Sailor Steve Costigan is a merchant sailor on the Sea Girl and is also its champion boxer. His only true companion is a bulldog named Mike, named after his brother and fellow boxer, “Iron” Mike Costigan. Costigan, one of Robert E. Howard’s humorous boxing pulp heroes, roamed the Asiatic seas with fists of steel, a will of iron, and a head of wood. He is an Irish American from Galveston, Texas, a heavyweight boxer, weighing 190 lb and standing 6 ft (1.8 m) tall. He has the “Black Irish” combination of blue eyes and black hair. The Sailor Steve Costigan stories were very popular in the pages of Fight Stories, Action Stories, and the short-lived Jack Dempsey’s Fight Magazine. Howard used understatement and misdirection to create humor. He established Costigan as a most unreliable narrator, a sailor who cannot admit when he has had a lot to drink, does not realize he is a terrible judge of character, and acts before he thinks. Told in a jaunty first-person style and in the past tense, the Costigan stories are presented in a slang-riddled, colloquial fashion. Costigan and Dennis Dorgan, renamed for a different publication, are the same character, acting, speaking, and fighting in exactly the same way.
Alias Sailor Steve Costigan, Dennis Dorgan
Real Names/Alt Names Steve Costigan, Dennis Dorgan
Appearance List 20 Steve Costigan stories published in Fight Stories, Action Stories, and Jack Dempsey’s Fight Magazine, 7 Steve Costigan stories published posthumously, 2 Dennis Dorgan stories published in Magic Carpet Magazine, 9 Dennis Dorgan stories published posthumously.
Sample Read “Sailor’s Grudge” from Fight Stories (March 1930) [PGAU]
Description Sailor Steve Costigan is a merchant sailor on the Sea Girl and is also its champion boxer. His only true companion is a bulldog named Mike, named after his brother and fellow boxer, “Iron” Mike Costigan. Costigan, one of Robert E. Howard’s humorous boxing pulp heroes, roamed the Asiatic seas with fists of steel, a will of iron, and a head of wood. He is an Irish American from Galveston, Texas, a heavyweight boxer, weighing 190 lb and standing 6 ft (1.8 m) tall. He has the “Black Irish” combination of blue eyes and black hair. The Sailor Steve Costigan stories were very popular in the pages of Fight Stories, Action Stories, and the short-lived Jack Dempsey’s Fight Magazine. Howard used understatement and misdirection to create humor. He established Costigan as a most unreliable narrator, a sailor who cannot admit when he has had a lot to drink, does not realize he is a terrible judge of character, and acts before he thinks. Told in a jaunty first-person style and in the past tense, the Costigan stories are presented in a slang-riddled, colloquial fashion. Costigan and Dennis Dorgan, renamed for a different publication, are the same character, acting, speaking, and fighting in exactly the same way.
