Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Comics

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 14 Nov 2002


Kev,

Re your comment below:

> . . . TORSO, a drak,
> nightmarish fictionalization of a true crime story
> investigated by
> Elliot Ness, et al, are all good reads, and all
> have been collected
> in graphic novels.

Given that you go on to talk about Al Collins later in your post, it's interesting to note that Al fictionalized this case twice. In "The Strawberry Teardrop," the first Nate Heller short story, Heller travels to Cleveland where Ness, having left federal service, is the police chief (Director of Public Safety to give him his official title) on a missing persons case and finds that the person he's looking for is one of the Mad Butcher's victims.

A few years later, he expanded the short story into the novel BUTCHER'S DOZEN (one of his best, in my opinion), moving Ness to center stage and cutting out Heller altogether.

There's a rumor that the script-writer of TORSO consulted Al about research, then essentially ripped off Al's the research, without attribution. I've also been told (but haven't read the graphic novel so can't personally comment) that TORSO is very deriviative of BUTCHER'S DOZEN.

I'm in the middle (or actually near the end) of a long true-crime article about the case, so I've kind of got the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run on the brain right now.

JIM DOHERTY

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