SECRET AGENT X-9 : The 1983 collection of the strips is available at Bud Plant's (lost the URL, but it should be easy to find with Yahoo!). It reprints the first four stories by Hammett, and the 5th by Leslie Charteris. PAUL AUSTER : City Of Glass was adapted in comics by David Mazzuchelli. Don't remember the publisher. MAX ALLAN COLLINS : Max Allan Collins is co-creator with artist Terry Beatty of the very hardboiled comic Ms Tree, a female Mike Hammer. 50 monthly issues were published by various independant publishers, and 10 quarterlies by DC, making it one of the longest detective comics (far beyong Dick Tracy, also written at the time by Collins!) They also created Wild Dog (DC) and bought the rights to the classic Johnny Dynamite series (Dark Horse). All these comics are easily available (and quite cheap!) at : Mile High Comics, http://www.milehighcomics.com/ MICKEY SPILLANE : Spillane worked on super-hero comics (Sub-Mariner) in the '40s. He then developped a P.I. series named Mike Danger, but it wasn't published and Spillane reworked the character as Mike Hammer. Mike Danger finally appeared in comics in 1995, written by Max Allan Collins and published by Tekno/Big. The 1950's P.I. is revived in 2050 N.Y., where his hardboiled manners make a threat to the sanitized world order. A very fine series! STARY BULLETS : Written and drawn by David Lapham, published by El Capitan (Lapham's own publishing structure!). The very best noir comics series ever published! A dozen issues have already been published, the first ones have been reprinted in a deluxe hardback collection. Just a word of caution: Read the stories in order! (The pages are numbered from #1 !) STERANKO : Chandler: Red Tide is the name of a short novel written and illustrated by Jim Steranko. Probably hard to find now, but well worth the trouble. OTHER COMICS : The comics listed by Flavio and here are the more easily available crime comics published in the last 15 years, but they're hardly the only ones. If you're interested in the subject and live near a comics specialized shop, check out their independents/small press titles for some truly harboiled stuff. Laurent - # RARA-AVIS: To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" # to majordomo@icomm.ca