Re: RARA-AVIS: Max Collins

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 10 Jun 2004


Miker,

Re Stewart's comments below:

> I can't really say, since I won't read anything by
> him on the basis of some
> terrible comic books he has written. In particular
> the Ms. Tree series, of
> which I've read about half, having bought them based
> on comments here.
> What was terrible about the comics was Collin's
> totally unimaginative use
> of the panels themselves to elevate the stories.
> His comics were
> essentially
> short stories turned into comics in the most
> workaday manner possible. The
> stories weren't that good to begin with, either. To
> me that shows a
> profound
> disrespect for the genre, and more importantly, for
> the reader. I am so
> angry at those crappy books, I won't look at his
> other stuff, under the
> assumption that he shows the same level of
> professionalism in all genres.

I very much LIKED the Ms. Tree series, which I regard as the best PI series ever done in the comics medium, and that includes RIP KIRBY, VIC FLINT, the syndicated MIKE HAMMER strip, and the recent Chandler adaptations.

However, I do agree with Stewart to this degree. If you like Ms. Tree, you'll like his prose work. If you don't, you probably won't.

Collins is prolific, but he's not a hack. And remember, he's a full-time writer. If you spent 40 a week writing, even if you were very careful and did a lot of revising, you'd probably be pretty prolific, too.

Further, occasionally, since he writes a lot of stuff on spec, when he has a lot of stuff out simultaneously, much of it is stuff that was done several years ago that he's just now sold.

His best books and stories are the Nate Heller historical PI series, and the connected Eliot Ness historical police procedural series (connected since Ness appears in the Heller stories and Heller in the Ness stories; the best Ness novel, BUTCHER'S DOZEN, was expanded from a Heller short story, "The Strawberry Teardrop"). My favorite Heller novel is probably the first, TRUE DETECTIVE, one of the best PI novels ever written. My favorite Ness is the aforementioned BUTCHER'S DOZEN.

JIM DOHERTY

        
                
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