Posts Tagged ‘Mike Hammer Graphic Novel’

San Diego and More

Tuesday, July 30th, 2019

Last week’s update was strictly pics from San Diego Con, and this time – along with some news and reviews – I will report in prose.

The highlight for me was the interview with my buddy Andrew Sumner, an exec at Titan; he and I did a Spillane two-man panel at SDCC last year and this time we focused on the upcoming release of the first of five Ms. Tree collections: One Mean Mother.


Andrew Sumner and M.A.C.

Jamie Coville posted the audio of our panel, a link to which you can find among the rest of his SDCC interviews – as of this writing, it’s the fourth entry down and you can download the audio by right-clicking the link once you navigate to this page.

A signing at the Titan booth – we had copies of Quarry’s War and the Mike Hammer graphic novel, plus free Ms. Tree art cards that I autographed – went very well. Got to talk to lots of smart fans – definition of “smart”: they like my work.

Jonathan Maberry did a great job, taking over for me as president of the International Association of Movie and Tie-in Writers, presenting the Scribe awards and helming a very good panel of mostly nominees. I did not win for Killing Town in the general fiction category, but did not expect to.

Otherwise, I have to admit that I find SDCC increasingly unpleasant and anything but user friendly. Part of this is my age, both in terms of physical tiredness and an absence of material of interest to me (Bud Plant, wherefore art thou?). Additionally, with this the 50th anniversary of the biggest con in pop culture, no particular fuss was in evidence. (The question I was most asked was, “Why isn’t Seduction of the Innocent playing?” And I have no answer.)

The aisles are hopelessly clogged, starting on preview night – in what I described to Barb as the world’s slowest moving stampede. Barb, doing an absent Nate’s bidding in search of inexplicably popular pins, had a series of increasingly harrowing, soul-destroying adventures in lines that were unfairly administered.

Here, in Barb’s words reporting back to Nate, are her experiences on Thursday, the official opening day of the con:

“We hit the Udon booth first thing for the other stuff you wanted, and there was no line…but they had sold out of the art book yesterday and won’t have any more. OMG, what a nightmare getting into the convention center at 9:30, a hundred thousand people – just crushing. And it didn’t let up once inside. I was plastered to a guy who worked at the Figpin booth, and he couldn’t get there. After hearing my tale of woe about trying to get a card, he pulled out the Ash pin from his pocket to shut me up.

I went to the Figpin line at 1:30 to mill around for the public 2 o’clock queue-up but there was already a line of a dozen, so I hopped on board. Then the staff tried to disperse us saying it was too early to be there, and when ignored, brought security over. We scattered like cockroaches, only to come back when they left. I was amazed at the camaraderie when we re-formed, “No, I was behind him, you were in front of her,” etc. We were locked in a war together!

After a while, the enemy gave up, and we settled in for the real battle. But then distressing news began filtering down from the front, “They’re out of Batman and the Joker!” Recon was sent out to confirm. “Yes, and Hercule, too!” And so it went. After an hour and a half, battle fatigue set in, some went AWOL, but the rest of the troop pressed forward into the breach! And when the dust settled, I got Thanos, and the last Gogeta.

One funny story – when I was exiting the booth, this girl was telling a Figpin employee HER tale of woe, which was that she had gotten inside before the others this morning, in a motorized wheelchair, and was zipping toward where Figpin was handing out the “golden ticket cards,” when, about three yards from her goal, the chair died, and she was stuck in the aisle, watching helplessly as the cards all disappeared. The thing is, she was saying this while STANDING, and stomped off in a huff when no comp card was given.”

All this culminated on Sunday with a near riot that had Barb shoved up against some garbage cans. Seemed a Figpin staffer just started tossing the precious cards (required to make a purchase) into the air like chum to sharks. Figpin, perhaps the prime offender, will be lucky not to be sued. A company called Bait also rates a “boo,” as Nate put it.

This seems to me to be no fun, no matter what your age. Yes, it’s entertaining to see the cosplay – my favorite was Jason from Friday the 13th dragging a body behind him – but belligerent guards, rude people and impossible-to-get-into panels featuring your favorite stars add up to a popular culture nightmare.

It’s unlikely I’ll be back…but that was what I said last year.

* * *

My partner in Eliot Ness crime, A. Brad Schwartz, attended a different convention of sorts in Coudersport, PA’s annual Eliot Ness fest. Read about it (and see him!) here.

I completed my pass of the second Ness non-fiction book, The Untouchable and the Butcher, and just recently yesterday the third pass, which is primarily tweaking and catching typos and so on. Barb enters these for me, in most cases. This was a big job – the manuscript runs around 550 manuscript pages, and does not include Brad’s bibliographic end notes. I still have to assemble the chapter files into one big file of the whole book.

We did this in the midst of a major event – the move to Muscatine from the St. Louis area of Nathan, his wife Abby and our two grandchildren, Sam, almost four, Lucy, ten months. They will be living up the street just seven houses away, and it will be wonderful. Right now it isn’t – we are all struggling to maintain controlled chaos. More about this later.

* * *

A few TV notes.

Much on the streaming services has yet to capture my attention. But three series already very much on my radar have delivered excellent seasons that are worth your time, whether you munch on them or binge.

The fifth season of Schitt’s Creek continues to astound with its unique combination of deepening characterization and off-the-wall humor. Netflix has it, and if you’ve not watched this offspring of SCTV starring Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy (the latter’s son Daniel is a co-star and co-creator with his dad, and a genius), you need to drop everything and start. And it only gets better and better. For me, a particular pleasure is watching Chris Elliott bump his gonzo comedy style up against the Second City-trained cast members, creating a comic tension that provides the laughs with a special subtext.

Stranger Things has a third season that is broader than the first two but similarly satisfying. The central location, an ‘80s mall, provides a nostalgic backdrop that provided me with unexpected pangs – who knew I actually missed Sam Goody and B. Dalton? The storytelling is first-rate as the cast members are divided into groups for excellent back-and-forth narrative with tiny cliffhangers to hold you from scene to scene, and of course larger ones to keep you bingeing. Millie Bobby Brown continues to be a remarkable young actress, exploring this dangerously powerful girl’s entry into the teen years with poignance and possibilities. The creators, the Duffer brothers, have also found a way to avoid (this time anyway) the pitfalls of a character who can easily swoop in to save the day.

Finally, Veronica Mars roars in with an unexpected fourth season. I have not hidden my admiration for Kristen Bell (not even from my wife) and she outdoes herself here, bringing layers to her characterization with every pause and glance. This twisty mystery is hard to discuss without spoiler warnings, so I’ll say only that the season seems to be dealing with the need to move on from Neptune, California, and Veronica’s teenage years (the character is pointedly described as being in her late thirties) into adulthood and the maturity of a classic detective. Creator Rob Thomas clearly wants Veronica to join the ranks of Marlowe, Hammer, Nero & Archie, and other noir-ish detectives. I would caution him only that to abandon Enrico Colantoni’s Keith Mars, and the hilarious yet warm verbal interplay between father and daughter, would be to lose the heart and soul of the show. My favorite moment in the season has Veronica telling her father how irritated she is that her longtime lover Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring) has asked her to marry him. Keith’s droll low-key reply: “What an asshole.”

* * *

Check out this fantastic Leonard Maltin review of Scarface and the Untouchable.

Jude Law’s role is number six on this list of his best screen performances.

M.A.C.

Confessions of a Laserdisc Fiend Pt. 2 & New Caleb York

Tuesday, May 28th, 2019

Hardcover:
E-Book: Google Play Kobo
Digital Audiobook: Google Play Kobo

Today (Tuesday May 28) is pub date for Last Stage to Hell Junction, the new Spillane/Collins “Caleb York” novel. It’s a hardcover and you will probably be able to find it in the western sections of Barnes & Noble and BAM! Also, this means those of you who have been waiting to review the novel, having won a copy in a book giveaway, will now be able to post your thoughts at Amazon.

I like this one quite a bit, as much of it happens outside of Trinidad, New Mexico, which has been pretty much the sole setting of the previous three novels. I had in mind the Warner Bros television westerns of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s that, as much as anything, made me love the western form. My particular favorite was Maverick, which is the only one of those shows I’ve revisited extensively in recent years, although I’ve collected the DVD sets of all the rest, from Cheyenne to Sugarfoot, from Lawman to Bronco.

Maverick, of course, is known for its genre-spoofing approach, but the series had plenty of serious episodes, particularly (but not exclusively) the Jack Kelly-starring Bart ones. The very best episodes usually had both Bart and James Garner’s Bret, and these did tend toward humor; but a surprising number had noir-ish aspects and Agatha Christie-like enclosed settings. Hell Junction has the latter by way of a ghost town hotel that is welcome only to outlaws.

If you’ve been avoiding Caleb York because the novels are westerns and not crime novels, you are making the wrong assumption, and I encourage you to take a ride on this particular Hell-bound stage.

* * *

Meanwhile, back at the laserdisc ranch….

So far the experience has proven to be neither folly nor triumph. The 21″-inch tube TV (CRT) arrived and, with Barb’s help, I managed to extricate it from a big cardboard box full of smunched newspaper and packing peanuts. Such an experience is will-crushing in and of itself, and that was just the beginning.

What followed was an effort by a heart-patient/recovering stroke victim up the stairs with the heavy, clumsy TV aided by a not thrilled-about-it wife. I had, as luck would have it, a cabinet that was perfect for the TV to rest upon, a big square boxy affair that was designed to hold LPs with a built-in shelf designed for nothing in particular. That shelf would have been perfect for the laserdisc player to rest within, but no hole in the back existed to feed cords through. And I am a do-it-yourself-er whose skills do not include drilling a small hole in a piece of wood.

I had earlier ordered a stand from Amazon for a princely $28 that would support the TV and under which the laserdisc player would (theoretically) slide. This little stand, a sturdy effer, needed assembly. Either Barb or I assembled it. I will allow you to decide which of us was capable of that task. If you are giving me the benefit of the doubt, you are making a mistake.

Next step was to set the 21″-inch TV on top of the stand. Not that bad a job we made of it, for two people with a collective age of 141 years. I had shrewdly studied the specs at the Amazon listing and knew everything would be perfect. Plenty of room to slide that laserdisc player within the stand.

I’d already connected the appropriate cords and a S-video cable to the laserdisc player, so we set the TV sideways on the stand and completed connecting everything up. We eased the TV into position. We prepared to slide the laserdisc player home.

Amazon’s specs, however, did not include a wooden brace under the stand that made the passageway two inches or so smaller. No room at the inn (we could have used Jesus – he was a carpenter, after all). So I needed to prop up the stand at least two inches, all around. I considered pieces of wood, and then Barb suggested something we have no shortage of – books.

I tried four copies of the paperback edition of Road to Paradise – not quite right. After several other attempts, we used the Bantam mass market paperback of Stolen Away – representing my first royalties from that edition.

The laserdisc player now slid under perfectly. I was delighted. I turned to say as much to Barb, but for some reason, she had disappeared. Oh well.


M.A.C. with three random laserdiscs.

I fired everything up and all seemed tickety-boo. The laserdisc player made some disturbing noises, like a Tasmanian devil clearing its throat, but soon settled down. I selected a laserdisc to try out – The Bangles Greatest Hits (all of their hits, actually) – and pushed a button on the laserdisc player to open the tray into which the disc would go. The tray emerged and revealed a disc already in there. Somewhat disturbingly, its label was loose – had come unglued, picked off its perch by the hands of Father Time.

Also, disturbingly, the label on the reverse side of the shining disc was M.I.A. This meant it was somewhere down inside the machine. So far that didn’t seem to matter, though it might explain the initial sounds of discomfort emanating from the belly of the beast.

But the Bangles looked fine on the little TV – much better than such discs had looked on a flat screen – and the music sounded great. The girls (I mean, young women) may have had only enough hits to fill one compilation, but what great hits they were.

As Borat once said, “Success!”

That evening I selected another disc – Sammy Davis Jr. and Jerry Lewis performing in Vegas. Summoned the tray, filled it, sent it back into the machine. The disc looked and sounded great! When it was over, I pushed the button to eject the disc (I had done this successfully with the Bangles LD, earlier in the day).

The grinding returned, more forcefully now, the Tasmanian devil’s jaws grinding, and the disc tray would not open.

I tried various tactics to open it, all desperate in nature, and got nowhere. Finally I unhooked the laserdisc player, which still had its previous Sammy and Jerry disc in its mouth, and tried another machine. That machine was older and it too grumbled (even though it had not ingested a laserdisc label), but it did play. It does play. But it’s sluggish, taking forever to warm up and to perform such functions as ejecting a disc, and its key feature – playing side B after side A completes – does not function at all.

I am hobbling along with this disc player until I find if the original player I tried can be repaired. I believe it is merely a case of removing the semi-ingested laser disc label from the player’s mechanical innards. I’ve taken it to a computer store, where the gent is going to give it a try, though he looks from me to the Pioneer player and back again, as if trying to figure out which of us is the dinosaur, only to conclude: both.

But I will succeed. I promise you. I am not easy to dissuade. It’s the only child in me.

I will report back, whether you want me to or not.

* * *

Here’s a really nice review of Girl Most Likely.

I’m not sure why this 2017 interview of me by Sean Leary was recently posted, but Sean did his typical good job.

Finally, check out this great review of the Mike Hammer graphic novel from Titan.

M.A.C.

Harlan and Harold

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2018

So Harlan Ellison is gone. Not dead, because his work will survive. He may not maintain the presence in the popular culture he once had, because he was chiefly a short story writer. Still, he might overcome that, because after all Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury were both chiefly short story writers, and they endure. Hard to imagine “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” disappearing.

In the aftermath of Harlan’s passing, amid expressions of friendship and loss, came those who figured that while the body hadn’t cooled yet, it would be a good time to say that he was overrated and a “gasbag,” as one dweller in the dingy, dreary corners of Facebook put it. These nonentities who must disparage those who have actually contributed will be with us always –- perhaps more shrilly now, in the age of Trump and Social Media.

In my formative years – adolescence and teens – I read mostly crime/mystery writers. I followed only a handful of science-fiction authors, despite a love of comics, films and TV shows in that genre; among those authors were Bradbury and Ellison. I was particularly attracted by Ellison’s introductory material to his short story collections – I found it fascinating and exciting for the writer to come out from in back of his tales. To be a presence.

There’s no question that he influenced me in that regard. I talk about my work in that same way, if not with as much personality or gift for language; but I do it here, and have introduced many of the reprints of my work and the collections of shorter material.

I also enjoyed his fiction itself, very much, and was aware of his byline on TV scripts on such shows as Burke’s Law, The Outer Limits and Star Trek. Seeing his name on the screenwriter credit of a TV episode always made me sit up. And in my college years I loved his writing about TV, which covered his own experiences in the medium as well as unbridled reviews of various series (collected in The Glass Teat).

I met him in 1973 at a comics convention in Dallas, which happened to be the first such convention I ever attended. Knowing he was the guest of honor, I spotted Ellison in the dealer’s room on the first evening of the show and introduced myself, and told him my first two books had just been published (Bait Money and Blood Money). He congratulated me and asked me to accompany him as he took a stroll around the dealer’s room. He was friendly to me, even warm. Of course, I’d made it clear I was a fan and had brought a book along for him to sign.

Anyway, I accompanied him on his circuit around the room. About half a dozen times, dealers at the show took pot shots at him – picked verbal fights with him (I don’t remember the specific subjects), but were beyond rude. It was like walking down a street in the Old West with Billy the Kid and seeing various punks try to goad him into a shoot-out.

Harlan was soft-spoken, just nodded, said very little to them when he said anything at all. I was confused, knowing Harlan’s reputation for confrontation and not suffering fools. I told Barb about it in our hotel room, not sure whether I was impressed or disappointed.

Throughout the weekend I would stop and chat with Harlan, but we didn’t share a meal or head to a bar or anything – we were just friendly ships that had passed in the night. At the banquet on the final night of the con, with all the dealers and the other guests and many attendees present, Harlan was the scheduled speaker.

I said to Barb, as we sat and dined on rubber chicken, looking around at those who’d verbally assaulted the guest of honor earlier, “How I wish Harlan would take these sons of bitches on.”

And that’s what he did.

Harlan had noted the names of every face that insulted him on that tour of the dealer’s room, and in his keynote speech he reported their rude conduct and called them out individually. Told them it was a hell of a way to treat their guest of honor. And he shot each one of them down, leaving each writhing in a pool of embarrassment.

And I loved it. And I loved him for it, fan of revenge that I am.

A few years later, at a San Diego con, Harlan was going into a ballroom for a panel, accompanied by reps of the con. I paused, gave him a smile and a little wave, not thinking he’d even remember me. Then he called out, “Al! I can’t talk to you right now! We’ll get together later!”

We didn’t. I don’t believe we ever met face to face again, but over the years the damnedest thing happened: out of the blue he would call me. He treated me as if I were one of his closest friends, and as the years and these lovely sporadic calls kept coming, I began to feel that way myself. He made it clear he liked my work and that was extremely gratifying – little in a writer’s life is better than being admired by one of your favorite writers, particularly one who was a formative influence.

We did not agree on Mickey Spillane. He had a low opinion of Mickey typical coming from a progressive writer of his era. But he knew I loved Mickey and his work and he respected that.

One afternoon in my office at home I got a call from Harlan. Mickey’s The Killing Man, his first Mike Hammer in some time, had just come out.

“Al! Did you write this?”

“No. I’ve never ghosted Mickey. That’s his work.”

“Great! Now I don’t have to read it.”

He hung up.

Later he revealed to me that he had a standing order at his regular bookshop to set aside any novel of mine that came out. Only once did he criticize me.

“Al, stop using, ‘He shook his head no.’ Shaking your head is no.”

“Not all shakes of the head mean no, Harlan.”

“Fine. Then characterize those head shakes that way. Otherwise, it’s no!”

“Okay,” I said. “You sold me.”

“And can you watch your word repetition closer, please? You’re a better writer than that.”

Most good fiction writers try to avoid repeating words in the same paragraph or even on the same page (excluding articles like “a” and “the,” of course, and character names). Barb catches most of mine on her edits.

So I said to Harlan, “I admit I do that more often than I should. I try to catch them. But Harlan, a lot of words fly out of here in a year, and sometimes I slip. I’m trying to make a living.”

“Okay,” he said. “I can accept that.”

He was always gracious to me, friendly and funny, and very frank. His anecdotes about Hollywood, frequently ending with him trying to strangle an executive, were priceless. But a year or so ago, he confided that his failing health was something he wasn’t sure he could live with. He said sometimes he contemplated the choice Hemingway had made.

“Don’t do that,” I said, as if he were using too much salt on his food. “Hemingway taking his life colored his work forever. You don’t want that following you around after you’re gone.”

He allowed this was probably good advice.

I was troubled by his admission, but touched that he’d share something like that with me. Yet wasn’t that what had attracted me so as a teenager? This writer who came out from behind his fiction to confront you with his humanity?

And yours?

* * *

Lately I’ve read a number of books about improv comedy and Second City. If you follow these updates regularly at all, you know that I am a huge SCTV fan. When there was an SCTV reunion in 2009, as part of a 50th anniversary Second City celebration, Barb and I spent big bucks to attend the show, which included Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short and Dave Thomas on stage together. Ramis performed with them, and also directed the performance. He had been a cast member the first season and head writer the second.

I embarrassed myself thoroughly bugging and fawning over any SCTV cast members I happened to encounter, and that was most of them. Why Barb remained married to me after such unconscionable fan boy behavior, I have no idea. But I was a teenage girl in 1964 talking to the Beatles – that bad. Maybe worse.

I’d met Ramis a few years before at a film festival in Chicago. That time I behaved myself, pretty much, getting introduced to him by a mutual friend. He was very gracious, quiet but nice, and he smiled when I mentioned how far I went back with him – to Swami Bananananda and kid show host Ol’ Muley (“These are the worst drawings yet, boys and girls”). We also talked about Stuart Saves the World, his Stuart Smalley movie with Al Franken; I told him how much I liked the film and that I wished it were out on DVD (later it was).

At Second City, though, I first flagged Ramis down the night of the reunion show and tried to remind him that we’d met (I don’t think he remembered) but he was friendly and expressed concern that they hadn’t had enough rehearsal time. He gave me an autograph, as well (I was on the hunt).

Throughout the weekend, I saw him a number of times, basically saying “The reunion was great” and hello, but it must have seemed to him that I was everywhere, maybe even stalking him (I wasn’t – it was sheer coincidence). Finally I caught him alone for a moment and apologized for bugging him (even as I bugged him again) and rather desperately said, “I just wanted to let you know how much I love Groundhog Day. It’s one of my favorite movies and it’s my son’s favorite movie, period. It’s a great, great film, it’s like…It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“It is,” he said with an enigmatic smile. “It is a wonderful life.”

I of course meant that his film Groundhog Day is on a level of importance with Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. But I am still not sure if he was agreeing with me, or saying his film was a variation on that film, or maybe just that…it’s a wonderful life. As in, it’s wonderful being alive.

I’m still thinking about that ambiguous reply, particularly now that I know a year later he would contract autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, and be gone in 2014.

The books I’ve read recently about this remarkable actor, writer and filmmaker include Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story by Chris Nashawaty, and Ghostbuster’s Daughter: Life with My Dad, Harold Ramis by Violet Ramis Stiel. The former is fascinating and covers the birth of The National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live and (to a lesser extent) SCTV, with the Caddyshack material starting about midway. It gives a good picture of Ramis at that important time of his life.

His daughter’s book I admit having some problems with, but I would still recommend it to fans of her dad. The book is her memoir, and only really interested me when it was dealing with Harold Ramis himself, although it did that frankly and with insight.

* * *

Here’s a really nice review of the first issue of the Mike Hammer serialized graphic novel from Hard Case Crime Comics (and Titan).

Here’s another good one.

And another.

Finally, here’s a review of Quarry’s Vote.

M.A.C.