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
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