Mickey Spillane's Iconic Detective, Mike Hammer, Was Nearly a Comic First

Welcome to the 891st installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine three comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. This time, our second legend is about whether Mickey Spillane's iconic private detective, Mike Hammer, was nearly a comic book character first.

During the first half of the 20th Century, if you were a professional writer, that meant that most likely, you wrote for pulp magazines at one point or another. Some of the most popular and successful writers of the era wrote for the pulps at one point or another. Now, depending on where you were writing during the period, and WHEN, you could also find yourself writing comic books, as well. You see, most of the comic book publishers of the "Golden Age" of comic books were originally pulp fiction publishers. It was very easy to move from pulps to comic books, as the set-up was pretty similar, and the same printers who did your magazines could be adjusted to do your comic books.

Therefore, it is staggering the amount of famous writers who worked in either the comics or in the pulps in the 1930s and 1940s. In the past, I've done legends on a few of these oddly famous writers, like Patricia Highsmith (of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley fame) or The Godfather writer, Mario Puzo (Highsmith did comics, while Puzo only wrote for the pulps, although, of course, Puzo later on wrote the screenplay for Superman: The Movie in the 1970s, hot off of the success of The Godfather). Another one of the writers that I did a Comic Book Legend on regarding their comic book work was Mickey Spillane, the world-famous private eye novelists whose character, Mike Hammer, is one of the all-time most popular private eye characters in P.I. history. In that old CBLR (we're talking almost EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO, people!!!!), I discovered a line that kind of shocked me, to be frank. I wrote, "It was even rumored that Mike Hammer was originally meant to be a comic... titled Mike Danger!" Well, huh, Brian, if that was "rumored," why in the heck did you not write about it in your long-running column about comic rumors and legends? Well, I have no answer to that, so I guess we'll NOW look into the story of how Spillane did, in fact, originally intend for Mike Hammer to be a comic book hero!

When did Mickey Spillane start writing comics? How did he get into writing comics?

In a great interview with Roy Thomas in TwoMorrows' Alter Ego #11, Mickey Spillane explained how he got into writing comic books after being a prolific pulp fiction writer.

Thomas: So when and how did you get into comic books? Was it about 1939?

Spillane: I don't know the year, but Ray Gill—who was a good artist and a good writer—I was a friend of his brother's. Joe later turned out to be a great comic book writer. He introduced me to Ray, and Ray said, "Come on, give comics a try." So I went up with Ray, and I started—Bam!—right into Funnies, Incorporated. I was doing other things on the outside, but then I got into comics, and I started to enjoy it. Now don't forget, I'm not a young guy! But I was then—and all these new experiences were pretty exciting and nice and enjoyable. I was never a comic book reader until I got into the business itself.

Thomas: Lloyd Jacquet put together Funnies, Inc. What was it like to work for him for that year or two?

Spillane: Oh, that was a lot of fun! Boy, he was a very strange man. He looked just like [General Douglas] MacArthur; he looked so much like him that he used to smoke a corncob pipe! [laughs] But he was a nice guy, he let us alone, we did our jobs. We were a studio. We did things for other publishers. Funnies did not publish itself.

Thomas: I know that two of the main companies they packaged for were the early days of Martin Goodman's Timely Comics, and Novelty, for which you did a lot of work. Novelty did Four Most, Blue Bolt, Target.

Spillane: Oh, yeah, I did a lot of those.

Be sure to read Alter Ego #11 to see the full interview with Spillane (plus another interview with Spillane by my buddy, Chris Irving).

How was Mike Hammer nearly a comic book?

In 1942, Spilllane first tried out a new idea for a private detective, named Mike Lancer, in a backup feature in Green Hornet Comics (art by Harry Sahle)...

After the war, Spillane decided to try to start his own small comic book company, and the main character in this new company would be a private eye character named Mike Danger. Timely artist Sam Burlockoff explained in an interview with Jim Amash in TwoMorrows' Alter Ego #32 that he had done the artwork for the Mike Danger story that would be the lead of the series, but the small company couldn't acquire enough paper to publish, so the whole thing fell apart. The finished pages weren't published until 1954, by which point Mike Hammer was already a famous character (and Spillane had already started a short-lived Mike Hammer comic strip, which is a story for another day)...

So Spillane took the characters from the failed comic book and rewrote it into a novel starring Mike HAMMER, and he went to a connection he knew from comics to get it published. I, the Jury was published in hardcover in 1947...

However, the hardcover, while only printing a few thousand copies, was not the key to the book, but that it was almost simultaneously put out in paperback, and the paperback was a SMASH success, and Spillane was quickly one of the most popular detective authors on the planet (there was a Mike Hammer TV series starring Stacy Keach. That's what I used for the header)....

And it all started with a failed comic book (years later, Max Allan Collins would write a Mickey Spillane's Mike Danger comic book for Tekno Comix in the 1990s).