The Phantom City

Lester Dent (b. 1904) was an American pulp fiction author and master of adventure storytelling. He was best known as the primary creator and prolific ghostwriter behind the iconic superhero archetype Doc Savage under the house pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Born in Missouri and raised partly on a ranch in Wyoming, Dent worked as a telegraph operator before breaking into professional writing in the late 1920s. After moving to New York City in 1931, publisher Street and Smith hired him to develop the Doc Savage series, which quickly became one of the most successful and enduring franchises in pulp magazine history.

Dent authored more than 150 Doc Savage adventures alongside westerns, aviation tales, and detective fiction until his death in 1959. His imaginative gadgets, fast-paced narratives, and influential formula for mystery and action helped shape the development of modern comic book superheroes.

Essential Reading

• The Man of Bronze (1933): Doc Savage investigates the suspicious death of his father and uncovers a lost Mayan civilization in Central America.
• The Thousand-Headed Man (1934): The bronze adventurer travels into the treacherous jungles of Indochina to stop a sinister cult and solve a kidnapping.
• The Lost Oasis (1933): Doc Savage journeys into the Sahara Desert to rescue abducted aviators and find a hidden civilization.
• The Polar Treasure (1933): Doc and his team race ruthless adversaries across the icy Arctic to locate an elusive sunken treasure.
• The Phantom City (1933): A perilous expedition into the Arabian desert leads Doc Savage to an ancient subterranean metropolis hidden beneath the sands.
• Fear Cay (1934): Doc Savage confronts a centuries-old villain searching for an elusive fountain of youth in the Caribbean.
• The Mystic Mullah (1935): Doc battles a terrifying mastermind who uses luminous green death and supernatural illusions to terrorize Central Asia.
• Mystery under the Sea (1936): Doc Savage descends into ocean depths to investigate sabotage and a menacing undersea conspiracy.
• The Golden Peril (1937): Doc works to prevent an international economic crisis caused by massive amounts of counterfeit gold flooding global markets.
• The Terror in the Navy (1937): Doc uncovers an espionage scheme involving high-tech acoustic weapons targeting American naval vessels.
• The Green Eagle (1938): An airborne menace terrorizes the skies as Doc Savage hunts down an extortionist piloting a lethal aircraft.
• The Stone Man (1939): Doc Savage tracks a bizarre criminal operation capable of turning living human beings into petrified stone.
• Mad Mesa: A Doc Savage Adventure (1939): Doc journeys to the American West to uncover a deadly conspiracy tied to a sprawling mountain ranch.