How do you like the new updated website?
Nate has done a great job as usual. One minor glitch: a long update got lost in cyberspace, and this quickie (I’m working on ROAD TO PARADISE) will have to suffice.
Following these brief words, you’ll find a ROAD TO PURGATORY (on sale Nov. 23) press release, and our ROAD TO PURGATORY book tour so far. Out all at once are ROAD TO PURGATORY (Morrow prose sequel); ROAD TO PERDITION 2: ON THE ROAD (DC graphic novel sequel, collecting the three ON THE ROAD graphic novellas); TWO FOR THE MONEY (Hardcase Crime dual reprint of my first two novels, BAIT MONEY and BLOOD MONEY (the first two Nolan and Jon books); MEN’S ADVENTURE MAGAZINES (the campy Taschen coffee table book George Hagenauer and I have done on the “sweat” mags of the ’50s and ’60s); and the new CSI graphic novel from IDW, DEMONHOUSE. There’s also a recent CSI novel from Pocket still on the “new” shelves: GRAVE SECRETS.
I have just completed CSI: BINDING TIES and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDERS. ROAD TO PARADISE is shaping up well — it takes place in the early ’70s…about the time my career began! What does it say that my historical novels have now caught up with my lifetime?
Exciting indie news: SHADES OF NOIR, my anthology film collecting the three short films (“Eliot Ness: an Untouchable Life,” “A Matter of Principal” and “Three Women”) and my Mickey Spillane documentary will be released by Troma on DVD next year. It will also be part of a boxed set of all my indie films to date, as will a new 10th Anniversary DVD edition of MOMMY.
SHADES OF NOIR will premiere on Nov. 26 at the Brew & View in Rock Island, Illinois, as part of a benefit for the Mississippi Valley Writers Colony — it also marks the start of the PURGATORY book tour. I’ll try to post more details soon.
And we just did a one-night only preview of the full-length play version of ELIOT NESS: AN UNTOUCHABLE LIFE. Mike Cornelison, the John Wayne to my John Ford, hit the ball out of the park, and it bodes well for the more elaborate production we’ll mount (and film) next year, probably at the Des Moines Playhouse. We hope to tour the midwest. This performance was a benefit for the Iowa Motion Picture Association and the Iowa Scriptwriters Alliance; it was presented at the the Art House Valley West in Des Moines, a terrific venue.
More later!
FROM PERDITION TO PURGATORY — THE ROAD WINDS ON
Max Allan Collins, creator of ROAD TO PERDITION, was presented with a unique opportunity — and challenge — after Hollywood transformed his graphic novel into the Academy Award-winning film starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Jude Law.
“I knew there’d be demand for a sequel,” Collins says.  “And I’d already been thinking about following the son of hitman Michael O’Sullivan, into adulthood, on his own quest for revenge.” The question Collins faced was — what medium? Comics or prose? “I felt a certain responsibility to the comics form,” the author says. “That a GODFATHER-level crime film like ROAD TO PERDITION had as its source a kind of comic book seemed to interest, and confuse, a lot of people. For many months, I was interviewed on the subject of graphic novels, and sort of became the form’s ‘poster boy.’ I almost felt guilty about the notion of abandoning the graphic novel for the sequel.”
The unique solution Collins came up with was to create two follow-ups — one his novel, ROAD TO PURGATORY (a Morrow hardcover, December), and the other a second graphic novel, ROAD TO PERDITION 2: ON THE ROAD (a DC Comics trade paperback, December). “I don’t believe two sequels to the same work, in two different mediums, by the same creator, has ever been done,” say DC Vice President, Dan DiDio.
ROAD TO PURGATORY, the prose sequel, follows Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., from the battlefields of Bataan back home to WW2-era Chicago, where his Medal of Honor-winning fame paves the way for an undercover war against Al Capone; O’Sullivan — now 21 — blames Capone for the death of his own gangster father. A lengthy flashback to the 1920s explores the surrogate father-and-son relationship between John Looney and Michael O’Sullivan, Sr. (the characters portrayed by Newman and Hanks in the original film).
ROAD TO PERDITION 2: ON THE ROAD, the graphic novel, is a new narrative that takes place within the structure of the original story, when the father and son were “on the road,” fleeing gangsters and robbing Capone-held banks. The artists are Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Steve Lieber and Josef Rubinstein.
Will there be a second film?
“It’s too early to tell,” Collins says. “DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox have first look. There certainly seems to be strong interest.”
Collins is not waiting for Hollywood’s answer. He is already at work now on ROAD TO PARADISE, a second prose sequel for Morrow.
For more info and/or author interview, contact: M.A.C. Productions 563-263-4473 or 
MAX ALLAN COLLINS/ROAD TO PURGATORY Book Tour