Mickey’s Milestone

As I noted in The Rap Sheet, yesterday—March 9—marked the 100th anniversary of author Mickey Spillane’s birth in Brooklyn, New York. (He died in 2006.) In addition to my extensive interview with Max Allan Collins, Spillane’s friend and posthumous collaborator on a trove of novels and short stories (some featuring Manhattan gumshoe Mike Hammer, others not), I had planned to commemorate this occasion with a gallery of Spillane book fronts. However, I ran short of time to post those images on his birthday, so I am doing so today.

Above, you can enjoy two of the most eye-catching covers to come from Spillane’s half-century-long writing career. Those Signet paperback editions of The Last Cop Out (1973) and The Erection Set (1972) both feature photographs of his second wife, actress Sherri Malinou, whom he married in 1965 and divorced in 1983. Other of his paperback releases, though, are equally distinctive. Below, you’ll find covers painted by Robert McGinnis (Killer Mine, Me Hood!, The Consummata), James Avati, Lu Kimmel, James Meese, and several others. There’s also the photo front from Signet’s 1967 issue of The Body Lovers, which has Spillane himself portraying Hammer; two jackets from recent Titan Books editions of Lady, Go Die! and The Will to Kill, their designs credited to Amazing15.com; a pair of Caleb York Western mysteries, co-authored with Collins; two covers from the 1990s Mike Danger comic books Spillane and Collins worked on; and a couple of the variant fronts from Hard Case Crime’s forthcoming, four-issue Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer comic series, created by artists Alex Ronald and Mack Chater. (The primary cover for Issue No. 1 of that series is this McGinnis-painted beauty.)

Of course, there are many more Spillane fronts still in print or available in used copies. If you have other favorites you think really ought to be showcased, I invite you to share links to them in the Comments section at the end of this post.

Click on any of these images to open up an enlargement.

POSTSCRIPT: Book cover-art expert Art Scott points out that the paperback edition of Spillane’s The Erection Set, shown atop this post, is a strategically censored version of the earlier hardcover dust jacket. Take a gander at the 1972 original here.

McGinnis at 90: “The Consummata”

Part of a day-long celebration of artist Robert McGinnis’ birthday.



The Consummata, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
(Hard Case Crime, 2011).

Mucho Mickey

Something I ought to have mentioned before: British blogger and editor Steve Holland’s three-part collection of Mickey Spillane covers. Take a gander here, here, and here.

There are some genuine beauts among this bunch, though I’m surprised Holland didn’t also include illustrator James Avati’s famous Spillane fronts from the 1950s.

READ MORE: “McGinnis and Spillane,” by Paul Bishop (Bish’s Beat).

Did You Hear About Morgan?

Author Max Allan Collins first mentioned The Consummata to me during an interview I conducted with him for The Rap Sheet last May. It’s the long-awaited sequel to Mickey Spillane’s 1967 thriller, The Delta Factor, featuring a professional thief known only as Morgan the Raider. The Consummata was one in a small stack of uncompleted manuscripts that Spillane left behind--and specifically in Collins’ care--when he died in the summer of 2006. Since that time, Collins has been slowly but surely finishing those Spillane yarns and arranging for their publication. He wrote in his blog earlier this month that wrapping up The Consummata was more difficult than some of those previous projects:

I’m very pleased with it, but it was a tricky one. Mickey had completed 108 double-spaced pages, but this time I had no plot or character notes. Even the evocative title itself (which had been announced by Signet Books many years ago) went unexplained. It required really getting inside the manuscript, and Mickey’s head, to figure out where he was headed ... and I think I pulled it off.

This book isn’t due out from reborn publisher Hard Case Crime until September 2011, but Collins has already posted the cover (shown above). You may recognize the illustration as coming from famous paperback artist Robert McGinnis--the second time he has created the front for one of Collins’ numerous novels. (McGinnis’ previous one was for The Last Quarry, 2006.) And if you think you’ve seen another cover from McGinnis’ brush that bears a striking resemblance to this one ... well, pat yourself on the back, because you’re right. The 1972 Signet paperback edition of The Bombshell, by Carter Brown (shown on the right) focuses on a very similarly posed woman, only in that one, the lady dangled a flower in her left hand, rather than a pistol.

Click on either cover for an enlargement.