Mister 8

Sarge Steel Commission piece by Dick Giordano

As I said in my initial post on the passing of Dick Giordano, I’ve been planning a Sarge Steel Week since starting Mister 8. I wrote to Giordano in February of last year to inquire as to the possibility of an interview. He responded favorably, and provided answers to a first round of questions. But soon, it was convention season, and the last round of questions I submitted went unanswered. I never pushed the subject, but I wish I had now.

In any case, what follows is an all-too brief email exchange with Dick Giordano on the subject of Sarge Steel, conducted in March of 2009:

Mister 8: Sarge Steel is credited as a Pat Masulli creation, and I’m struggling a bit to place the timeline here. Had Masulli been promoted to general manager, with you taking on the role of managing editor at this point?

Dick Giordano: No, I believe Pat’s title at the time was still Managing Editor and I was a staff artist given the assignment. He became General Manager much later and I took his position as Managing Editor. Neither title is correct in publishing circles and were assigned to people who handled the business of publishing, not the creative.

M8: How much of the character concept was Masulli’s, and how much was the work of you and Joe Gill? Did Masulli approach the two of you with, “I’ve got an idea for a character,” and you ran with it from there?

DG: Pat wrote the first script, loosely in pencil, as I recall.  The steel fist was his idea and Sarge Steel and Bess were his names.  I was responsible for the design of the characters including the Y-shaped scar at the bridge of Sarge’s nose and his brush cut and style of dress.  I designed Bess with an eye to satisfying my desire to draw good looking, sexy female characters. She was never developed as a strong character, which I would insist on doing now.  She was, unfortunately, just eye candy.  Like every supporting  female character of the times.

I don’t recall how the assignment got to Joe Gill’s typewriter but I do recall Pat saying that he couldn’t do it regularly.  Joe and I discussed it briefly and I was given carte blanche to make alterations I thought would make the story better.  Joe, Pat and I were on staff and did most of our work in the same office in normal business hours so consulting with each other never presented a problem.

M8: How do you see Sarge Steel fitting in with the (for the most part) non-powered “Action Heroes” line that also featured Blue Beetle and (my all-time favorite comic character) The Question? He shares an enemy with Judo Master, so he’s certainly part of the shared universe, but how does he fit thematically with the other costumed heroes?

DG: He didn’t have a costume but he WAS an Action Hero, no?  After a while he was delegated to the back-up slot in Judo-Master.  I’ve never been a big fan of continuity and it never reared it’s ugly head at Charlton.  Sarge was in the Korean conflict (I think  [Dick remembers wrongly here -- Sarge was in Vietnam; according to Max Allen Collins, he was the first P.I. who was a Vietnam veteran]), where he lost his left hand and Judo Master was active in WW ll.

M8: How did you define the look of Sarge? Did he have a physical model, like an actor, to influence his appearance? Was the tall, crooked nosed, dark-haired, well-dressed version that we see in the comics the first version you developed?

DG: Actually, he was patterned somewhat after me.  I made him taller, older and heavier, and traded in my pompadour for a crew cut.  Sarge was wishful thinking on my part…I wanted to look ( and BE ) like him.  I used myself as a model on some of the art. I was well dressed in those days wearing a jacket and tie to the office every day ( the plant we worked in was NOT air conditioned) and wore cuff links and a tie bar.

M8: How did you go about deciding on the style of the book. Though Sarge is, especially at first, a throw-back to P.I.s of the days of film noir, his visual style is all 60s-era secret agent. He has to be the most well-dressed comic book character…maybe ever. And he drives that beautiful Jaguar XKE / E-Type. Did you go in with a sense that you wanted Sarge to be a very modern, contemporary character?

DG: He was originally a combination of Mike Hammer and Sam Spade, my favorite tough guy private detectives. Later, we added a bit of the secret agent mystique when 007 was a rage. Someone of authority at Charlton ordered the change to make Sarge a secret agent to hop on the James Bond bandwagon. I stopped drawing it at that point.

The Jaguar roadster was my favorite car of the time and I bought a model car to draw from.  I still have the model.  I wanted him to be suave and honest and tough…and very contempory.

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And sadly, that’s as much as we finished. I’d hoped to talk next about the legendary and prolific Joe Gill, and the factory-like process at Charlton, but alas, it was not meant to be.

I will respectfully disagree with Giordano on the subject of Sarge Steel’s attire. Other comic book heroes and villains wore off-the-rack suits, but Sarge was one of the few who you could tell wore bespoke suits. In looking at pictures of Giordano at the time, one suspects the style came directly from the artist.