Doc Savage , as published in the UK

[Blog updated 30th August 2024 by Ian Baker]

As someone who spent their formative years and youth in the UK, and the last quarter century in the US, I have long been interested in the history of the importation of American comics into the UK - both the process and the identification of UK-specific differences.

Recently I started to consider whether the importation of US adventure genre paperbacks and pulps into the UK bore closer inspection, and specifically the history of Doc Savage paperbacks and pulps as sold in mainstream retail outlets in the UK in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. I have thus set out to document the history of Doc Savage publications in the UK, whether the stories were published specifically for the UK market, or were “UK Price Variants[1]” (or UKPV’s) printed in the US for official import and sale in the UK. 

First Wave - 1938-1940

The story of Doc Savage publication in the UK could not be told without mentioning a man named Walter Stephen Dexter (1868-1945). Dexter was the owner and publisher behind Atlas Publishing & Distributing Co. Ltd, a business set up in November 1914 to import American magazines into the UK. The story behind the growth of Atlas (not to be confused with the Marvel/Timely comic business) can be found at my blog https://atlaspublishinganddistributing.blogspot.com/.

Dexter was importing remaindered copies of Street & Smith pulps into the UK by 1922 for sale at 9d each, and by 1925 was the official London-based agent and formal address for eight Street & Smith magazines, mostly pulps with a few slicks. Dexter selected which S&S magazines would sell well in the UK market, initially focusing on on genre stories (Western, Detective, Romance),  avoiding the single-character adventure pulps. Thus Dexter did not initially import Doc Savage and The Shadow until sometime in 1938. 

Following a three-week business trip to New York in April 1938, Dexter decided to import remaindered sale-or-return US copies of Doc Savage into the UK. 

The first mention of US pulps of Doc Savage being officially available in the UK was in the Anglo-American Year Book for 1938, published 19th May 1938 by the American Chamber of Commerce in London, of which Dexter’s Atlas Publishing & Distributing Company was a member. Atlas was subsequently listed as the contact point for Doc Savage magazine in the Year Books for 1939 and 1940 also.

However, with the outbreak of war between Britain and Germany on Sept 1st 1939, and the first sinking of merchant ship SS Athenia by a German U-Boat two days later, it became obvious to Dexter that relying on merchant ships to bring US magazines to the UK was no longer a sustainable business proposition. By November 1939[2] , Dexter had geared his business to reprint new and back-catalog selected pulp titles in the UK, and the import of US pulps stopped. Paper was rationed under wartime restrictions, and Doc Savage was not chosen for UK printing. The list of titles below is the best educated guess for US Doc Savage titles that were distributed in the UK in this period.

Most likely issues of US Doc Savage pulp sold in the UK 1938-1939

I have yet to find a copy of a US Doc Savage pulp from this period sold in the UK sporting a UK price sticker or hand-stamped (not printed) onto the front cover, although it is likely the price sticker would resemble those use for the Astounding Stories pulps that Atlas imported into the UK in the 1930s.

Typical Atlas price sticker for imports

Second Wave - December 1954 - September 1957

Despite the period of pre-war copies of the original Doc Savage pulps being imported into the UK, the first major exposure of the British public to Doc and his crew was in the pages of Street & Smith’s Detective Monthly, a UK-produced pulp which ran for 45 monthly issues from Dec 1954 to August 1958. In fact, the Doc stories only ran from Dec 1954 to Sep 1957, featuring 29 Doc stories in total. 

The pulp reprints, digest sized, slightly smaller and thinner than their US pulp counterparts, were again published by ATLAS PUBLISHING & DISTRIBUTING CO. LTD., 18 Bride Lane, Fleet Street,London, E.C.4, “by arrangement with Street & Smith Publications”.  

Since the end of the Second World War, Atlas Publishing & Distributing had been limited by UK import laws which compelled them to produce British-printed versions of American pulps. In the 1950s, Atlas were to produce British editions of Astounding Science Fiction and Analog. UK editions of Mike Shayne and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine were also in their stable. While the US pulp business had largely shut up shop in 1949, the appetite for pulp stories remained active in the UK through out the 1950s.

Atlas is mostly known to UK comic books fans for their publication of hardback annuals featuring reprinted black & white stories of DC characters from the 1950s and 1960s, (e.g. Batman Annuals from 1960-67, Superboy Annuals from 1953 to 1967)  distributing comics and books published by K.G. Murray in Sydney, Australia.

By the end of 1953, Atlas's US pulp reprint business was short on content, yet there was still a demand for short story novelettes by the British public. As the US pulp business had closed in 1949, Atlas were dependent on using back-catalog stories from the surviving pulp companies to print in the UK.

In 1953, the new publisher and owner of Atlas, Walter James Dexter, who had inherited the business from his late father Walter Stephen Dexter in 1945, embarked on plans to expand the business, while at the same time shore up the pulp reprint business as long as he could.

Walter James Dexter in 1935 - credit to original owner

On May 8th 1953, Dexter embarked at Liverpool on the M.V. "Britannic" for the voyage to New York for the purposes of negotiations with magazine publishers. He traveled first class, arriving in New York on May 16th with three suitcases, enough space for his clothes as well as magazine samples likely to be collected in New York. 

His primary purpose was to visit famed editor Hugo Gernsback of Gernsback Publications at 25 West Broadway, NYC. Dexter had known Gernsback since at least his previous visit to New York in 1947. Atlas had been distributing Gernsback's Radio Electronics in the UK since 1948, and had started UK distribution of Gernsback's new magazine Science Fiction Plus a couple of months earlier in 1953. 

Since WW II there had been severe import restrictions on US magazines into the UK, with the exception of magazines with scientific or technical merit, and so Dexter was looking either for import opportunities for "slick" magazines that complied with UK Government restrictions, or contracts with publishers who had a back-catalog of pulps that would be reprinted in the UK.

Before Dexter departed New York on the Queen Mary on 11th June 1953, he had met with Popular Publications to discuss taking over pulp reprints of Detective Tales and Star Western, but most importantly he had met with Street & Smith to explore what back-catalog pulps they might have available for UK reprint.

In November 1953 Paul F. Imbusch, manager at Atlas, wrote to Street & Smith enquiring about obtaining the reprint rights for Doc Savage and Shadow stories originally published by Street & Smith in the US in the period 1945-1949. After some investigation, S&S confirmed to Atlas that the Doc Savage and Shadow stories were available for British "First Publication", although some of the other stories in the books were not cleared for British printing. Also, it was unclear if the original covers were cleared for republication in the UK.

By March 1954, Esther Ford of the S&S copyright department had cleared all the Doc Savage stories for the period March 1945-Mar/Apr 1948 for UK publication, and sent bound file copies of the original Doc Savage pulps to Atlas in London, for examination and possible use as the basis for the UK editions. However, the Sept 1946 issue "The Exploding Lake" was missing and not sent.

As it was illegal to import magazines from the US into the UK due to import restrictions, the paper file copies could only be imported into the UK under a strict UK Government license for the purposes of UK-based reproduction and sale. This meant that Atlas would need to use photo reproduction techniques to create the new printing plates for the text, and creating new blocks for the covers.

This explains why the cover reproductions of the UK-printed pulps vary so much in quality.

In June 1954 A. Van Delft of S&S wrote to Atlas that S&S was agreeable to Atlas publishing Doc Savage material in a magazine titled "Street & Smith's Detective Monthly" at royalty rate $5.00 per thousand copies sold, the same rate as for Shadow reprints already contracted. Also rights for covers from Jan 1945 to Mar/Apr 1948 were cleared.

Source : Heritage Auctions. Doc Savage © Conde Nast

Edd Cartier illustrations in The Angry Canary

Starting with The Angry Canary the UK pulp reprinted latter-era Doc stories originally published in the period March 1944 to Summer 1949, but out of original publication sequence. No attempt was made to correct American spellings for a UK audience. US pulp covers were generally used, always altered to accommodate new text, some times totally re-painted by a UK artist, or even repurposed from a different story.  These repainted covers do not credit the artist.

The Green Master comparison

In some instances, Doc covers were used for non-Doc stories (eg)

Cover for The Shape of Terror (Aug 1944) used for  non-Doc story

The issues were priced at 1 shilling (1/-), increasing to 1/3d (one shilling and 3 pence) with the May 1956 issue.  At the prevailing “gold standard” exchange rate of $2.80 = £1 in 1957 , the 1 shilling price was the equivalent of US 14c.

The first Doc story to be printed in the UK was the Dec 1954 issue The Angry Canary,  and was somewhat of a landmark issue, in that (according to Will Murray's commentary in the recent Sanctum Books reprint edition) it was the last time that Edd Cartier spot illustrated a Doc Adventure .

The issue sold well, as did the following issues. Atlas wrote to S&S inquiring if reprint rights existed for pre-1945 stories. The answer came back in May 1955 that British reprint rights were not available for pre-1945 stories. Subsequent investigation and approach to cover artists approved selected 1944 material and 1949 material for publication.

Thanks to information found at site www.philsp.com , an excellent resource, supplementing information in many cases provided by collector Terry Gibbons, I have been able to construct the table below, showing the order of stories published, along with US pulp publication cover date.

The stories were presumably chosen for both their modest length as well as those which could be argued to have more of a mystery element than the earlier fantastic adventures of Doc and his crew, to fit in with the magazine title Detective Monthly.

Twenty-nine stories were reprinted in total, the final one being The Ten Ton Snakes, cover dated in the UK September 1957. 

The magazine continued to reprint Shadow stories and other novelettes from Street & Smith's back catalog until the publication of Street & Smith’s Detective Monthly ceased with the August 1958 issue. 

In March 1958, Atlas Director Paul F. Imbusch wrote to S&S asking if they had any more DETECTIVE or UNKNOWN stories available in their back catalog for reprint.

 

Arthur P Lawler at S&S replied that there were no more stories available, but S&S would be happy if Atlas printed other publisher's stories as long as "Street & Smith's" was removed from the Atlas magazine title.

 

Atlas decided to cancel the title, leaving Atlas to focus on books featuring their comic character properties licensed by their Australian partner company.

Third Wave - November 1964 to August 1969 (Books #1-#37)

Doc Savage would have likely remained an obscure hero in the UK had it not been for the major cultural shift which was the appearance of James Bond on the cinema screen in Dr. No in 1962. 

The Bond books had been selling respectably well through the 1950s as hardbacks. The first Bond story “Casino Royale” had been published by Jonathan Cape on 25 April 1953 to highly positive reviews in the London Times and the Guardian, amongst others. The paperback version was published in the UK by Pan on 18th April 1955, and established the adventure spy genre as a viable paperback series.  On Nov 29th 1957  Cape re-issued the hardback, and then re-issued the paperback version of Dec 5th 1958 along with Moonraker, Diamonds are Forever and Live and Let Die.

But it was not until the arrival of the Bond film Dr No in 1962 that both the UK and US public appetite for adventure series paperbacks started to escalate.  Bantam in the US were not slow to see this and negotiated with Conde Nast, now owners of Street & Smith, to reprint the Doc Savage pulp series as paperbacks in the United States, starting in October 1964. 

In parallel, Bantam decided to officially release selected editions of the paperbacks in the UK, mindful of the success that UK comic book importers Thorpe & Porter had been having since 1963 with importing into the UK the series of Shadow novels published in the US by Belmont, written first by Walter Gibson, latterly by Dennis Lynds under the Maxwell Grant house name. Thorpe & Porter typically priced their Shadow imports at 2 shillings and Sixpence (2/6d), but were happy to discount to 1/6d to shift unsold stock 

Shadow © Conde Nast. A Belmont priced by Thorpe & Porter at 2/6d

Shadow © Conde Nast. A Belmont discounted by Thorpe & Porter to 1/6d

Belmont Books, also known as Belmont Productions, was a New York-based  American publisher of genre fiction paperback originals founded in 1960. It specialized in science fiction, horror and fantasy, with titles appearing from 1961 through 1971. Rather than in bookstores, their books were sold in railroad stations, airports, bus terminals, drug stores, and the lobbies of office buildings and hotels. Belmont published about a dozen titles a month, with print runs ranging from 30,000 to 70,000 copies. 

(Reference https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardhyfler/2010/09/15/books-for-bus-terminals/?sh=34e0a9df49ce )

Belmont had no UK presence, and so negotiated deals with UK book importer Thorpe & Porter to generally take returns or overruns at discounted rates.

Unlike Belmont, Bantam was represented in the UK by Transworld Publishing, established in 1950 as the British division of American company Bantam Books.

Whereas the Belmont Shadows arrived in the UK in a haphazard manner in monthly batches, likely sourced from store returns, Bantam/Transworld were able to import their own books in a more structured and predictable manner.

And so Bantam decided to test the waters in the UK by publishing two Doc Savage novels - #1 The Man of Bronze and #3 Meteor Menace - on Thursday November 26th 1964. 

Official copies were registered with the British Library on December 10th. 

One month later on Boxing Day (December 26th 1964) Bantam followed up with publication of #2 The Thousand-Headed Man. All three of these books were priced at 2 shillings and sixpence (2/6d), equivalent to US 35c at that time. The price was added to each book as a discreet circular sticker obscuring the US price.

Bantam/Transworld decided to wait until the sales figures arrived before releasing more. The first three novels had been released simultaneously in the US in October 1964, and it was April 1965 when the US business released the next 3 in the US - 'The Polar Treasure', #5 'Brand of the Werewolf' , #6 'Lost Oasis’.

On June 17th 1965, Bantam followed suit in the UK, releasing the same three books, but with the price raised to 3/6d (49 US cents equivalent), the price point that would remain for the next four years. (Incidentally, “Brand of the Werewolf” was to be Bantam’s best-seller with 185,000 copies sold eventually.)

Spot the 3/6d sticker.  Photo from my collection in 1977. Doc Savage © Conde Nast

In the period between UK publication of the first three novels and the second tranche of three, word had spread about the early success in the US of the first TV tie-in books to the spy/gadget TV show “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”  The UK TV premiere was scheduled for 24th June 1965 on BBC, so a June release of the second set of three Doc Savage novels was a serendipitous co-incidence.

Bantam followed up with a UK publication of book #7 “The Monsters” in August 1965, and again waited. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Was taking the UK by storm, and 4-Square published the first British U.N.C.L.E. tie-in by Michael Avallone in October, to be followed by many more UNCLE novels. 

© MGM Arena and 4-Square Books. The first UNCLE paperback in the UK

Within months, 4-Square were trumpeting that they had sold 2,000,000 copies of their U.N.C.L.E. books in the UK, claiming to be the most successful paperback book series ever.

Initially, UK publication of Doc’s generally lagged 3 months behind the US books, presumably indicating that the books imported were either returns or print overruns. Once May 1966 rolled around, and with it the first UK broadcast of the Batman TV series with its attendant cultural impact, Bantam stepped up to a new Doc Savage book every two months. And by May 1968 publication had moved to a monthly basis, following the US publication sequence numerically.

November 28th 1968 suddenly saw a glitch.   Book #28 ‘The Deadly Dwarf’ was published on the heels of book #26 ‘Death In Silver’. Book #27 ‘Mystery Under The Sea’ had been skipped completely!  

This was no doubt due to impact of a major Dock strike in the US, occasioned by the expiry of the union contract for the International Longshoremen's Association  on September 30. All longshoremen would effectively be on strike until the union and employers reached a contract agreement. On October 1, the federal government issued an application for an 80-day cooling-off period as provided by the Taft-Hartley Act, allowing striking longshoremen to return to work while negotiations continued. When the 80 days concluded without an agreement, however, some 75,000 dockworkers went on strike along Atlantic and Gulf ports. Eleven ships sat idle off the coast of Texas, including seven at the Port of Houston. Agreements for each port were not finalized until 1969. With an estimated loss of $2 billion, the dock strike became the longest and costliest of its kind at the time. (Source: texasarchive.org)

Bantam was then forced into a three-month hiatus until February 1969 when the missing title #27 The Mystery Under The Sea was published along with #29 The Other World.

March 1969 saw two more books - #30 ‘The Flaming Falcons’ and #31 ‘The Annihilist’. 1969 then progressed with one book per month until suddenly the series stopped, with #37 ‘Hex’ being published on August 14th 1969.  

Presumably UK public interest in the adventure/gadget genre was waning ; the Man From U.N.C.L.E. books had ceased UK publication in June 1968, leaving a number of their series left unpublished. The U.N.C.L.E. TV series had finished their UK broadcast run that same month. The Batman TV phenomenon had already burned out in the UK in mid 1967, leaving some of the 2nd season shows and the entirty of the 3rd season of that show unbroadcast for many years.

I can find no evidence that Atlas served an legal injunction on Bantam to stop importation, on the basis that they retained UK reprint rights for Doc Savage.

Whatever the reason, the second wave of UK publication of Doc had ceased.

List of UK Bantam publication dates

Fourth Wave - March 1975 - July 1975 (UK versions of books #1 to #3) 

Early 1975 had seen an upswing in interest in Doc Savage with the news that famed movie director George Pal had secured the rights to all 181 Doc Savage novels, and was producing a cinema film ‘The Man of Bronze’ to be released in UK cinemas in July 1975.

Atlas Publishing & Distributing had be acquired by Seymour Press in 1965, so any UK publication rights they may have retained from their pulp reprints in the 1950s were up for grabs.

Bantam decided to produce three new versions of Doc Savage books #1-#3, this time under Transworld’s UK ‘Corgi’ imprint. The first book ‘The Man of Bronze’ was published on 20th March 1975, four months ahead of the UK film premiere. Inexplicably, unlike the US re-issue of the Man of Bronze with photos from the film, Corgi opted to reprint the 1964 version using the same plates, with no photo insert, but with a new cover painting likeness of Ron Ely as Doc Savage by Terence Gilbert. The book was priced at 35 new pence (35p = 78 cents US).

Three weeks later on 10th April 1975 publisher Panther released to strong reviews the UK version of Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life with a great cover by Richard Clifton-Dey, inspired by James Bama’s cover of #65 The Green Death.

© Panther Books. Painting by Richard Clifton-Dey

The week the film was released in the UK in London, the Corgi editions of #2 The Thousand-Headed Man and #3 Meteor Menace were published on July 24th 1975 with covers by Terence Gilbert, reworking James Bama’s covers for The Fantastic Island and Murder Melody respectively.

Corgi and Panther Doc book publication dates

The film had not yet moved out into the provinces, and Marvel decided to reprint the 1972 Marvel Doc Savage color comics in their UK weekly Marvel comic book “The Superheroes, starting with issue #23 on August 9th 1975. (The 1972 editions of the Marvel Doc Savage comic books had never been formally distributed in the UK). 

© Marvel & Conde Nast. Cover of The Superheroes #23

With generally negative reviews of the movie appearing in the UK press, any further publication of Corgi editions was put on hold. 

However, the re-broadcasting in the UK of the 1966 Batman TV series started in December 1975, and with it a resurgence in interest in high adventure.

Corgi revived tentative plans for a UK version of book #4 ‘The Polar Treasure’ with expected publication date of Feb 5th 1976. My pal Geoff and I stopped by our local bookshop ‘Robert Fludd Books’ in Southsea, UK that afternoon to be told that the book would not be published.

At that point, one of the few ways to source new Doc Savage paperbacks in the UK was through the offices of imports from SF specialist bookshop Dark They Were & Golden Eyed in London.

Fifth Wave - April 1977 - November 1977 (Books #86, #88, #89, #90)

Since the time of the premiere of the Doc Savage movie in 1975, Marvel had been receiving raves about the quality of their quarterly Black & White Doc Savage magazine, which combined well-researched text articles alongside a new comic book story, with covers graced by Bob Larkin and others. These were imported for general sale into the UK.

In addition, Marvel had included  a reprint of the Doc/Spidey team up from 

Giant-Size Spider-Man #3  "The Yesterday Connection!" in the UK hardback Spider-Man Annual 1977, on sale just in time for Christmas 1976.

© Marvel.  UK Spider-Man Annual 1977

With the magazines and Spider-Man annual achieving respectable sales, Bantam decided one final attempt to lodge Doc Savage in the UK public consciousness.

With no fanfare or advance publicity, book #86 ‘The Angry Ghost’ appeared on UK bookshelves on 21st April 1977. It was the authentic US edition, but with a 50p hand-stamp on the back cover. 

No sooner had #86 been published than Marvel cancelled their quarterly Doc Savage magazine with issue #8. The synergy with Marvel that Bantam had hoped for was gone. The writing was on the wall.

Book #87 (‘The Spotted Man’) was never published in the UK, with the next UK publication being #88 ‘The Roar Devil’ on July 30th. The Magic Island (#89) followed on Sept 22nd, with the final book #90 ‘The Flying Goblin’ appearing on Nov 24th 1977 with an increased back cover price of 60p.

© Conde Nast and Bantam. Back cover of UKPV "The Roar Devil"

Final set of Doc Savage stories published in the UK

And that was it for UK publications of Doc Savage. 

19 original pulps, 29 Atlas digests, 40 Bantam novels and 3 Corgi books in total. 

[1] Credit for the term “UKPV” goes to UK comic import researcher Stephen Cranch].

[2] Nov 1939 Atlas started printing Black Mask in the UK, whereas previously it had been printed in the US with UK pricing and ads for import by Atlas.

© Ian Baker, 2024