Doc Savage, GURPS Style

[Flyndaran]

The authors have said that Honesty does not mean just law abiding to the local authorities. It means following some set of rules that may be local laws or some other strict set of behaviors.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

The authors have said that Honesty does not mean just law abiding to the local authorities. It means following some set of rules that may be local laws or some other strict set of behaviors.

It doesn't mean making up your rules though. An Honest character follows the legal code of the culture they owe allegiance to in preference to all local laws when they come into conflict. But an Honest Doc Savage would have things set up so that the state legally turns over prisoners into his custody so that he can lobotomize them into good citizens. Which isn't entirely unbelievable during the 20s and 30s.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It doesn't mean making up your rules though. An Honest character follows the legal code of the culture they owe allegiance to in preference to all local laws when they come into conflict. But an Honest Doc Savage would have things set up so that the state legally turns over prisoners into his custody so that he can lobotomize them into good citizens. Which isn't entirely unbelievable during the 20s and 30s.

Is it clear that he didn't do that? Or might the author simply have not bothered to spell out all the details? After all, Doc had a brilliant lawyer among his allies, and supposedly he himself was more brilliant than any of his men at their chosen professions, which implies that he himself was a lawyer too.

Doc's actions don't really fit the "vigilante" paradigm very well; he was widely admired and most of what he did was in a blaze of publicity. And the 1930s weren't a big era for the rights of the accused, let alone the convicted.

[Flyndaran]

It was a time of forced sterilization and lobotomies of mentally ill and undesirables. A hypothetical genius truly capable of surgically reforming criminals would be worshiped just for that action, I think.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Is it clear that he didn't do that?

He didn't. When Doc or his men were left in possession of the field of conflict rather than calling the police, captured criminals vanished into unmarked vans and travelled to upstate New York.

Exactly what their treatment was is uncertain in the beginning. In one (and only one) early book it was Freudian couch therapy. When fully developed the idea seemed to be what later SF called a mindwipe with the recipient effectively becoming another person afterwards.

Lobotomies or excised glands are other persons projections onto the process and sometimes anachronistic ones at that.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Lobotomies or excised glands are other persons projections onto the process and sometimes anachronistic ones at that.

Are they? I'd see the phrase "crime gland"; did someone make it up subsequent to the publication of the original series?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Is it clear that he didn't do that? Or might the author simply have not bothered to spell out all the details? After all, Doc had a brilliant lawyer among his allies, and supposedly he himself was more brilliant than any of his men at their chosen professions, which implies that he himself was a lawyer too.

Doc's actions don't really fit the "vigilante" paradigm very well; he was widely admired and most of what he did was in a blaze of publicity. And the 1930s weren't a big era for the rights of the accused, let alone the convicted.

Well as I said it isn't entirely unbelievable.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Are they? I'd see the phrase "crime gland"; did someone make it up subsequent to the publication of the original series?

Yes, somebody else made that up long after the fact. There were no excised glands in the original material much less new and unknown ones that caused crime.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Yes, somebody else made that up long after the fact. There were no excised glands in the original material much less new and unknown ones that caused crime.

From a review of the The Annihilist from 1934. (The novella, not the review).

But it's the tragic figure of Sidney Lorrey and his twin brother Robert who appear in the most intense scenes. Skilled surgeons who work for Doc at the College, they are targeted for interrogation by Boke, who has used a fortune and many investigators to learn a bit about Doc's facility. Sidney goes through a nightmarish ordeal. A real, literal sadist named Leo tortures Sidney to the extent that the gangsters watching are nauseated, continuing even after it's clear the victim isn't going to talk. After the pop-eye death claims Leo, the bleeding and shaking Sidney discovers that his twin brother (tied and gagged on a couch) has actually been dead all along, jiggled by a hidden crook to make Sidney think he's still alive. This is enough to make anyone's mind snap.

If any criminals ever deserved to have their memories wiped clean, it's monsters like these. Leo chuckles about a squeamish thug, "I guess his crime gland ain't just right."

[Ed the Coastie]

My go-to sources for Doc Savage (and, for that matter, pretty much anyone else) is "Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life" and the various essays on the Wold-Newton Universe webpage. Great stuff, that, and chock full of material that has <ahem> "infected" my modern-day GURPS campaigns for more than 20 years.