Thanks Jim - I had forgot about Secret Agent X-9. Somewhere I
have a coffeetable edition of the collected strips.
Re: The Micker, in the 90s Mike Danger was again a comic,
scripted by Spillane (with other writers; how much Mickey
really wrote of it is debatable.)
John
JIM DOHERTY wrote:
>
> John,
>
> Re you comment below:
>
> "Then there's Spillane - . . . "
>
> Interestingly, Spillane might be an example of
someone who DID start
> out in comics and then went to prose.
>
> Whether Spillane started out in prose or in comics,
it's certain that
> Mike Hammer started out as a comic book character
called MIKE DANGER.
> When, after being mustered out of the Army Air
Corps, Spillane was
> unable to put together a deal for a comic book with
Mike Danger as the
> cover feature, he reimagined the character as the
hero of a novel, and
> wrote I THE JURY. Eventually, Hammer, returning to
his roots, became
> the hero of a syndicated strip called FROM THE FILES
OF MIKE HAMMER,
> with Spillane contributing some of the
scripts.
>
> Curiously, Al Collins's first comics work (though it
didn't sell), was
> creating (with artist Ray Gotto) a proposed
syndicated newspaper strip
> called HEAVEN AND HELLER, about a Depression-era
Chicago PI named Nate
> Heller. When the strip didn't sell, he reimagined
the character as the
> hero of a prose novel and eventually wrote TRUE
DETECTIVE. When I
> pointed out this parallel between his career and
Spillane's, Collins,
> the consummate Spillane fan, claimed that this had
never occurred to him.
>
> Though HEAVEN AND HELLER didn't sell, syndicate
editors were
> sufficiently impressed that, when Chester Gould
retired, Al Collins
> was invited to try out for the TRACY gig.
>
> Other famous mystery writers who've plied their
trade in the comics
> medium include Dashiell Hammett, who created the
cops-&-robbers
> syndicated strip SECRET AGENT X-9 for Hearst's King
Features Syndicate
> as a response to the Tribune/News Syndicate's DICK
TRACY; Leslie
> Charteris, one of several writers who continued the
X-9 strip after
> Hammett's departure, and who also wrote many of the
scripts used for
> THE SAINT newspaper strip; Erle Stanley Gardner,
who, apparently,
> personally wrote the scripts for a short-lived PERRY
MASON syndicated
> strip; and Robert Leslie Bellem, who wrote comic
book scripts
> featuring Dan Turner which appeared alongside the
prose stories in the
> pulp magazine DAN TURNER - HOLLYWOOD
DETECTIVE.
>
> JIM DOHERTY
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Jun 2008 EDT