“Yesterday’s” Comic> Sarge Steel #8

At some point we went from Mike Hammer to James Bond.

Sarge Steel #8

FINAL ISSUE

Charlton Comic Group (March/April, 1966)

“The Case Of The Terrible Talon”

CREATOR: Joe Matsui

WRITER: Joe Gill

ARTISTS: Montes & Basche

LETTERER: Jon D’Agostino

[Read along with me here]

Agents in West Germany seek Sarge’s aid in stopping a terrorist group from East Germany led by a man called Talon. Talon makes various attempts to scare off Sarge but later kidnaps him. Except Sarge was hoping to get kidnapped, as he prepared to capture Talon and bring him to West Germany for trial. Talon’s men try to grab him from the trial only to be taken out by West German forces and Sarge. Talon’s punishment is that his government will be told he betrayed them, forcing him to be on the run forever. (Yeah, we’ll come back to that.)

What they got right: There is some good action, and Sarge’s secretary at least gets to plant a kiss on him before the series ends.

What they got wrong: That’s Talon’s punishment? Go on the run? What’s to stop him from going after Sarge later, or finding a way to convince his people they lied about him turning traitor? There’s a girl in here but she contributes nothing to the story and is just there for obligations. The most annoying part is every time Talon or Steel breaks out a gadget out of 007’s adventures they have to shove in this distracting note about how they’ll tell us in the final story how it works. They live up to the promise but it got annoying after a while. We’ll get there on our own, or just tell us once “more about the gadgets in this story after the ending”.

What I think overall: I’m disappointed this didn’t stay a noir detective story, even dropping Sarge’s narration. Apparently they really wanted to do a spy story given the villains he fought early on, and had to push to move the character in that direction. Or maybe someone in management wanted a James Bond type character and made them rework this one as the only non-costumed crimefighter. Either way, it feels like a waste. DC would inherit this character when they bought Charlton’s “Action” line and while they’ve managed to do stuff with him, I can see why this run failed. Maybe he works better as a supporting character, but I haven’t seen those stories. Going by this one they didn’t know how to write him as the main one.