Created by Hunt Collins (Né Salvatore Lombino. Pseudonyms include Ed McBain, Evan Hunter, Richard Marsten, Curt Cannon, Ezra Hannon and John Abbott (1926-2005) She was cleaning fish by the kitchen sink when I climbed through the window, my .45 in my hand. She wore a low-cut apron, shadowed where her full breasts bunched together near the … Continue reading Dudley Sledge
Tag: Mickey Spillane
Caleb York
Created by Max Allan Collins & Mickey Spillane Max Allan Collins picks up the reins on a story idea by his old pal Mickey, and lets fly on a rootin,' tootin' honest-to-God western series revolving around former Wells Fargo detective CALEB YORK, who wanders the South West, a gun-for-hire tracking down assorted desperadoes and dispatching … Continue reading Caleb York
Fallen Angels
(1993-95, Showtime) FALLEN ANGELS was a crime television anthology that aired on the American network, Showtime, in the 1990's. Not all the episodes featured private eyes, or even detectives, per se, but who cares? It paired some great hard-boiled and noir short stories by some of the genre's masters (you know, hacks like Raymond Chandler, … Continue reading Fallen Angels
It Wasn’t Easy
Mike Hammer Comes to Television "I said, 'This is ridiculous! I mean, you can't take this shit seriously.'" -- Darren McGavin How do you turn the darkly violent, psychologically bruising revenge fantasies of Mickey Spillane's bestselling Mike Hammer novels into a weekly television show? In the squeaky clean surface puritanism of the 1950s? You can't. … Continue reading It Wasn’t Easy
Mike Hammer
Created by Mickey Spillane (1918-2006) "The monicker is Mike Hammer, kid. I'm a private eye." -- please allow him to introduce himself (I, the Jury) ONE TAKE Whatever else you may think about MIKE HAMMER, one word may well be appropriate: extreme. The Hammer books are not only extreme in their subject matter, but they … Continue reading Mike Hammer
Mickey Spillane
Frank Morrison Spillane (1918-2006) "Anyone who doesn't recognize Spillane's importance is an idiot." -- Max Allan Collins FRANK MORRISON SPILLANE was a Brooklyn kid, born on March 9, 1918, the only child of Catherine Anne and John Joseph Spillane, an Irish-American bartender who nicknamed him "Mickey." He passed away July 17, 2006 at his home in … Continue reading Mickey Spillane
Salted Peanuts Department
If Mickey Spillane Wrote Nancy This one comes from MAD Magazine, circa 1959. The name of the original article was "If Famous Authors Wrote the Comics," (from the "High Flown Balloons Dept.," of course), and featured dead-on parodies of not just the authors (who include the likes of Paddy Chayefsky, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling … Continue reading Salted Peanuts Department
Dear Mr. Daly
A Fan Letter From Mickey Spillane Just in case anybody doubts that Spillane's Mike Hammer was inspired by Carroll John Daly's Race Williams, check this out: The story goes (at least as far as Spillane told it) that when Daly's agent at the time saw the letter, she instituted a plagiarism suit. Whereupon Daly canned … Continue reading Dear Mr. Daly
Mike Danger
Created by Mickey Spillane (1918-2006) According to legend, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer was originally meant to be a comic book eye called MIKE DANGER, allegedly a harder, tougher version of a Mike Lancer backup feature he had written for Harvey Comics' Green Hornet #10 back in 1942. Danger worked out of New York City's Hackard … Continue reading Mike Danger
Mike Lancer
Created by Mickey Spillane & Harry Sahle (1918-2006) Was this Mickey Spillane's first private eye? Before there was Hammer; before there was Danger, there was... Lancer. A tale of three Mikes. By now the story's pretty well known, at least among P.I. geeks like myself, about how a rejected comic book project from 1946 was … Continue reading Mike Lancer