Dr. Satan™

Character History

History & Public Domain Status

Dr. Satan™ first appeared in The Mysterious Dr. Satan (1940), a 15-chapter Republic Pictures serial originally planned for Superman before licensing fell through. The villainous doctor battled the masked hero Copperhead with a blend of mad science, robotics, and ruthless schemes.

Because Republic’s copyrights on the serial lapsed, Dr. Satan now resides in the public domain. Unlike characters with ongoing comic or publishing appearances, he has remained untouched in modern media, leaving his pulp-era imagery and stories free for reinterpretation.

In our stories, Dr. Satan™, AKA Anton Saetanov, is reinvented as a chilling figure with roots in wartime atrocities and scientific corruption. Cold, precise, and disturbingly articulate, he manipulates both machines and minds. His schemes extend beyond simple villainy, pulling threads of conspiracy, addiction, and control into a larger, evolving web.

Our Dr. Satan remains a scientist of nightmares, but reframed for modern readers — a figure whose menace lies not only in robots and gadgets, but in his unsettling ability to turn society’s progress against itself.