Titan Entertainment’s Andrew Sumner sits down with author/screenwriter/director/comic-book writer Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition, Dick Tracy) to discuss his and artist Terry Beatty’s iconic, ahead-of-her-time hardboiled comics detective Ms. Michael Tree. Originally debuting in Eclipse Comics’ Eclipse Magazine in 1981, Titan’s Hard Case Crime imprint is now collecting five pulse-pounding Collins & Beatty continuities in Ms Tree: One Mean Mother and Max is here to spill the beans about his two-fisted heroine!
FRIDAY 19th JULY
11AM-12PM – Hard Case Crime with Max Allan Collins
Special Hard Case Crime comic event! Max Allan Collins will be signing an SDCC exclusive art card, featuring Ms. Tree, the upcoming graphic novel collection which launches this Fall. Plus Max will be signing copies of Mike Hammer, the tough-talking, brawling, skirt-chasing private detective who returned to comics in this thrilling noir graphic novel, The Night I Died, based on an original plot by Mickey Spillane, as well as his graphic novel Quarry’s War.
PANEL: The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers: Scribe Awards
TIME: 2:00p.m. – 3:00p.m
Room: 32AB
Jonathan Maberry (X-Files) will host this year’s Scribe Awards for excellence in tie-in writing, including honoring this year’s Grandmaster Award “Faust” winner, Nancy Holder (who will also join the panel). Other panelists include Matt Forbeck (The Marvel Encyclopedia, Halo: Bad Blood), Michael Kogge (The Last Jedi: A Junior Novel), Chris Ryall (comic book writer, Publisher at IDW), Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition, Mike Hammer); David Boop (Predator, Veronica Mars).
Those are the facts, but here a few more. I am nominated for a Scribe for best general original novel (meaning not a novelization and not science-fiction) for Killing Town, though I do not expect to win. This marks the first Scribe awards panel since I stepped down as president and handed the reins over to Jonathan Maberry, who is a dynamo. As you may know, Lee Goldberg and I co-founded the Tie-in Writers association a long time ago and we are both still members, but no longer running things (no coup – we were just tired).
For those interested in such things, I’ll have a few originals from Ms. Tree and Mike Danger for sale reasonably. Hey, it’s an expensive trip.
I was not planning to attend the con this year – actually, never really planned to attend again, as it has gotten bigger and I am, what’s the word, older. But when the opportunity came along to have a panel starring me about Ms. Tree finally getting collected in book form, I had to say yes. The entire run (except for a few odds and ends) will be collected in five fat volumes.
This is a little weird for me, as I had said goodbye to the con last year, and here I am getting drawn back in, like Michael Corleone in Godfather 3. It will require pacing myself, including naps. Sad, but true.
This incredible review of Last Stage to Hell Junction, by the fine western writer James Reasoner, is so good, it makes me want to read the damn book!
Girl Most Likely is $1.99 on Kindle right now ($7.98 for an actual book). And it’s #8 on Amazon’s Mystery Bestsellers list, #12 on their Women Sleuths Bestseller List (both Kindle and real book), and #17 on their Police Procedural Bestsellers Kindle list.
Ms. Tree: One Mean Mother is one of the best graphic novels of July, according to Barnes and Noble. (Scroll down.)
M.A.C.
Yes, at long last Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago by A. Brad Schwartz and myself is hitting the bookstores the very day this update first appears.
Brad and I (and Barb) will be appearing at two major Chicago bookstores and another at the bookstore in Dick Tracy’s hometown – Woodstock, Illinois, starting with the latter.
Sunday August 19:
Centuries & Sleuths (Website)
2:00PM till…?
19 Madison St
Forest Park, IL 60130 (Map)
Monday August 20:
Anderson’s Bookshop (Website)
7 PM till…?
123 W Jefferson Ave
Naperville, IL 60540 (Map)
This mini-tour will be the only joint event by Brad and me in support of the book during its opening weeks. Brad heads back to Princeton in his unending crusade to diminish me by making me call him “Dr. Schwartz” (who, let’s face it, sounds like a dermatologist). We’ll be doing some solo events thereafter, and if the media wises up and books us on a national TV show, we’ll likely do that together.
We are also set to appear on the WGN Morning News on Monday morning, but exactly when I can’t say (we arrive at 8:30 AM).
We’ll also be doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) on r/books this Thursday at 1PM EST. Keep an eye on my facebook page for a link.
The Centuries and Sleuths signing will include Barb, as “Barbara Allan”-bylined novels (Antiques Wanted in particular) will be available. This is the first joint signing Barb and I have done in some time.
Centuries and Sleuths is where Brad and I first met, when he came to a signing after seeing “Untouchable Life” live in Des Moines. By the way, work progresses on the Blu-ray of the film version. You can order it here.
In the meantime, come and see us (Mike Doran – I’m talking to you) (but no questions requiring a photographic memory of the entire run of TV Guide to answer).
The reviews thus far have been stellar, including the Chicago Tribune, where Rick Koganwhere Rick Kogan – a well-known writer and TV personality in Chicago – loved the book but hated my introduction. Why? Because I (with Brad’s help) singled out the authors (and one screenwriter) whose offenses had much to do with us feeling another book about Capone and Ness needed writing. We were very specific about what we were correcting, but Mr. Kogan found my intro “unseemly.”
Here’s what he wrote, along with links to other favorable reviews (the Kogan link is mid-page).
Now, just for fun, read what I wrote that offended Mr. Kogan, available thanks to the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine blog.
Others reviewing the book in the days just ahead of publication include USA Today, which makes us one of the top books of the week that they recommend. (Omarosa’s Trump memoir gets the top spot, though.)
Here’s a really nice review courtesy of Mystery People.
This one isn’t a review, but uses our book as a sort of tour guide to track Capone’s real-life hangouts.
Now in non-Scarface and the Untouchable news, here’s another San Diego Comic Con interview with me, on the new Mike Hammer serialized graphic novel from Hard Case Crime. It’s one of the better interviews, I think.
Finally, Gaping Blackbird continues to review the early Quarry novels, and very intelligently.
M.A.C.
After skipping last year due to health concerns of mine, Barb and I returned to SDCC wondering if the changes we’d noted in recent years would have continued.
They had.
My interests in collecting original comic art remained well-served by the likes of Anthony’s Comic Art and Steve Donnely of Coollines, as well as random comic-book back-issue tables where a handful of art was on display. That alone made the experience fun and worthwhile.
And a number of books on offer from such esoteric publishers as Last Gasp and Vanguard also made me smile, and spend money.
But there’s no question that the booths that serve my enthusiasms are disappearing, if gradually. It’s all Hollywood and video games (my son’s childhood fave, Dragon Ball Z, was much in evidence, due to a new movie about to screen in theaters, albeit in a limited way).
The worst thing about the con, however, is the people…not individually (not always, anyway) but the amount of them, the sheer packed humanity. Often aisles were just seas of bobbing heads. Movement was hampered by cosplay folks posing, con goers freezing mid-aisle to gawk at a booth, parents with small kids who were understandably advancing with caution, and, uh, the occasional idiot.
On the whole, however, we really did have a fine time. I was on three panels, all of which went well. I was lucky enough to share the stage with Leonard Maltin in the nicely named You’re Wrong, Leonard Maltin! (his talented daughter/moderator Jessie’s idea). My job was to explain why Deadpool 2 is a cinematic masterpiece. I did this largely by quoting from the title song of Road to Morocco, which indulges in the same sort of breaking the fourth wall as the Deadpool films.
Perhaps the best one-on-one with me ever seen at a con came courtesy of Titan’s Andrew Sumner, who knows his Spillane inside out, which came in handy because that was the topic. Following the panel I did a signing at the Titan booth, and I’m glad to say we sold a lot of books, both Hammer novels and The Last Stand.
This was on Thursday. On Friday I hosted the Scribe Awards, and the panel of pros was excellent. I was slightly disorganized but everything went well despite that. The Will to Kill did not win, but I was in good company with winner Mike Black and fellow nominee Reed Farrel Coleman.
We had several nice business meetings. Barb and I met with our Hollywood guy, Ken Levin (who is from Chicago of course), and two smart producers who came down from Los Angeles to talk to us about the possibilities an Antiques TV series. And today (Sunday as I write this) we had a lovely breakfast with Nick and Viv Landau of Titan, exploring the next cycle of Hammer novels, as well as a possible series of Nolan reprints, a reprinting of the complete Ms. Tree and various Spillane non-Hammer projects, since I am nearing the end of Mickey’s MH material.
Will we ever attend again? Hard to say. It’s not the same without Nate and Abby along, and their growing little family makes their presence doubtful for a few years at least. But any year the con wants me as a special guest (which means they pay and I don’t, something you will not be surprised to learn I like very much) Barb and I will almost certainly be there.
I hope you enjoy the photos from the con that Nate has liberally sprinkled throughout this update.
M.A.C.