1934-06 The King Maker - Bronze IconBronze Icon

Cover Date: June 1934
Volume 3 # 4
Copyright Date: May 18, 1934
Author: Lester Dent and Harold A. Davis
Editor: John Nanovic
WHMC: The collection contains ten folders for this story, f.169-178
Recurring Characters. The entire Iron Crew are all present in this story.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Free Doc Savage Portrait: Coupon Number 2
The King Maker by Kenneth Robeson
Rawhide Wrath by Don Lawrence
Jungle Doom by G. O. Mack
Shark Men by Walter Wayne

Doc Savage Club
– The Brave and the Meek
– The Doc Savage Code
– Termites Not Ants

From Our Members
– Howard Driver, North Carolina
– John P. Gauthier, Canada
– Harold Van Wert, Pennsylvania

Doc Savage and his crew travel to the Balkan country of Calbia to aid King Dal Le Galbin in putting down a revolution in this adventure. Coincidentally, in 1932, King Zog I of Albania, a country located on the Balkan Peninsular, faced a minor insurrection in his country, which was easily defeated.

Princess Gusta uses a hypodermic needle to inject Doc Savage with a drug and incapacitate him. Later Count Cozonac arrives to rescue Doc. He is stabbed with the hypodermic and passes out. Princes Gusta and Captain Flancul go to question Doc. Instead, they are captured. Doc Savage explains that he had emptied the hypodermic’s contents as a precaution earlier when all the Calbians were unconscious from the anesthetic gas to which they were exposed. So, what happened to Count Cozonac since the needle did not have a drug?!!! Perhaps Count Cozonac fainted…

Dent is using a Romanian language book for the foreign dialogue in the story.

Captain Flancul: Flancul means flank.

Count Cozonac is described as being made of bubbles. Cozonac is Romanian for sponge cake.

Gusta means “to taste or experience.”

Muta means move or displace which is appropriate as he is part of a gang that wants to remove or displace King Galbin.

Doc poses as a poor peasant named Botezul which means baptism in Romanian.

Galbin does not show up as a word but “galben” does. It means golden or fair as in blonde.

The story mentions that Calbia has some high production oil fields located within its borders. This would fit the profile of Romania which was a major oil producer. But it also fits Albania where oil was first discovered in 1918 in the Patos-Marinza field. The country saw its first major production in 1928 with the discovery of the Driza oil bearing formation.

The trip to Calbania is made via ocean liner which would fit Albania as it is bordered by the Adriatic Sea and the Ionian Sea on its western shores.

Dalmatia was another Balkan country that existed as a separate entity up until the end of World War I. After the war, its territory was split with most of it becoming part of Yugoslavia which was known at the time as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The smaller northern portion around Zadar became part of Italy. This is a likely basis for King Dal’s name.