November 1933: In the Depression, Was Doc Depressed?

The Shadow fought the gangsterism that grew out of the still-current Prohibition, but his Street and Smith brother at arms Doc Savage tackled the Great Depression itself — at least in one of his exploits.

A mental and physical marvel created by super-science, Doc began his adventures during the worst year of the Depression, 1933. Like the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film fantasies of the era, superheroes served as an emotional antidote to the depressing realities of the Depression.

Although even the cheap pulp magazines were hit hard by economic conditions, Street and Smith Publications’ hero pulps thrived.

“Between 1930-32, an estimated 85,000 American businesses failed, nine million savings accounts were wiped out by bank failures and half a million homeowners lost their houses,” noted author Will Murray. “In modern terms, it was a meltdown. As a result, by 1933 nearly 13 million people were thrown out of work — 120,000 in New York City alone.”

Escapism being the ticket, magazines and movies rarely addressed the Depression directly. But Doc Savage Magazine made an exception to that rule with its November 1933 issue, which featured Lester Dent’s novel The Czar of Fear. 

“Doc Savage in his most savior-like mode,” observed pop culture historian Dr. Hermes. “Instead of stowing away on a Zeppelin to Indo-China or tackling a weird menace in Tibet, he goes to a beaten-down manufacturing town in the Allegheny Mountains. Here, he fights unemployment and despair and hunger. In effect, this story is Doc vs. the Great Depression.”

In the process, the redoubtable Clark Savage Jr. finds himself accused of murder and up against police, gangsters and a mysterious costumed foe, the Green Bell.

With his vast wealth, Doc distributes food and buys up failed local businesses, promising jobs all around. That pits him directly against the Green Bell’s hooded gang, who use terrorist tactics in order to keep the town in poverty so that the Green Bell himself can gain complete economic control of the community.