November 1965: That Other Man of Steel

Like superheroes, fictional private detectives generally find themselves in the freelance justice business. And yet unlike superheroes, private eyes have rarely thrived in comic books. Perhaps they just aren’t colorful enough for four colors.

My favorite of the lot was Charlton’s Sarge Steel, a private detective created by Pat Masulli, scripted by Joe Gill and drawn by Dick Giordano. 

Steel appeared in 10 issues of his own title from December 1964 through October 1967, finally resurfacing much later in DC Comics.

The character updated the 40-year-old image of the heroic private investigator by setting it against the background of a contemporary war. Max Allan Collins has noted that Steel was the first fictional private eye to be a Vietnam veteran. 

And like a superhero, that experience provided him an “origin.”

Steel was on furlough, dancing with a pretty girl in Saigon, when a Viet Cong hand grenade was lobbed into the room at him. Seizing it in his left hand, the stoic, grimacing hero held the grenade out the window as it exploded.

So it was that Steel found himself sent home sporting a relatively “realistic” superhero attribute — a shiny steel fist that could be used to batter down doors or even a deflect a stray bullet. He hit people only with his right, however, because his left would have killed them. 

The title of his title shifted from Sarge Steel Private Eye to Sarge Steel Special Agent to Secret Agent.

At the time Sarge Steel was published, Charlton Comics was on the way to establishing a brand featuring marginally more realistic heroes than DC or Marvel, to be billed in ads as “Action Heroes” rather than superheroes. 

They included an unauthorized Jungle Tales of Tarzan title, a commando unit called The Fightin’ Five, the masked western hero Gunmaster and a handful of out-and-out superheroes — Captain Atom, Thunderbolt, Son of Vulcan and a Blue Beetle powered by ancient Egyptian magic (soon replaced by a non-super-powered version). 

December 1964: Tarzan in the Legal Jungle

For a few months there in 1964 and 1965, readers could buy Tarzan comic books from two publishers. Gold Key offered the authorized adventures of the Lord of the Jungle and Charlton Comics published four issues of Jungle Tales of Tarzan, based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1916 book about the wild boyhood of Lord Greystoke.

“Under a Pat Masulli cover which seems to want to evoke the fantastic physique of Tarzan actor Gordon Scott, we find the first of several stories by ERB adapted from his stories of the Ape Man when he was growing up among the Mangani and learning the ways of the varied denizens of the jungle,” observed blogger Rip Jagger. “These are often charming stories filled with wonder and well suited to the perceived youthful audience for comics during the early ’60s.”

But not for long.

“Unfortunately it turns out that the ERB estate took legal issue with those who appeared to be using Tarzan’s name in vain and they brought the various productions to a halt including Charlton’s, seizing all the artwork and the materials related to it,” Jagger said. “Jungle Tales of Tarzan as a comic book disappeared from the stands and it became a taboo topic within the halls of (Charlton’s offices in) Derby (Connecticut).”

The Tarzan rights were all over the map in those days, with both Ballantine and Ace publishing Burroughs’ actual Tarzan novels, and somebody called “Gold Star Books” publishing fake, plagiarized Tarzan novels purportedly written by “Barton Werper” (an archenemy of Tarzan’s, appropriately enough. A nice in-joke there).

Five such titles were released — Tarzan and the Silver Globe (1964), Tarzan and the Cave City (1964), Tarzan and the Snake People (1964), Tarzan and the Abominable Snowman (1965) and Tarzan and the Winged Invaders (1965) — before ERB, Inc. sued them out of existence. Because unsold copies were ordered destroyed, these awful novels are quite collectible.

And so, too, are Charlton’s well regarded handful of Tarzan issues. 

August 1955: All My Atomic Bunnies

Charlton Comics, which rarely failed to copy any popular trend or character (The Lone Ranger, Casper the Friendly Ghost, etc.), offered multiple Mighty Mouse knock-offs that interested me as a child.

All were caped, black-clad funny animal heroes who — in one of those derangements peculiar to the nuclear-nervous 1950s — used the word “Atomic” as a synonym for “Super” in their names.

So we had Atomic Mouse, Atom the Cat (a Tom Cat, get it?) and two atomic Leporidae, along with one magical one.

In 1955, Atomic Rabbit gained the powers of flight and super strength by eating irradiated carrots.

The talented artist Al Fago “…handled Atomic Rabbit from his first appearance, dated Aug. 1955, through the end of the series under that name — #11, dated March, 1958. As of #12, it was changed to Atomic Bunny, and it’s not certain they’re the same character,” comics historian Don Markstein noted. “Bunny looked like Rabbit in the first issue, (although) drawn by Charlton’s editor, Pat Masulli, but his appearance changed radically after that. Then, he was back to his former appearance with the last issue (Dec. 1959).”

 “Funny animal superheroes have been a part of the animation and comic book scenes since the days of Mighty Mouse and Supermouse, respectively — almost as long as human superheroes have been around, in fact,” Markstein noted. “Marvel had Super Rabbit, DC had The Terrific Whatzit, Fox had Cosmo Cat etc. But the biggest concentration of the sub-genre was at Charlton Comics during the 1950s, which had Happy the Magic Bunny, Atom the Cat, and several others — in fact, its longest-lasting superhero title ever was Atomic Mouse.”

Happy the Magic Bunny was Charlton’s barely retooled version of Fawcett’s Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, who’d debuted in 1942, the same year as Mighty Mouse.

When Captain Marvel and his pals were legally hounded out of business by Superman, Hoppy/Happy remained quietly on Charlton’s back pages, the last surviving member of the once million-selling Marvels.