Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer: The Comic Strip, Vol 2

I've got so many books that I had forgotten that I even owned this. I've been reading a lot of mystery noir lately and I was going through a forgotten corner of my comic book collection where I unearthed this read. So I was already in the mood to finally read it. How long has it been in my collection? I couldn't say other than I've not had it longer than 2007 when I started collecting again after over a decade pause.

From 1985, this collection from Ken Pierce, Inc., reprints the final half of the short-lived Mike Hammer comic strip that ran in nationally syndicated newspapers from 1953-54. Written by the master himself, Mickey Spillane, these stories are as gritty and violent as his novels. Take the wrap around cover image of a partially undressed girl being tied up, gagged and tortured with a lit cigarette being held to the bottom of her foot. It was so salacious at the time, several major newspapers dropped the strip immediately, spelling the end of the strip that ran 6 dailies along with a separate Sunday supplement story.

The cancellation didn't really bother Mickey Spillane all that much. He was getting tired of the grind of coming up with stories that would last about 6 weeks on average. The author wanted to focus on just novels once again. But for artist Ed Robbins, he took the cancellation very hard, causing a rift between the artist and Spillane.

Novelist Max Allan Collins interviewed Robbins for years and the two developed a friendship. Collins' forward to this book details that relationship along with an overview of the Mike Hammer strip and the events behind it's demise. Unfortunately, Ed Robbins died before this book could be published. Though I am happy to report, not before being able to patch things up with writer Spillane.

The stories are quite good. But they are not quite my taste. I prefer Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe stories. But I'd rather read something by Mickey Spillane than anything Dashell Hammett wrote any day of the week. 

The stories inside involves private eye Mike Hammer being targeted by an unknown assailant when the NYPD erroneously claims that the detective saw who killed a man he found dying in the streets. Mike and trusty secretary Velda then help a naive young couple who are swindled by a pair of loan sharks. Hammer also falls for a girl (the same one being tortured on the cover), who is trying to help her brother flee from gangsters that thinks he stole a jackpot's worth of dough from them. Lastly, Mike gets a paying customer for once; a dying old man who's desperate to reunite with his prodigal son one last time.

I think the most striking thing about this book was how different Mike Hammer looks in the strip compared to the detective I grew up watching on TV. I'm used to envisioning actor Stacy Keach in my head with his gray business suit and equally gray fedora with slicked back hair and mustache. That's because that's exactly what the actor looked like on the CBS TV series Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer in the 1980s. Here, Hammer is short and stocky, with a buzz cut, a nose that has obviously been broken many times, and wearing really shabby looking clothes. Obviously, this is what Mike Hammer is supposed to look like as I highly doubt Mickey Spillane would have let Ed Robbins draw his signature character any other way. But it's a stark contrast from what I grew up watching.

I was satisfied enough to not need to search out volume 1. I enjoyed what I read here. But not enough to keep it. So I felt like I was nonplussed with needing to read further. That is until I found out that one of the stories contained in volume 1 is a Christmas Mike Hammer adventure. Well, let's put that on my holiday comic wish list.

Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in!!!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.