Sarge Steel

About Sarge Steel

Sarge Steel is a Charlton Comics comic book series from the mid-1960s about a hardboiled private eye with a mechanical left hand. It ran for eight issues, from December 1964 to March-April 1966, then continued under the title Secret Agent until issue #10 in October 1967. Steel's cases generally involved international intrigue, and by issue #6 he had become a "special agent."

Editor Pat Masulli is credited with creating the character, and the stories were written by Joe Gill and drawn by Dick Giordano, with the team of Bill Montes and Ernie Bache later taking over the art. Issue #1 leads with the 20-page "File #101 The Case of the Pearls of Death" by Gill and Giordano. It is backed by "The OSS in WW II," a short comic drawn by Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico, a text article on the events that sparked World War I, and a one-page war story by Sam Glanzman.

In his book The Fine Art of Murder, writer Max Allan Collins notes that Steel was the first fictional private eye to be a Vietnam veteran. DC Comics later bought the character along with Charlton's other "Action Heroes," and in DC's stories he has been put in charge of the government agencies that deal with superhuman activities.

On LiveComics, every issue here plays panel by panel, with each line voiced by a full cast, plus sound effects and a score.

Sources, checked October 2026: Wikipedia: Sarge Steel · Grand Comics Database: Sarge Steel (Charlton, 1964 series) · Grand Comics Database: Sarge Steel #1 (Charlton, December 1964) · Don Markstein's Toonopedia: Sarge Steel · CBR: Comic Book Legends Revealed #323