Then-thirty-eight-year-old American graphic artist, comic book writer/artist, comics historian, magician, publisher, and film production illustrator James F. “Jim” Steranko’s Savage Supermachine Pistol Mark II Specifications debuted in Brotherhood of Bronze Bulletin No. 3 (13 Sep 1977) and has since become the “go-to” image for Doc Savage’s “supermachine pistol” (34 issues), “superfirer” (29 issues), “rapidfirer/rapid-firer/rapid firer” (27 issues), “super-firing machine pistol” (8 issues), “mercy pistol” (8 issues), “pistollike [sic] machine gun" (5 issues), “super-firing pistol” (4 issues), “compact machine gun” (four issues), “[tiny] machine-gun [pistol]” (four issues), “compact continuously-automatic pistol” (3 issues), “supermachine gun” (3 issues), and “super-firing machine gun” (1 issue).
Because Steranko went overboard trying to reconcile two different feed mechanisms, one from the text and the other artistic license on the part of both cover and interior art illustrators, while ignoring a third drum magazine option mounted on the top favored by co-author Harold A. Davis, he got most of it wrong.
Everything in front of the trigger guard was never there. It’s just as big, if not bigger, than the unwieldy M1928 Thompson submachine gun on which it was modeled and certainly can’t be worn in a shoulder holster, which Dent quaintly called an “armpit” holster, as described in the original pulp magazines and paperback reprints.
Now, forty-eight years after the fact, MARS Publishing illustrator David Pipgras and DNA Entertainment are proud to present the Doc Savage® Supermachine Pistol Mark I, the only visualization of the weapon to fully match the descriptions in the novels.
