Hi Kevin, One of the websites dedicated to The Spider,
describe him as one of the first masked superheroes. It
describes the Spider's novels as Batman vs. The Army of
Darkness as directed by John Woo.
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Kevin Burton Smith
<kvnsmith@...> wrote:
>
> Chuck wrote:
>
> > This probably not hardboiled, but Baen is
reprinting The Spider
> > stories by Gerald W. Page from the 1930s. I
just finished the
first
> > paperback 'Robat Titans of Gotham', and really
enjoyed it.
Nostalgia
> > Ventrues is also reprinting The Shadow. Are
there any other
writers of
> > this type of story that people might
recommend?
>
> (All together now)
>
> Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na BATMAN!!!!
>
> Okay, there may be a comic book or two featuring
Batman, but you
> probably mean prose stories.
>
> There have been some pretty good Batman short
stories and even
novels
> in prose form, particularly in the nineties, and at
his best,
Batman's
> always had a hard, noirish edge to him. My guess is
it was the
> animated series ( a popular AND critical success,
surprisingly
subtle
> and nuanced) done for "kids", not the increasingly
dreadful and
> increasingly campy movies done for children, that
helped attract
some
> of the better crime writers of the era to take a
whack at the
Bat:
> Greg Rucka, Joe Lansdale, Stuart Kaminsky, Max Allan
Collins,
James
> Ellroy, etc. In fact, some of them also wrote for
the series, if
I'm
> not mistaken, and there were a couple of collections
of Batman
stories
> published about the same time. And of course,
there's THE DARK
KNIGHT
> set to open soon on the multiplex near you,
thankfully not based
on
> Frank Miller's over-rated piece of graphic novel
sludge (which,
more
> than anything, is why I dreaded him getting his
hooks on Marlowe).
>
> And of course Batman himself made his debut in issue
#27 of
DETECTIVE
> COMICS, a monthly collection of hard-boiled comic
stories inspired
by
> the then-popular detective pulps.
>
> Kevin
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
removed]
>
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