with the times and been presented in modern contexts to great and sustained commercial success. This has eluded Doc Savage. Do you think Doc and Company should undergo a similar update in prose format?
CW: No? Yes? Maybe? When the topic is broached many Flearunners howl with pain. Their Doc is firmly rooted in the 1930s society – warts and all. I believe that any film that doesn’t update the characters is doomed to fail. You can keep the environment, the society, and the accouterments, but if you keep all the characters white and male you will shut out more than half of today’s population. That would be a mistake. Everyone deserves heroes they resemble.
As for novels, I truly wish Condé Nast would try all sorts of approaches to Doc Savage. Set a series in the 1980s. Put out Doc Savage short stories set in the 1930s where he works with other aides. Remix and refresh the character for modern audiences. Do that, but also release the original novels in an inexpensive, approved digital format. Make it easy for new fans to discover the characters. You won’t confuse audiences by giving them multiple options.
CMC: Do you think Doc Savage and similar vintage pulp characters could be made relevant again for younger generations of readers?
CW: Yes, make the characters resemble modern audiences. Make the characters speak to the concerns and hopes of the modern audience. Put the heart and soul of Dr. Clark Savage, Jr. into the person that must navigate the modern world. In the 1930s, Doc Savage succeeded because the fans walked the streets that Doc Savage walked. He also traveled to places where they could only hope to travel. That’s tough in this connected world. If you really want to make Doc Savage relevant for the modern reader, move the fiction further into the world of science fiction and — this will irritate some — move Doc Savage out of the United States. Make him a citizen of the world with worldwide concerns. Put him in locations that are known, but unfamiliar to new readers.
CMC: What is your favorite Doc Savage novel, and why?
CW: Bleeding Sun. Yes, it is an unauthorized fan novel that’s 20 years old. But it grew from fandom at a time when Condé Nast was letting Doc Savage lay fallow. That novel by a fan and for fans helped bring the community together and keep it warm until Will Murray and Anthony Tollin brought us books new and reprinted.
And it is a damn good Doc Savage novel. The intrigue, the fast-paced action, the colorful characters, and the humor are all in place.
CMC: The Bronze Gazette is the longest-running and certainly the most slickly-produced Doc Savage fanzine in history. What do you think accounts for its enduring popularity?
CW: I can really only speak to the last seven years of the magazine, but Terry Allen, Kez Wilson, timing, focus, design, and most importantly, diversity of authors. There’s still always something new and interesting to read about Doc Savage. We have the philosophy that we want all the “zealous Savageologists” to write at least one article. Each Doc Savage fan and researcher has a unique viewpoint and we want as many as we can publish. That doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten the longtime authors. For example, Will Murray, Tom Barnett, and Howard Wright are in the current or forthcoming issues.
CMC: The past couple of issues of TBG have been accompanied by cardboard standees of individual characters for subscribers. Apart from the remaining team members, and presumably, Pat, might we expect the pets, Chemistry and Habeas Corpus? Perhaps a key villain, or two?
CW: Isn’t Tim Faurote’s artwork great? I pitched a 1930s “dress-up book,” where children punched out clothing to put on standee characters. Tim very graciously steered me away from that idea. Terry Allen, The Bronze Gazette publisher, found someone who could print on stock thick enough for a standee and thin enough that we could mail. So, the dress-up Doc became the stand-up Doc. We’ll finish the aides, but we’re not sure if we’ll go beyond that. We like to keep coming up with new ideas.
CMC: I believe there are three issues of TBG planned for 2023. Can you give us a hint about what might be expected?
CW: Our 93rd issue, the first of the year, was just delivered. All I can say is that numbers 94 and 95 will be bigger, badder, and bronzer.
CMC: Anything else you would like to tease or reveal about the Bronze Gazette?
CW: Two addresses: submissions@bronzegazette.com and bronzegazette.com/subscribe/.
As one of the original Internet Fans of Bronze, Chuck Welch has been an online presence in the world of pulps for many years. He created the Hidalgo Trading Company in 1996 and the Flearun discussion group in 2000. From 2013 through 2018, he was a member of the PulpFest organizing committee. A resident of Canada, Chuck is the editor of The Bronze Gazette. To learn more about Chuck and his interest in Doc Savage, listen to episode 3 of Garry Snow’s Dieku Podcast.
If you’ll be attending the 2023 Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, visit the Flearun Facebook page for information about joining this year’s Bronze CONversation. It will take place April 21 – 23 at the convention inside the Westin Lombard in Lombard, Illinois.
Author of the Edgar-nominated Hector Lassiter historical crime series, Craig McDonald is an award-winning novelist, journalist, and editor. The Hector Lassiter series chronicles the exploits of a fictional Black Mask author and his encounters with such notable figures as Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles, Ian Fleming, and Lester Dent. McDonald’s internationally acclaimed works have found a global audience and have also been adapted into graphic novel format. His works have been published by Simon & Schuster and Macmillan Press. His newest book is The Blood Ogre, the first in a new series called The Adventures of Zana O’Savin. A member of the PulpFest organizing committee and a regular contributor to our website and The Pulpster, you can read more about Craig on our PulpFest Committee page. Craig is also a frequent contributor to The Bronze Gazette.
Ron Hill drew our caricature of Chuck Welch in 2020. Ron is a lifelong Doc Savage fan and a contributor of articles, artwork, and cartoons to The Bronze Gazette, the premier Doc Savage fanzine. He is currently working on We Are Doc Savage, a feature-length documentary film that will focus on the collectors, creators, and characters of Doc Savage fandom.
Lester Dent’s The Phantom City — the tenth volume in Bantam Books paperback reprinting of the Doc Savage series — was Chuck Welch’s first Doc Savage novel. The cover painting is by James Bama, featuring actor/model Steve Holland as Doc Savage.
Chuck Welch met his wife, Catherine Lavallée-Welch, a fellow Doc Savage fan, at the 1998 Pulpcon held at Bowling Green University in Ohio. Above, he is pictured at the convention reading the first issue of Street & Smith’s Doc Savage Magazine, featuring Lester Dent’s novel, “The Man of Bronze.”
Alex Ross contributed the cover art for Dynamite Comics Doc Savage #8, dated July 2014. The Dynamite series was one of several recent attempts to move Doc Savage into present-day settings.
Our featured image is excerpted from a painting by Mark Wheatley in which the artist imagines Doc Savage as he might have appeared if first published in Collier’s Magazine. Mark’s painting was used as the cover art for The Bronze Gazette, issue number 93, dated April 2023. To learn how to get a copy, visit The Bronze Gazette website at https://www.bronzegazette.com/. Recent issues have included standees of Doc Savage and his aides, created by artist Tim Faurote. Two of the sets are pictured above.
Watch for our next PulpFest Profile in May when William Patrick Maynard will talk with Henry G. Franke III, the editor of The Burroughs Bulletin, the journal of The Burroughs Bibliophiles, the nonprofit literary society devoted to the life and works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
