Michael,
Re your comments below:
"Išve since made contact with the literary agent who holds the rights to
Michael Shayne and she was adamant that the property would not be used in
comics. It was the first time Išve actually encountered someone who
'verbally' held the graphic medium in such low esteem. Funny in that I
attempted to explain to her that our interest was in a pulp sized digest
with painted covers and spot black and white line art along with essay
material on the various writers associated with the property along with all
the other ancillary material such as films and stuff...she just scoffed.
Hmmmm, I guess it takes all kinds to make a world. I wish her luck in
selling this property for an exorbitant sum in today/s market."
So, let me see if I've got this straight.
There's been both a Sherlock Holmes comic strip and several different comic books, from Classics Illustrated to DC to Marvel. There's been a Nero Wolfe comic strip. There've been several different Ellery Queen comic books. There's been a Mike Hammer comic strip, and Hammer was actually created for comic books as Mike Danger. There was both a Perry Mason newspaper strip and several Perry Mason comic books. There's still, to this day, a James Bond newspaper strip running in the UK, AFAIK, and there've been any number of Bond comic books. There's been a series of 87th Precinct comic books under the DELL FOUR-COLOR banner. There've been comic book adaptations of Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON, Chandler's THE LITTLE SISTER, Christie's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, Wilkie Collins's THE MOONSTONE, and Twain's PUDD'NHEAD WILSON.
Acclaimed mystery novelists, like Hammett, Leslie Charteris, Max Allan Collins, and Greg Rucka, have all practiced their trade in the comics medium.
The single most famous hard-boiled detective in fiction, indeed, with the exception of Sherlock Holmes, the most famous detective of ANY kind in fiction, Dick Tracy, was created especially for the comics medium.
And, most tellingly, there's already been a Michael Shayne comic book, one that was produced during Halliday's lifetime, indicating that he was not at all averse to his character appearing in that medium.
But now Mike Shayne is too good for comics.
Go figure.
I don't know if it's possible to somehow go around the agent, but maybe it would help if you contacted the actual beneficiaries of Halliday's estate, and got them to shake the agent's tree. After all, they're the ones losing out financially by the agent's intransigence.
JIM DOHERTY
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