Spillane’s Comic Book Detective Will See Print After Half-Century

The warmth of an April sun clings like perfume to a cheap suit as gumshoe Mike Hammer’s alter-ego, mystery writer Mickey Spillane, greets us from the wooden deck of his waterfront home.

This day, with the mercury heading toward 90 and the gulls circling like bad fan dancers in a burlesque club, Spillane wants to talk of his return to his comic book roots after a half-century.

So a photographer and I head to the ‘burg where he’s hung out for more than four decades.

This 77-year-old writer, actor, television pitchman and one-man literary empire could live anywhere he wants - Los Angeles, New York, the South of France. But he chose a South Carolina fishing village lined with seafood eateries. He lives in a modest home with his beloved fishing boat parked on the grass in front.

Hammer would go stir crazy here, but Spillane visited in the early 1950s, liked what he saw, and settled for good.

Spillane, whose novels have sold more than 180 million copies, leads us into a tiny office off the porch. The carpet is blue-gray; the sunlight soft as it filters onto a cluttered desk through venetian blinds.

He explains that before Hammer and those millions of books, he created a comic book detective named Mike Danger. At the time, the early ‘40s, he was scribing for Batman, SubMariner and other comics.

“I wanted to get away from the flying heroes and I had the prototype cop,” says the writer, who still hammers away with two fingers on a vintage gray Smith-Corona manual with dark green keys. He calls it his mistress.

Danger never saw print. The Big One broke out and Spillane enlisted. When World War II was over, he came home and wrote the Hammer novels. The comic book idea was put aside for more than 50 years.

Tekno-Comix will bring Danger to print next month. Danger, the prototypical ‘50s detective, will be transported to the 21st century, but he’ll get entwined in the usual entanglements and the usual dolls.

Spillane may even write some of the plots. But, like his other literary endeavors, “it all depends on whether the fish are biting or not biting.”

If they’re not, and Spillane needs some cash, he sits at the 30-year-old Smith-Corona. He has eight of the machines - another that works and six he uses for parts.

He keeps a shelf of dental tools above his desk - not to pull the truth from a suspect but to repair his typewriters.

For Spillane, this business of writing is simply that - a business.

“I don’t write for fans. I write for customers,” he says. “When you’re good to your customers they’re good to you.”

The next Hammer novel sits next to the Smith-Corona - pages of typing on canary yellow paper stashed in a manila folder. There’s no title yet but Spillane has a few more weeks of work ahead.

He started his career writing for general circulation magazines. Then he worked his way down to the pulps.

And it’s the fans who still recognize Spillane wherever he goes:

“I can’t walk through an airline terminal without people saying ‘Hey! Where’s the doll?”’