Sgt. Streetwise was a photographic comic series published in the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 Eagle

Eagle (comic)

Eagle was a seminal British children's comic, first published from 1950 to 1969, and then in a relaunched format from 1982 to 1994. It was founded by Marcus Morris, an Anglican vicar from Lancashire. Morris edited a parish magazine called The Anvil, but felt that the church was not communicating...

, from issue 1 (dated March 27, 1982) to at least issue 78 (dated September 17, 1983). It was written by Gerry Finley-Day

Gerry Finley-Day

Gerry Finley-Day was a prolific British comics writer from the 1960s to the 1980s, best known as the creator of Rogue Trooper.He started out at D. C. Thomson & Co., before becoming the editor of IPC's girls' title Tammy in 1971, for which he wrote strips such as "Ella on Easy Street" and "The Camp...

 with photography by Dave Watts.

Plot

The action

Action genre

The word action has more than one meaning in fiction. Action is one of the fiction-writing modes authors use to present fiction. The term is also used to describe an exiting event or circumstance.-Action as a fiction-writing mode:...

-based strip featured Detective

Detective

A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...

 Sergeant

Sergeant

Sergeant is a rank used in some form by most militaries, police forces, and other uniformed organizations around the world. Its origins are the Latin serviens, "one who serves", through the French term Sergent....

 Wise (his first name never being given), a special police

Police

The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...

 operative working undercover

Undercover

Being undercover is disguising one's own identity or using an assumed identity for the purposes of gaining the trust of an individual or organization to learn secret information or to gain the trust of targeted individuals in order to gain information or evidence...

 to the point of living in a boarding house

Boarding house

A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...

 pretending to be an odd-job man. Many of the early strips in Eagle were photographed rather than hand-drawn; to maximise the impact of the 'realistic' format Wise was a master of disguise

Disguise

A disguise can be anything which conceals or changes a person's physical appearance, including a wig, glasses, makeup, costume or other ways. Camouflage is one type of disguise for people, animals and objects...

, with strips involving Wise infiltrating criminal gangs, being incognito, or even simply using his knowledge of human perception to hide in some elaborate manner.

Wise's superior was Inspector

Inspector

Inspector is both a police rank and an administrative position, both used in a number of contexts. However, it is not an equivalent rank in each police force.- Australia :...

 Taggert (created before the TV show

Taggart

Taggart is a Scottish detective television programme, created by Glenn Chandler, who has written many of the episodes, and made by STV Productions for the ITV network...

 of similar name), who would brief Wise on missions by phoning up as his "Uncle George", or even encounter him as a seemingly random passer-by.

Wise was occasionally accompanied by Constable

Constable

A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions.-Etymology:...

Botham, who in the tradition of British police fiction, was an incompetent buffoon, jeopardising missions and often striking up conversations with criminals believing they were Wise in disguise.

Publication

Sgt. Streetwise appeared intermittently in Eagle issues, and continued when Eagle converted to a fully drawn format; however the strip's premise was not as visually effective without the confines of the photo-strip format, and the strip was soon discontinued.