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.
I know what you’ve been waiting for.
An update on my laserdisc adventure!
Here it is, anyway. The laserdisc player I ordered was a dud. I did receive a refund for it, but that meant trying again, which I did with trepidation. But the new (I should say “new”) player arrived and works great. I am amazed by how good the discs look and think their analogue nature may explain that. They sound wonderful.
Laserdisc collecting was an obsession I truly enjoyed pursuing throughout the 1990s. While I’ve continued on with DVDs and Blu-rays, the thrill of those 12″ silver discs has never been equaled. It’s very similar to the difference between collecting CDs and 12″ vinyl albums. Now, I have not gotten back on board with collecting vinyl – I prefer CDs, having grown up frustrated by pops and clicks and scratches.
But those big album covers, often folding out, and with extensive liner notes and pictures…what a trip that was! How I loved record albums as a kid, and even into adulthood. I still have all my Bobby Darin LPs (in both stereo and mono) (and a second set of sealed copies) (what a shock) and Kim Wilde and Blondie and…quite a few others, still. Bobby Rydell. Selected soundtracks and Broadway musical albums.
Laserdisc collecting, a hobby I have now renewed (after selling hundreds of them cheap over the last ten years), provides a similar buzz with their LP-like covers. But Blu-rays, and most DVDs, blow the lasers out of the water. Only two reasons (three, counting insanity) justify this nostalgic trip.
First, a good number of discs are of material that has not reached DVD (and may never). Oddball movies – B material and below, TV movies and so on – are what a collector like me is after, with ‘80s schlock often in video limbo. That kind of thing and – in particular – music. The discs I had held on to, when dumping anything I’d upgraded to DVD or Blu-ray, are about one third music – concerts and early video collections (“Eat to the Beat!”), everything from Sinatra to the Beatles, with lots of ‘60s and New Wave in the mix. Japan, where laserdisc was big (and even still is, to a degree) issued a lot of American musical material. Scads of British Invasion acts are represented, including the Animals, Them and the Yardbirds; and with New Wave there’s Kate Bush and Bangles and Kim Wilde and Blondie and Elvis Costello and the Cardigans and a bunch more.
(Porn and R-rated Playboy smut might be of interest to some. I, of course, am more refined, as readers of Quarry’s Climax are aware.)
Some of the stuff I’ve been picking up on e-bay, but I already owned a good deal of it, languishing for wont of a hooked-up laserdisc player and a vintage tube TV. (For those who came in late, laserdiscs look awful on flat-screen TVs.)
My son Nathan, home for the July 4th holiday with his bride Abby and kids Sam and Lucy, has enough hipster in him to be mildly impressed by my retro shenanigans. He has helped me select a better stand for my 21″ inch TV with laserdisc player beneath (hasn’t arrived yet – and I will have to talk Barb into assembling it for me) (I am not a man’s man, even if I do write Mike Hammer).
And so, for now, my laserdisc adventure concludes, and yet it continues. Seems so right somehow.
Even as I spend my late evenings watching laserdiscs featuring acts like the Dave Clark Five, Ike and Tina Turner (what a happy couple!), Dusty Springfield, the Hollies and the Kinks, my own rock ‘n’ roll adventure continues to wind down.
On the 4th of July, Crusin’ played at the Missippi Brew in their beer garden to a nice, and appreciative, crowd. (My buddy Stu Rosebrook, editor of True West magazine, dropped by with his family for the fireworks.) The weather was much better than our recent gig at the Muscatine Art Center, but it was indeed hot and we played around three-and-a-half hours…a long, long time at my age.
The following day I was so wiped out I feared I was back in a-fib. I hadn’t felt so lousy since I was recovering from my hospital stay, and I was worried, as was Barb. But in a day or so, I was back to normal (so to speak), so it becomes ever more clear that my rocking days are winding down. We have three gigs left, I believe, this season. I still intend to make one more original material CD and then do a farewell appearance next summer.
No politics, but as a true patriot I cannot help but recall the words of Paul Revere via Longfellow: “One if by land, two if by sea, three if by air!”
Here’s the first (great) Killing Quarry review from longtime Quarry booster, Ron Fortier.
This review of Murder, My Love is pretty good, too.
Finally, out of the blue, came this review of the Ms. Tree prose novel, Deadly Beloved.
M.A.C.
The day this post appears is the pub date for the new Mike Hammer novel from Titan, Murder, My Love.
I am offering ten copies to readers who are willing to post a review at Amazon and other sites, such as Barnes & Noble and Goodreads. We also have eight Advance Reading copies of the new Barbara Allan, which is not out till April 30, Antiques Ravin’. And five more Advance Reading copies of Girl Most Likely. When you enter, list your order of preference for which book to receive (and let me know if you already have a Girl Most Likely or if there’s one of these three titles you simply aren’t interested in).
With Antiques Ravin’ and Girl Most Likely, you will need to wait till pub day to review at Amazon. Elsewhere you should be good to go.
You need to be in the USA – foreign mailings are expensive – and you must send me your snail mail address (even if you won in the past).
Send requests to macphilms@hotmail.com.
As you may have noticed, if you follow the comments section, there has been misunderstanding about the reader reviews that are the point of these books being sent out. They are not being sent out of the goodness of my heart. They mean to generate positive reviews and nice star ratings at Amazon.
For that reason, I’ve made it clear that anyone who wins a book in one of my giveaway from me, and winds up not liking the book, need not feel obligated to review it. I don’t mean such readers should lie and say that liked the book, just that they not slag it at my expense. These book giveaways are an expensive and time-consuming undertaking. The one Barb and I are launching here will run me around $150.
This is why I suggested that if you win a book, and can’t at least give it a mixed but predominantly favorable review, you just don’t bother. That you chuck it in the circular file or take it to Half-Price books and earn yourself a dime or so.
I don’t think this is unreasonable.
On the other hand, review copies sent to readers for honest reviews by Amazon or the publisher’s PR reps can say whatever they please – obviously. Ditto for book giveaways at Goodreads. An honest bad review is a perfectly acceptable response in that kind of giveaway.
Just don’t ask the author for a free book and then trash it in public.
Now, I admit to being annoyed with the First Read reviewers who get free books from Amazon and then savage them. But I can’t do anything about it except bitch.
A few words about Murder, My Love.
This is the first Mike Hammer novel that contains no Spillane prose – strictly Collins. Every single novel of the dual-byline Spillanes that preceded had at least a chapter or two by Mickey, although I always expanded and manipulated that material to extend the Spillane influence and his sound. This time I did, however, work from a fairly detailed synopsis of a novel he intended to write, although it may have been a synopsis of Mickey’s for a Mike Hammer TV movie for Stacy Keach and producer Jay Bernstein (my introduction explains my reasoning and sets the novel’s place in the chronology of the series).
The next Hammer novel, which I haven’t started yet, does have some Spillane prose in it, though it too is mostly a synopsis.
For those who have wondered, I will likely be converting some non-Mike Hammer material – two screenplays and several starts on novels – into Hammers, if Titan moves forward with another contract (or two).
I think Murder, My Love came out rather well, and it certainly feels like authentic Hammer to me. I’ll be interested in your opinion.
One of my favorite crime writers is the late Ted Lewis, whose novel Jack’s Return Home (1985) became the great Brit crime film, Get Carter (1971). I wrote about Lewis in an introduction to the Jack Carter prequel novel in 2014, Jack Carter’s Law, originally published in 1978.
Recently I read a solid bio of Lewis by Nick Triplow, Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir, published in the UK in 2017 by No Exit Press (it’s also available here). Lewis is an interesting but sad, even tragic figure, another artist taken down by self-doubt and alcoholism. I was fascinated (but not surprised) to learn that Lewis had been heavily influenced by Spillane and by Richard Stark’s Parker novels, to which Lewis had been led by the film Point Blank…because that was exactly the case with me. So Nolan and Quarry grew out of the same influences as Jack Carter.
But something strange and oddly wonderful, at least in my view (Small World, Dept.), popped up late in the book, in a discussion of Jack Carter’s Law, the very book I would one day introduce and praise. Triplow had difficulty finding any contemporary press reviews for that novel, with the only one turning up coming from the Carroll Daily Times Herald, the “Iowa Book Shelf” by reviewer R. Choate, who praises the book as offering a “realistic background of the London criminal element,” but says it’s “not recommended for those with squeamish stomachs.”
In the very next paragraph of the bio, Triplow talks about what I had to say of the same novel in my 2014 introduction. He of course doesn’t mention I am also from Iowa, and perhaps doesn’t know.
Here’s what had my jaw dropping: “R. Choate” is almost certainly Richard Choate, at the time a Des Moines area actor who was one of Michael Cornelison’s best friends. Do I have to tell readers of these updates that Cornelison was also one of my best friends, and that he had major roles in every one of my indie films and narrated both of my documentaries? That his one-man show of my Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life is streaming on Amazon Prime right now?
I met Richard through Mike, and it’s entirely possible that Mike – knowing of my interest in crime fiction and film – made Choate aware of the book called in America, Jack Carter and the Law.
Richard Choate – who I haven’t seen since the public tribute to Mike, where I spoke – was originally going to have a major role in my indie film, Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market (2000). In fact, I wrote the part for him (he’s a wonderful actor), but a last-minute unexpected conflict with his day job made it necessary for me to re-cast the day before we went into production.
So what? (you might reasonably wonder).
But I ask you to put yourself in my place, innocently reading a book about one of your favorite authors and then having the coincidence of those two adjoining paragraphs gobsmack you.
To put it in some kind of less than ridiculous context, it was likely the one review Lewis got came from my talking up Get Carter to Mike, which likely led to him mentioning it to Richard, who then gave the prequel novel its only known review, until I wrote that 2014 introduction….
Cue Rod Serling and the music.
Two postscripts.
I believe Richard is in Oregon now and still involved in theater, and also in addiction treatment and counseling.
Also, Carter himself, Michael Caine, has a book out (Blowing the Bloody Doors Off) that is wonderful reading, not an autobio exactly (he’s done several of those), but reflections on his acting career and how what he’s experienced and learned can be translated to other professions. Much of what he says can easily be transferred to the writing game.
But, interestingly, he says little about Get Carter and doesn’t seem to particularly value it as anything special. This is odd because in Great Britain it is widely considered the best UK crime film of all. I would rate it Caine’s best, even above The Ipcress File and The Man Who Would Be King. I do agree with him, though, that the third Harry Palmer film, The Billion-Dollar Brain, is woefully underrated.
If you read this the day it’s posted (Tuesday, March 19, 2019), I will be appearing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at an event for writers dedicated to the memory of my late friend and great writer, Ed Gorman – a free 7 p.m. presentation in Sinclair Auditorium at Coe College in Cedar Rapids.
Here is an article – which is among the better in depth articles written about me ever, by the way – with the details.
And here is a terrific article about Ms. Tree (and the upcoming series of collections from Titan) at the generally terrific Stiletto Gumshoe site.
Finally, here’s where you can get a signed copy of Girl Most Likely. (Not a giveaway!)