Posts Tagged ‘Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane’

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Please, Sir, I Want Some More…Money

Tuesday, April 18th, 2023

We have about a month and a half to raise $5000 for our movie of Blue Christmas (we’re at $550 as I write this). It’s your opportunity to help us make a good little film, and to see your name on screen – being thanked, or even given a claim to fame as an Associate Producer or (if you’re flush and really want to pep up your resumé) Executive Producer.

Physical media-type perks have not been offered, but I’m going to give the nice folks who drop by here an opportunity that isn’t part of the Indiegogo page. If you contribute $25 to $500 range, write me at macphilms@hotmail.com and include a list of books by me that you are lacking in your M.A.C. collection…hard to find, out of print, and/or pricey stuff. I’ll do my best to send you something, signed (personalized if you like) from that list. If I can’t comply, we’ll discuss other options via e-mail. Don’t ask for first editions of True Detective, True Crime, Stolen Away (hardcover), or the original trade edition of Road to Perdition unless you are going in at the Associate Producer level (a few pages of original art from Ms. Tree, Wild Dog and Mike Danger would be available at that level). If you’re interested in being an Executive Producer, we’ll talk.

Associate Producers and of course any Executive Producer will be able to arrange a visit to the set.

Again, this offer is not being mentioned on the Indiegogo page. This is for readers of the F.O.M.A.C. blog.

As I’ve mentioned before, there is a Plan A and Plan B for Blue Christmas. Plan A will require our receiving a grant from Produce Iowa’s Greenlight competition. Chad Bishop has put together a presentation for us that is absolutely outstanding, but the competition is considerable. Reaching the goal in the Indiegogo campaign will help us come up with the necessary matching funds, should we prevail.

If we are not a recipient of funds from Iowa’s Greenlight competition, we will go forward with Plan B: a play version of Blue Christmas, which would be produced live and recorded much as we did Encore for Murder, only with full-on pre-production (Encore’s shooting as very much a last-minute decision, based upon what we felt was emerging as a strong production, thanks to a strong local cast and a wonderful guest performance from Gary Sandy).

For those of you in (or near) Eastern Iowa, we are presenting the premiere of the movie version of Encore for Murder on May 5 (having postponed it due to weather). The info accompanies the photo here.

M.A.C. at the MCC Black Box Theater
Courtesy Muscatine Journal
[Correction: The time is 7pm, not 7am. There will be no breakfast showing of Encore for Murder.]

Speaking of Encore, we have delivered it and the new expanded edition of my documentary Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane to VCI Home Entertainment. With Phil Dingeldein backing me up, I recorded a commentary for the documentary (which now runs 61 minutes) at TAG (the ad agency affiliated with dphilms).

I am not doing a commentary for Encore because it’s being presented (I think appropriately) as a bonus feature with the documentary. The new approximately fifteen minutes of footage that Phil and I shot as a wraparound for the doc brings it up to date, including Mickey’s passing and the efforts to bring his unpublished material to completion and publication. It also includes interview footage with Encore actors (Gary Sandy discusses playing Mike Hammer) which provides me an opportunity in the commentary to explain the circumstances of the production of the Golden Age Radio-style play as a fundraiser for our (Muscatine, Iowa’s) local art museum. Essentially, this sets up the bonus feature.

Please note that, in our Indiegogo effort to raise 5K for Blue Christmas, we are not going after a s**t-load of money. I have designed the screenplay to be shot on a bare bones budget, though I think without compromising the material.

Compare this to the kind of money that Riff Trax (God bless ‘em) raises just to lambast somebody else’s movie (half a million bucks on their current one, and we’re seeking a “mere” five thousand).

Imagine me pleading with giant kitty eyes and see if your heartstrings (and pocket book) aren’t touched.

Blue Christmas is, frankly, an experiment to see if I’m up to directing a film, starting out with this low-budget affair that is designed not to be a challenging shoot in terms of locations, stunts, length of shoot, etc. I had assumed, after my heart and cancer surgeries – and the continuing medications that have followed them – that my movie-making days were over…that my contribution to film would be relegated to providing source material by way of my prose and comics work, and by the occasional screenplay.

But the “instant movie” that was the stage production of Encore for Murder got my filmic juices flowing again. Blue Christmas is designed in part to see what I am capable of at this ripe old age. My health, for someone with so much wrong with me, appears to be pretty damn good.

So we shall see, as they say, what we shall see.

* * *

Remember how I whined a few weeks ago about my lack of support at the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Barnes & Noble? A return visit found one (count ‘em, one) copy of The Big Bundle available, no copies of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction, but a nice display of some Nolan Hard Case Crime titles.

The Davenport Barnes & Noble, however, is giving me stellar support, as these photographs indicate. No need to whine here.

* * *

Here’s a nice review of Kisses of Death, the Nathan Heller short story collection from some time ago. These stories were rearranged with additional ones in two volumes from Thomas & Mercer, Chicago Lightning and Triple Play, short stories in the former, novellas in the latter.

The first six volumes of the collected Dick Tracy are coming out from Clover Press, making them physically compatible with the subsequent IDW printings. Each has an intro by me.

Here’s a nice little review of Kill Me If You Can, the current Mike Hammer novel.

Finally, this is a nice assessment of the film version of Road to Perdition.

M.A.C.

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Spillane Bio Positive Praise & My Bad Attitudes

Tuesday, February 21st, 2023

Wonderful reviews are still coming in for Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction by Jim Traylor and me. We’ll start with this one, from the first-rate Shelf Awareness site:

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction
by James L Traylor and Max Allan Collins

Mickey Spillane (1918-2006), one of the top-selling pulp mystery writers, gets his first-ever biography with Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction, a splendid, intimate and well-researched achievement by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor. The two have previously co-written books about Spillane, and Collins (Scarface and the Untouchable, with A. Brad Schwartz) co-authored/completed more than a dozen Spillane novels that were discovered and published posthumously. But this is the first full-length biography about the prolific author. For years, Spillane said he didn’t want anyone writing his biography because he was going to write it himself. This book contains Spillane’s entire autobiographical output–all 11 pages. (It ends in the middle of a sentence.)

Spillane gained national attention in 1947 when I, the Jury, his debut novel, introduced his violent private-eye-as-avenging-hero, Mike Hammer. The hardcover sold respectably, but the paperback sales were amazing. One book dealer reported selling 25,000 copies in one day. More Hammer novels were released from 1950-52 (including his only New York Times bestseller, Kiss Me, Deadly, and Vengeance Is Mine!, notable because it saves its surprise ending until the very last word). And then there was a decade of publishing silence. Collins and Traylor, polished writers and expert researchers, not only discover why Spillane refused to publish for a decade but also uncover his pseudonyms.

The two authors are strong and persuasive advocates of Spillane’s novels. Few readers will be able to resist sampling Spillane’s work after reading this engaging and definitive biography of the surprisingly affable tough-guy writer. –Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Here’s the review in context at the Shelf Awareness site:
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/sar-issue.html?issue=1161#m21157

I admit I was frustrated when I saw J. Kingston Pierce give a lot of space in the Rap Sheet to a new James Ellroy bio, a book that will likely knock Jim Traylor and me out of Edgar competition thanks to the brigade of “Demon Dog” acolytes. While I don’t generally criticize (in public) other writers in the genre, I have not hidden my contempt for the subject of this bio, or anyway his fiction; the very title of the bio (Love Me Fierce in Danger) announces the silly tin-ear pseudo noir poetry of this self-professed master.

I don’t say this to court an argument – this is my opinion and I’m unlikely to be swayed from it. I am also aware that a lot of smart people (probably a good number who are smarter than me) disagree with my harsh assessment of a writer I consider a fraud. It’s entirely possible that I’m wrong. But I’m counting on posterity to see through the Emperor’s lack of clothes.

No, I mention this because it demonstrates a battle I’m having with myself to focus on what’s important (my family, my health, my work) and not get caught up in my tendency toward petty resentment. My initial reaction to seeing Jeff Pierce give so much space to this particular competitor of mine was a knee-jerk one – a combination of what-am-I-chopped-liver? and childish annoyance.

Then the next day, there Jeff was at January magazine saying wonderful things about Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction. It made me feel like a fool, and I am exposing myself as one in sharing this reaction with you. But I’ll also share what Jeff (whose Rap Sheet is the definitive mystery fiction web column) had to say about Spillane:

Crime Fiction: Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor

February 16, 2023 J. Kingston Pierce.

“The chewing gum of American literature” is how crime novelist Mickey Spillane described his books, which typically blended eye-for-an-eye justice with risqué innuendos and granite-chinned philosophizing (“Too many times naked women and death walked side by side”). And boy, did readers eat up his fiction, making his first Mike Hammer private-eye yarn, 1947’s I, the Jury, into a best-seller that spawned a dozen sequels and turned its protagonist into a radio, film, and TV fixture. Spillane developed his own media persona along the way, part-Hammer (he portrayed his Gotham gumshoe in a 1963 film, The Girl Hunters) and part-ham (he spoofed himself in a succession of Miller Lite beer commercials). In this enlightening biography, fellow writers Collins (his friend and posthumous collaborator) and Traylor make the most of their extraordinary access to Spillane’s personal archives, delivering incisive perspectives on his comic-book years, his multiple marriages, his pugnaciousness and wont to embellish the facts of his life, his surprising conversion by Jehovah’s Witnesses, his vexation with Hollywood, and his eventual recognition by peers who’d earlier condemned him as “a vulgar pulpmeister.” This book’s paramount success, though, is in casting Spillane as a trendsetting stylist, who recognized early the value of paperback publication and helped shape late-20th-century detective fiction.

Here is the January Magazine post in all its glory: https://januarymagazine.com/wp/crime-fiction-spillane-king-of-pulp-fiction-by-max-allan-collins-and-james-l-traylor/

I made one minor correction here – the original review puts I, the Jury’s publication at 1945, but it’s 1947. We are still in the 75th anniversary year of Mike Hammer’s first appearance.

I am and have always been very competitive, and that feeds pettiness and resentment, which isn’t entirely bad in the first two acts of a writer’s life. But in the third act the focus ought to focus onto just the work itself – what you are able to accomplish in the time you have left.

But old habits are hard to shake. So last week when I was approached via e-mail by a bookshop owner (a dying breed unfortunately) about a possible signing, I had certain knee-jerk reactions. First, this bookshop proprietor is a sweet guy and has always been a supporter of my work (and Barb’s). When we stopped doing signings for other people, we kept doing his. Nonetheless, I experienced certain irritations. In particular, I can’t remember once in a number of decades when this very nice man ever said anything positive about my (our) work. And he always took me aside to tell me with great enthusiasm about some mystery writer (some writer who wasn’t me) he had recently discovered.

If I were a mature, grounded individual – a state I aspire to but haven’t yet reached – I would interpret this behavior in a positive way. This individual probably thought his liking for my (our) work was obvious – after all, he was booking us back into his shop for signings regularly. He looked at me as someone interested in mystery fiction and wanted to share his enthusiasm for new discoveries in the genre.

Nothing wrong with that.

But again, a part of me responded: what am I, chopped liver? And I had said, numerous times in presentations at his shop, that I did not read current mystery writers for a multitude of reasons (which I’ve discussed here at length).

Last week he e-mailed me about doing a signing. Barb and I have not, obviously, done any signings in recent years. First came the open-heart surgery in 2016 and 2017, and then Covid. And, of course, we are both approaching age 75. (This appearance would require a four-hour drive one-way and an overnight stay, at our expense of course.) But we had already discussed that this particular bookshop was a place we wouldn’t mind signing at again, maybe one last time…but at least one last time.

The shop owner’s invitation to do a signing included a strong suggestion that we “share the stage” with another writer, who was also from Iowa and who was a big fan of mine and had met me a number of times. Okay – only I don’t remember meeting him (doesn’t mean I haven’t) but I have read a number of interviews and articles with and about him, and my name (probably the best known writer in the state of Iowa) (not a huge distinction) never came up. This was accompanied by praise for this writer from the bookshop owner and one of his customers, who had recently discovered this other Iowa author.

I stewed about this for several days, feeling insulted. (Exactly the kind of behavior I am trying to shake.) When I responded to the e-mail, I did my best to stay positive and friendly. But I did take a hard pass on “sharing the stage” with a fellow Iowan author.

The bookshop owner – an incredibly nice man – has not responded to my e-mail, probably astounded by my attitude.

I guess I have a prickly side. Or maybe just a prick side. But I am generally friendly and jokey and it surprises people when I recoil at stuff like this. I wrote here about how offended another (ex-)bookshop owner was that I didn’t express gratitude for being sent a laundry list of errors in The Big Bundle I’d supposedly made (and some I had, but a good number weren’t errors at all).

Last week I discussed how I didn’t consider teaching to involve “heavy lifting,” after which I got scolded (rightly) for diminishing the tough role of teachers. But I thought I’d been clear that I was talking about my own teaching experience – how I’d been able to fake it and just use my gift of gab to get by. That it had not been my finest hour. To me, teaching is – or should be – a calling. At West Junior High, Terry Beatty’s father fueled my love for reading. At Muscatine High School, Mr. Robinson encouraged me to write (and a teacher I despised, Miss Fogerty, taught me everything I know about grammar and usage, God bless her). At Muscatine Community College, Keith Larson – farmer poet – taught me to love the sound of words, and Jack Lockridge – tattooed ex-Marine history teacher – turned me from an Ayn Rand conservative into a left-of-center Democrat in one session. At the University of Iowa, in the Writers Workshop, Richard Yates encouraged me to layer more and more reality onto my melodrama, and got me my first agent.

These were great people. I was not their equal. Barely their peer. There was never any heavier lifting done than what these teachers did with the raw clay of my desire to tell stories.

On the other hand, I will not censor myself here (my son Nate is in charge of that). I present my thoughts and, to some degree, my opinions here, unfiltered and unvarnished.

* * *

The new version of Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane (my 1999 documentary) is complete. It used to run 47 minutes and now is 61 minutes. We’ll be delivering it to VCI Home Video, along with the 90-minute Encore for Murder program (as bonus content) next week.

Here’s a reminder that Supreme Justice will be promoted via Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle book deals in the US marketplace, now through 2/28/2023, offered at 2.99 USD during the promotion period.

M.A.C.

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Book Giveaway! Blue Christmas and Bucket Lists…

Tuesday, January 17th, 2023
The Big Bundle audiobook
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo Google Play
Digital Audiobook:

We have a book giveaway this week – ten copies of the hardcover of The Big Bundle. You agree to write a review for Amazon and/or other on-line reviewing sites, like Barnes & Noble or even your own blog. This is for USA only – overseas is, I’m afraid, too expensive.

[All copies have been claimed. Thank you! –Nate]

The book will be out in about a week and a half, so time’s a wastin’. (I may not be writing Caleb anymore, but some things get in your blood.)

The audio may or may not already be available – I haven’t been able to determine that. But it will definitely be out when the book itself is released (it’s out there now on e-book). Barb and I listened to the first third of it on a jaunt to Cedar Rapids yesterday, and Dan John Miller is simply brilliant as Nate Heller and this extensive cast of characters. He’s always good but he’s outdone himself here.

* * *

We hope to include Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder on a Blu-ray/DVD release of the expanded Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane documentary, which Phil Dingeldein and I are working on right now. I think this makes more sense than releasing it on its own, because it is after all a local production, even with the commanding presence of Gary Sandy, who I think is really terrific as Mike.

But the experience of shooting the play (which we did live, as well as two dress rehearsals) and then editing the footage into a kind of movie got those juices flowing again. I honestly didn’t think, post-heart surgery, that doing a film project was possible. But this showed me, on a more limited scale, a project was possible.

We are going after grant money to get Blue Christmas off the ground. It will be, to say the least, a low budget production. Probably $75,000 plus that much again “in kind.” We initially were going to mount it as a play and shoot it that way, as we had with Encore for Murder, only with actual pre-production, as opposed to me just realizing we might have hold of something and oughta shoot it.

If the grants don’t come through, we would still do it, most likely, and would go the play route in the fall, with four cameras recording two dress rehearsals and two performances. We will be in a smaller theater – at Muscatine Community College, where years ago Barb and I fell in love and I later taught for a while – and if we do shoot it film-style, that black-box theater will be converted into a studio.

There is a part of me – the part of me that loves movies at least as much as I love books – that wishes I had gone the film route. There is a power to Chinatown, Vertigo and the Aldrich/Bezzerides Kiss Me Deadly that in my experience can rarely be touched in a book. (Feel free to disagree. I was shaped as a storyteller more by Hammett, Chandler, Spillane and Cain than by TV or movies. So I get that view.)

But I also like the collaborative aspect of making a film. It’s part of why I’ve stayed active with my band since 1974 (and from 1966 to 1971 before that). I am fine with working by myself, and as an only child am a loner. And the control that can be exercised in writing a novel or story is all-inclusive – nobody tells me what to do.

In collaborations, however, the human interaction is compelling and rewarding. Since I am a natural leader – I don’t know how to behave otherwise (I’m not proud of it) – I still tend to hold sway over the decision making. But that input from others makes the result far richer.

We are also in the “bucket list” area – not a term I love. But I am going to be 75 on March 3 (start shopping now!) and (like I said before) time’s a wastin’.

I began having a sense of the ticking clock well before my health issues kicked in. I started ticking off dream projects as early as Mommy, which was all about my obsessive desire to see Patty McCormack play a grown-up variation on The Bad Seed. USS Powderkeg (also published Red Sky in Morning) was about honoring my father and getting his WW2 story, with all its racial implications, told. Black Hats represented my desire to do a Wyatt Earp book.

Sometimes bucket list projects have foisted themselves on me. I thought Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life was my last word on Ness. But Brad Schwartz convinced me we should write the definitive history of both Ness in Chicago and in Cleveland – though the instigator was Ken Burns. When he got Ness wrong in his Prohibition documentary series, by listening to uninformed, biased “experts,” those two massive books Brad and I did became necessary.

Blue Christmas is a story that has great meaning for me. As I’ve said here before, it was a story written on Christmas Eve 1992 – all fifty pages of the novella, in one fevered sitting – that got me back up on the pony to ride, after the bastards at the Tribune took Dick Tracy away from me.

I, of course, did not realize the Tribune had done me a favor, because I was about to fill the slack with Road to Perdition. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I also think about what Dean Martin said: the two best things that ever happened to him were teaming up with Jerry Lewis…and breaking up with Jerry Lewis.

* * *

The great Ed Catto has written a lovely piece about Ms. Tree. Don’t miss this one. It’s right here.

J. Kingston Pierce was nice enough to say this at the Rap Sheet: “Among the non-fiction releases I look forward to seeing (is) Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction, Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor’s ‘first ever’ biography of ‘the most popular and most influential pulp writer of all time.’” See that in context here.

Here’s a nice look at Jacques Futrelle, the detective mystery writer who starred in my The Titanic Murders. (I rate a mention!)

You may have already seen this interesting article on Quarry, but it’s worth at least one look.

M.A.C.

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Nathan Heller, Blue Christmas Project & Mickey Spillane

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023

I have just completed my proofing of the typeset version of Too Many Bullets, the next (and perhaps final) Nathan Heller novel, coming from Hard Case Crime in the fall of 2023, which seems to be the year we find ourselves in.

A certain number of the hearty souls who check in here regularly (and also those who show up irregularly) are readers of my Quarry, Nolan and other series whose entries run in the traditional 60,000 words or so length. Some others may be comics fan who are interested in Ms. Tree, Road to Perdition and my other occasional forays into graphic noveldom.

This means, these readers have not yet sampled Nathan Heller, the series I consider my best and most significant work. It may be because the books deal with history and these readers are unaware that historical subject matter does not discourage me from trafficking in sex and violence; or perhaps they are put off by the length – these two HCC Heller novels are 80,000 words each. I say gently to these folks that another 20,000 words or so will not kill you, nor will the historical content, although the research for these two recent Hellers damn near killed me. I remind these readers that later this month (delayed by a dock strike in London) physical copies of the new Heller, The Big Bundle, will be available. The e-book and (I think) the audio versions are both available now.

But a certain kind of reader – I will not go so far as to invoke OCD or Anal Retentive tendencies, having both of those conditions myself – won’t start reading a new series anywhere but the beginning. Despite my concerted efforts to make each Heller novel stand alone, such readers are stubborn about starting at the start.

For that reason I am pleased to announce that True Detective (1983) will be promoted via Amazon Monthly Deals: starting 1/1/2023 and running through 1/31/2023, the first Nathan Heller novel (a winner of the Best Novel Shamus from the Private Eye Writers of America) will be offered on e-book at 1.99 USD.

True Detective Thomas and Mercer cover
* * *

Doing the read-through (and tweaking of) Too Many Bullets was an interesting experience. I felt generally very good about the book – in fact, I was really satisfied with it and felt like it showed me at the top of my game.

And I was writing well during the months of actual writing (many months of research preceded that), despite having health issues then, including two brief hospital stays related to my A-fib. But despite what I felt was a high standard of work, I also came across uncharacteristic lapses – word repetition, pronoun confusion, and occasional lack of clarity.

It was odd to see me with my powers intact but now and then flagging, probably due to those health issues. Thankfully I am doing much better on that front, but it was sobering to see the lapses. I’m sure advancing age is another factor. But I will keep at this as long as my marbles are more or less intact.

Still, I’m sure my HCC editor Charles Ardai will wince when he sees I am sending 44 correction pages out of 300 hundred pages or so.

As for whether there will be another Heller novel after Too Many Bullets, that depends on sales, frankly. I have yet to write the major Heller/Hoffa novel I’ve had in mind for, oh, thirty years.

But we are at least nearing the end of Heller’s run. The research is just too daunting for a duffer.

* * *

About a month ago, here, I wrote this (feel free to skip):

I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again on the occasion of the Christmas Season. Just before Thanksgiving 1992 – right before – I received a letter from the Chicago Tribune Syndicate editor letting me go from the Dick Tracy strip after my 15 year run. Shortly thereafter Bantam cancelled Nate Heller and returned the novel Carnal Hours to me after the editor there had accepted it enthusiastically. (The previous entry, Stolen Away, had won the Best Novel “Shamus” award from the Private Eye Writers of America.)

On Christmas Eve 1992, still shellshocked, I wrote “A Wreath for Marley,” the lead story in the Blue Christmas collection ($2.99 on e-book). It has been published several times, including in the Otto Penzler anthology, The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. The story is what they call (hideously) a “mash-up” – of A Christmas Carol and The Maltese Falcon. Its significance is that it showed me getting back into the game after two bad batterings. The story is a long one, probably 15,000 words, and was done in one fevered sitting. It remains my favorite short story of mine.

It almost became my second indie movie – there’s a script, you will not be surprised to learn – but the success of Mommy led to us deciding to do Mommy’s Day instead.

Since I wrote this post, I’ve been exploring – with Chad Bishop, who put together Encore for Murder with me as a video presentation (stay tuned) – mounting a production of Blue Christmas here in Muscatine that could be presented as a live performance but also shot as a feature much as we did Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life.

But Blue Christmas exists as a novella and as a film script, and no live performance version was ever written. Adding a second level of problems, er, challenges, a script for the stage is needed, with an eye on putting together the feature. So it needed to be a hybrid – a screenplay written for the live-performance stage.

Does your head hurt yet?

Still, I have long intended to someday take the time to write a stage play version of Blue Christmas. It’s a story I believe in and that has special resonance for me, as the piece of fiction I wrote on a long-ago Christmas eve that got me back up on the one-horse sleigh writing again after having my career get yanked out from under me.

Anyway, I spent a week on it, over Christmas (appropriately) and I’m very happy with it. Putting together a piece that was intended to have fairly elaborate special effects for a low-budget indie film and doing it instead live on stage…tricky. I am proud of how I solved the challenges…the problems…as the only stage play I’ve previously written is Eliot Ness.

But, as I say, it’s set up in a screenplay manner, in part because we are going after a couple of grants that are intended for backing low-budget feature films, not stage productions.

In the meantime, I’m entering Encore for Murder in a couple of Iowa film festivals, getting back in the game a little. As much as I love writing fiction – and even relish the solitary nature of it – I have to admit I’m never happier than when I’m in an editing suite working with my pal, Phil Dingeldein. And working with Chad Bishop has been a joy, as well.

Speaking of Phil, last Thursday he and a two-person crew – Justin Hall and Hannah Miner – came to Muscatine and shot the additional footage for our expanded version of Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane. The original documentary was shot in 1998 and released in 1999, and this brings the Spillane story up to date, from Mickey’s final years through the work I’ve done completing his unfinished manuscripts.

We are talking to VCI, who have released a lot of my stuff in the past (but never the Spillane doc) and hope to include Encore for Murder as a bonus feature. It’s a natural flow as we have Gary Sandy talking about playing Mike Hammer in the new documentary footage.

* * *

Here’s a two-party review of several of my Batman issues. These fans don’t realize that I was subjected to artist changes (artists who apparently didn’t have access to character designs from the previous issue!) and that no Batman “bible” existed, meaning I had to fly by my bat wings into unknown backstory territory. They do like my Penguin story, however.

Road to Perdition is back on Netflix.

Finally, here’s a great write-up on the forthcoming Nolan two-fer, Mad Money.

M.A.C.

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