Canada’s National Post marks the 75th birthday of “the original Superman,” Clark Savage Jr. — Doc Savage — who first appeared in March 1933 in Doc Savage Magazine #1:

Doc Savage had an immediate, freakish impact. Trained from childhood to a point of physical and mental perfection, Doctor Clark Savage Jr. could perform delicate brain surgery one minute and battle vicious criminals the next — sometimes knocking them out by pressing nerves at the base of the skull. Years in the tropics left him so tanned he was nicknamed the “Man of Bronze.” Exposure to unspecified “Oriental wise men,” meanwhile, gave him great control over his emotions but also the habit of making a strange, trilling sound during moments of intense concentration or stress.

A secret gold mine in Central America made Doc Savage one of the world’s richest people, and he spent this wealth on an array of gadget-laden cars, planes and boats. (He also had miniature devices hidden on his person, some of them in a special belt.) He maintained headquarters on the 86th floor of an unnamed New York skyscraper — apparently the Empire State Building — but also had a mysterious “Fortress of Solitude” in northern Canada, “north of Hudson Bay” and “near the Arctic Circle.”

The most-shocking detail, however, was what he did to the evildoers he captured: At a covert institute in upstate New York, they were subjected to brain surgery and drugs until they became nice.

The popularity of the Man of Bronze spawned radio shows, countless comic-book adaptations and, to date, one movie. Doc Savage also influenced the creation of countless comic heroes, from Superman and Batman to Tom Strong and Doc Brass.

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