Archie Comics has a deep bench of superheroes, although a lot of people probably don’t realize that.
Those thick, satisfying Archie Digests have provided a way for the publisher to bring its crimefighting paragons out of the 1940s and 1960s and onto 21st century supermarket shelves.
In his superhero identity of Pureheart the Powerful, Archie Andrews and his super-teenage pals have teamed up with any number of those champions, including the Shield, the Fireball, the Comet, the Jaguar, Captain Flag, Mr. Justice, Blackjack, the Boy Buddies, Fly Girl, Pow Girl and Steel Sterling.
The latter joined Pureheart to battle Suprema the Sorceress in World of Archie Digest 126 (Jan. 2023).
In a career that stretched back to Zip Comics 1 (Feb. 1940), Steel Sterling subdued such tough customers as the Black Knight, Twisto the Rubber Man, Inferno the Flame-Breather, the Rattler, the Creeper, the Puppet Master, Herr Kraht, Baron Gestapo, Der Hyena, Merry Ha Ha, a Nazi werewolf, living shadows, the invisible fairies called the Yehudis and even the Queen of the Amazons (who promptly fell in love with him).
Comics historian Kurt F. Mitchell noted that Zip’s “…main attraction was Steel Sterling, Man of Steel, a superhero strip by Abner Sundell and Charles Biro. After giving himself ‘the resistance, the magnetism and the strength of steel,’ scientist John Sterling began a one-man war on crime as the costumed Steel. In the third episode, ‘as a blind to both police and underworld,’ Steel adopted an alternate identity, that of his own twin brother, a non-powered private eye.”
“Steel Sterling was all headlong action, smashing, bashing and crashing his way through walls, monsters and gangsters in his early adventures,” noted comics historian Lou Mougin in Secondary Superheroes of Golden Age Comics. “His tactics were swiped straight from Superman: when amidst a horde of unfriendly folks, he leaped straight up and let them crash into each other. Then he tore loose a huge leather drive belt from some nearby machinery, quickly looped it around his foes, and tied up the whole throng of them. Then, when three others stabbed him with knives that broke off at the hilts, he slugged them, tied them up in a human knot and smashed nonchalantly through a brick wall to get where he was going.”
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