Chuck wrote:
> This probably not hardboiled, but Baen is reprinting
The Spider
> stories by Gerald W. Page from the 1930s. I just
finished the first
> paperback 'Robat Titans of Gotham', and really
enjoyed it. Nostalgia
> Ventrues is also reprinting The Shadow. Are there
any other writers of
> this type of story that people might
recommend?
(All together now)
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na BATMAN!!!!
Okay, there may be a comic book or two featuring Batman, but
you probably mean prose stories.
There have been some pretty good Batman short stories and
even novels in prose form, particularly in the nineties, and
at his best, Batman's always had a hard, noirish edge to him.
My guess is it was the animated series ( a popular AND
critical success, surprisingly subtle and nuanced) done for
"kids", not the increasingly dreadful and increasingly campy
movies done for children, that helped attract some of the
better crime writers of the era to take a whack at the Bat:
Greg Rucka, Joe Lansdale, Stuart Kaminsky, Max Allan Collins,
James Ellroy, etc. In fact, some of them also wrote for the
series, if I'm not mistaken, and there were a couple of
collections of Batman stories published about the same time.
And of course, there's THE DARK KNIGHT set to open soon on
the multiplex near you, thankfully not based on Frank
Miller's over-rated piece of graphic novel sludge (which,
more than anything, is why I dreaded him getting his hooks on
Marlowe).
And of course Batman himself made his debut in issue #27 of
DETECTIVE COMICS, a monthly collection of hard-boiled comic
stories inspired by the then-popular detective pulps.
Kevin
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