Posts Tagged ‘Ms. Tree: One Mean Mother’

What Can You Do Today?

Tuesday, September 17th, 2019

I know what you’re thinking.

What can I do today for Max Allan Collins?

Thanks for asking. Here are several suggestions.

Girl Can’t Help It – the sequel to Girl Most Likely – comes out on March 10, 2020. So does the new Nate Heller novel, Do No Harm, the first in several years – the Sam Sheppard Murder Case novel. I am prolific enough that this kind of thing (dual publication) happens from time to time, because I work with more than one publisher (and they do not coordinate releases with each other). This causes certain problems, as you might imagine, because promoting two books at once is less than ideal.

The future of other books featuring the respective series characters in these two very different novels is riding on the success of these new titles. That’s hardly unusual in the publishing world today, where publishers who for many decades gave writers like me multiple-book contracts now offer one-book contracts. The freelance writing trade has always had its insecurities, but this is a new low.

What can you do to help? Advance order one or both novels at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BAM! or whoever your favorite on-line bookseller is. That will help me out while not putting you in the position of having to buy two M.A.C. novels at the same time next March, straining your wallet and the credulity of the B & N clerk.


Paperback:
E-Book: Amazon
MP3 CD: Amazon
Audio CD: Amazon

Hardcover:
E-Book: Amazon Google Play Nook Kobo iTunes

What else can you do?

If you have a reviewing blog or such-like (these updates of mine fall into the “such-like” category) you can e-mail me your snail-mail address and I will get you an advance copy of the book you wish to review, as soon as it’s available. Advance reading copies (ARCs) will be available fairly soon. If you want to review them both, just say so.

You will not be expected to write a rave, just to write an honest review. Mixed reviews are fine and negative reviews are legal (but be gentle). Write me at macphilms@hotmail.com.

This is only for on-line reviewers. Help me build a mailing list for readers of mine with review columns (or who review at times within a more eclectic column, like, oh I don’t know, this one).

For the rest of you, I will be doing giveaways when we get closer to the pub date of both books (which, as I say, is the same date). A new Quarry (Killing Quarry) is coming in November of this year. The Untouchable and the Butcher by A. Brad Schwartz and me is set for next May – another massive tome, and in conjunction with Scarface and the Untouchable will be the definitive work on Eliot Ness. There will be a new Caleb York novel, Hot Lead, Cold Justice, also in May.

So there will be plenty of M.A.C. to read. But if you are a Nate Heller fan, I do need your support, because there’s nothing harder to keep going than a long-running series that doesn’t star a household name like Bosch or Reacher. Even my Mike Hammer novels (and Hammer is a household name, or used to be), co-written with Mickey, are almost never reviewed by the trades (Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal). There are exceptions, of course – Killing Quarry has been reviewed by all those except Library Journal (so far), and very favorably.

What’s on the docket for Heller are two novels completing the Kennedy cycle – both RFK-oriented one dealing with the Hoffa feud, the other with Bobby’s assassination. But I have no contract for those books yet. I am considering Martin Luther King, Watergate and the Zodiac to round out Heller’s career, but I have to have a publisher to do that. And it takes readers to encourage a publisher.

So. As I recall, you asked what you could do for me. Let publishers know you’re interested. Pre-order both Girl Can’t Help It and Do No Harm, and do so with my thanks. And Krista and Keith Larson’s. And especially Nate Heller’s.

* * *

Speaking of Do No Harm, here’s a nice advance write-up from Craig Zablo.

Nice Ms. Tree: One Mean Mother write-up from Mystery Tribune.

Here’s another nice review of Ms. Tree: One Mean Mother.

M.A.C.

Ms. Tree Gets Hers Today

Tuesday, September 3rd, 2019

Paperback:
E-Book:

Today is the publication date of Ms Tree 1: One Mean Mother from Titan. I don’t know how much presence it will have in the graphic novel sections of Barnes & Noble, BAM! and so on, but it’s available from the usual online suspects (Amazon has it for $17.49, 30% off the retail price).

I’ve already gotten some complaints over my beginning the reprint series with material from the last iteration of the comic book, DC’s Ms. Tree Quarterly. We did ten graphic novellas there, and One Mean Mother gathers five of them, which together form a graphic novel, admittedly an episodic one.

The remaining DC graphic novellas are free-standing, and will make up the second of these five collections, which will comprise the complete Ms. Tree – almost. A few crossovers are not included (notably the P.I.s mini-series, which co-starred Mike Mauser) and the story in which Ms. Tree tracks down a certain long-missing private eye, which will appear next March in Craig Yoe’s Johnny Dynamite collection, which Terry Beatty and I are editing. (I am working on the intro today.)

But these five volumes are the body of work that I am very pleased to have in this format. Why start at the end? Well, I feel it’s our best work, and it was done in color, so I’m just putting our best foot forward. I have been told that when several volumes collecting a strip or comic book feature are published, the first volume sells the best and the sales gradually go down. Also – though it was many years ago – the first issues of Ms. Tree (and the serialized “origin” in Eclipse Magazine) have already been collected in three trade paperbacks.

Our celebrated letters column (SWAK!) will not appear or even be excerpted. They are so politically incorrect, I would probably be jailed, or at least shunned. Times have changed, although not enough to make our then topical subject matter seem dated. It’s a sad fact that most of the crimes and problems these continuities deal with – abortion clinic bombings, gay bashing, date rape – are still very much with us.

If you aren’t familiar with Ms. Tree, she is basically a take on what would have happened to Mike Hammer’s secretary/partner Velda had she and Mike married, and the groom been murdered on their wedding night. The answer is two-fold – she would take over the business, and her first case would be tracking down her husband’s killer. This does not mean Ms. Tree is Velda – each is her own woman. But that “what if” notion was our starting point.

The other thing you should know is that Ms. Tree was the first of the wave of tough female private eyes that became an ‘80s phenomenon in mystery fiction – pre-dating the great V.I. Warshawski and Kinsey Milhone by my friends Sara Paretsky and the late Sue Grafton respectively.

We’re proud of that fact, which was noted in a really nice three-part article here (Ms. Tree gets a lot of space in Part Two but the entire article is worth visiting).

Even if you have the original comics, this series of Ms. Tree volumes is something you need for your bookshelf. You also need to tell your friends about the books and urge them to get onboard. I’m just trying to be helpful.

Comics scripting has always been a secondary part of my career, and to some comics fan I’m still best known for my “abysmal” year of Batman (subject of a recent podcast by nimrods with nothing worthwhile to be doing). To most, Road to Perdition is my claim to fame (or anyway less infamy), and I do think that graphic novel, in many respects, is my best single work. Others might cite my fifteen years writing the Dick Tracy strip, and I’m of course proud of that. But I think the most influential and probably important work was what Terry and I did on Ms. Tree. We didn’t just jumpstart female private eyes, we re-introduced tough crime/mystery to comic books, and paved the way for a lot of people to do their own good work (some were fans of ours who frankly seem to have forgotten that).

So if you are a reader of my prose fiction, and think comic books are for the boids, you really should bite the bullet and buy these five books, as the volumes gradually emerge from Titan. No less an expert than Kevin Burton Smith of the great Thrilling Detective web site considers Ms. Tree my greatest creation, topping even Nate Heller and Quarry. I’m not sure he’s right, but I’m not sure he’s wrong, either.

One thing is indisputable – Ms. Tree was the longest running private eye comic book to date…sixty issues plus various “specials.”

Lots of coverage on the net about the first of the Ms. Tree collected volumes has popped up. Here’s just one.

Jerry House did something everyone should do: he read seven novels by me in a week and a half. See what a piker you are? Then he produced one of the coolest, and I will immodestly say insightful, pieces ever written about my work.

Finally, here’s a really nice look at the Cinemax version of Quarry.

M.A.C.

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.

My San Diego Comic-Con Schedule

Tuesday, July 16th, 2019
THURSDAY 18th JULY
PANEL: The Hardboiled Return of Ms. Tree!
Time: 5:30pm – 6:30pm
Room: 26AB
Guests: Max Allan Collins, Andrew Sumner (host)

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).


Paperback:
ComiXology Digital Comic:

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.