RARA-AVIS: Frank Miller and Max Allan Collins & Terry Beatty (apologies if r edux)

From: Todd Mason ( Todd.Mason@tvguide.com)
Date: 14 Nov 2002


Oddly, I thought I'd sent this mail some time ago today, but can't find any evidence.

Frank Miller is a guest on FRESH AIR today, the NPR interview show: www.whyy.org and the 91FM pages for streaming audio, right now (just after 3pm ET) and repeated at 7pm ET as streaming simulcast, and it will be archived, barring the flood or Miller's objections, as a sound file there.

I picked up a copy of a (Paperjacks?) mass-market paperback edition of MS. TREE a few months back as a drugstore remainder, but in that format the dialog is tiny enough for eyestrain, sadly. TM

-----Original Message----- From: Kevin Burton Smith [mailto: kvnsmith@thrillingdetective.com]

>I like Miller's work too, though I find his SIN CITY slightly hollow in
>comparison - although it is a wonderfully fun and highly stylised
>Chandler-Spillaine pastiche, with fantastic art.

I'd have to agree. Miller's skill with large areas of black ink far surpasses his writing skill. For crime comics, go with Vertigo's 100 BULLETS or some of their other mini-series, most of which are collected in graphic novels. SCENE OF THE CRIME and JONNY DOUBLE are particularly worth tracking down.

Going back a few years, Max Allan Collins (the Nate Heller series, etc.) and Terry Beatty's MS. TREE is still the yardstick by which a continuing series in the hard-boiled crime category should be judged. The series jumped from publisher to publisher, but most of it is available in graphic novel form. Nothing fancy, and Beatty's
"just-the-facts, Ma'am" drawing style is miles away from the stylized artistry of Miller or Risso, but like Collins meat-and-potatoes prose, or Ms. Tree herself, it gets the job done.

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