Miker,
Re Stewart's comments below:
> I can't really say, since I won't read anything
by
> him on the basis of some
> terrible comic books he has written. In
particular
> the Ms. Tree series, of
> which I've read about half, having bought them
based
> on comments here.
> What was terrible about the comics was
Collin's
> totally unimaginative use
> of the panels themselves to elevate the
stories.
> His comics were
> essentially
> short stories turned into comics in the
most
> workaday manner possible. The
> stories weren't that good to begin with, either.
To
> me that shows a
> profound
> disrespect for the genre, and more importantly,
for
> the reader. I am so
> angry at those crappy books, I won't look at
his
> other stuff, under the
> assumption that he shows the same level
of
> professionalism in all genres.
I very much LIKED the Ms. Tree series, which I regard as the
best PI series ever done in the comics medium, and that
includes RIP KIRBY, VIC FLINT, the syndicated MIKE HAMMER
strip, and the recent Chandler adaptations.
However, I do agree with Stewart to this degree. If you like
Ms. Tree, you'll like his prose work. If you don't, you
probably won't.
Collins is prolific, but he's not a hack. And remember, he's
a full-time writer. If you spent 40 a week writing, even if
you were very careful and did a lot of revising, you'd
probably be pretty prolific, too.
Further, occasionally, since he writes a lot of stuff on
spec, when he has a lot of stuff out simultaneously, much of
it is stuff that was done several years ago that he's just
now sold.
His best books and stories are the Nate Heller historical PI
series, and the connected Eliot Ness historical police
procedural series (connected since Ness appears in the Heller
stories and Heller in the Ness stories; the best Ness novel,
BUTCHER'S DOZEN, was expanded from a Heller short story, "The
Strawberry Teardrop"). My favorite Heller novel is probably
the first, TRUE DETECTIVE, one of the best PI novels ever
written. My favorite Ness is the aforementioned BUTCHER'S
DOZEN.
JIM DOHERTY
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