Deadly Beloved

ABOUT “MS. TREE”

An Afterword

by Max Allan Collins

This is the first prose novel about female private detective Michael Tree, but numerous graphic novels precede it, all written by me and drawn by Ms. Tree’s co-creator, cartoonist Terry Beatty.

The “Ms. Tree” feature began in 1980 when the independent comics scene was just getting started, and one of its pioneers, editor/publisher Dean Mullaney, approached me about doing a serialized tough detective story for Eclipse, a new magazine he was putting together.

The buzz in comics fandom about that magazine was considerable, because Dean was bringing in some of the hottest talent in comic books to try to do something that could hold its head up alongside (and possibly above) anything the big boys, Marvel and DC Comics, were doing.

I was surprised to be asked to participate, frankly, because I had never written comic books. But I’d been writing the “Dick Tracy” syndicated comic strip since late 1977; and my take on that classic crime strip had attracted attention. I’d attempted to return the venerable strip to its hardboiled roots, with as much gunplay as I could get away with, and reviving classic Chester Gould villains in the context of contemporary themes—human cloning, video piracy, computer viruses.

Mullaney was part of the generation of comics fans-turned-professionals who revered “Tracy,” and I got a lot of positive reaction from this group—eventually I even got to do Batman for a year, because of the high regard in which some comics pros held my work on “Tracy.”

Also, Dean had seen a little strip I was then doing with cartoonist Terry Beatty, called “The Mike Mist Minute Mist-eries,” part of a weekly page of comics Terry and I self-syndicated for a year or so to smalltown papers and advertising “shoppers.” This was a great idea that made us not much money at all, but one of our clients, The Chicago Reader, had picked up our “Comics Page” just to run “Mike Mist,” taking advantage of my “Tracy” connection, the strip being a Chicago institution.

Anyway, seeing and liking “Mike Mist” primed Dean for allowing me to use Terry—who also had zero comic book credits—as the artist in a magazine otherwise filled with stars and even superstars.

On his initial phone call, Dean asked me if I had any ideas for a new private detective character. Immediately I pitched “Ms. Tree,” because I’d been thinking for a long time about doing a switch on Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and his secretary Velda.

The central notion was that the tough private eye and his loyal secretary, his unrequited love for years and years, would finally get married, only for the P.I. to be murdered on their wedding night, leaving the secretary to take over the detective agency and step into her late husband’s shoulder holster. The private eye’s murder would be the former secretary’s first case.

Though clearly patterned on Hammer and Velda, this notion was generally true of many if not most classic (and not so classic) private eyes, who always seemed to have beautiful secretaries who loved them, for all the good it did.

Of course, what separated Spillane’s Velda from the rest was that she was a licensed P.I. herself, packed a gun in her purse, and was almost as tough as Mike Hammer, despite needing to be rescued by him now and then.

Due to my corrupting influence, Terry was a stone Spillane fan, too, and we looked at the obscure but wonderful “Mike Hammer” comic strip from the early ’50s and used, as a stepping off point, the way Spillane crony Ed Robbins had drawn Velda. But even without cartoonist Robbins to light the way, Spillane’s description had been fairly exact—Velda was a big beautiful brunette who wore a pageboy hairdo.

For a while we toyed with making pin-up queen Bettie Page (who in 1980 had not yet received much mainstream attention) the physical model for Ms. Tree. But we ultimately rejected that, not wanting to go with a sex-kitten Honey West type, on the one hand, and finding it a little too obvious, on the other. Within a year or two, gifted artist Dave Stevens embraced the obvious, brilliantly, and his Bettie Page-styled heroine helped fuel his Rocketeer to comics fame and Hollywood success.

Terry and I always viewed “Ms. Tree” as the syndicated comic strip we would have done if continuity strips were still being bought by the newspaper syndicates (which they weren’t, and aren’t). That meant the character names had the kind of on-the-nose Dickensian quality that makes some people wince—from the pun of Ms. Tree/mystery to the chick-stealing Chic Steele, not to mention inexperienced young Dan Green and brave cop contact Rafe Valer (valor).

I don’t apologize for that, because “Ms. Tree” grew out of a specific pop culture myth—Mike Hammer and Velda—and a general one—the private eye and all his/her trappings. If this novel, like the graphic novels, plays less “real” than some of the rest of my melodrama, so be it: in Ms. Tree’s world, blood runs in four colors.

Despite the superstar efforts we were surrounded by, the six-part “Ms. Tree” serialized graphic novel, “I, For an Eye,” was the surprise hit of Eclipse magazine, and the “Ms. Tree” feature was spun off into a full-color comic book—titled Ms. Tree—which ran ten issues. After that, not missing a beat, we were published as a monthly comic book by Cerebus creator Dave Sim (and later by Deni Loubert) as a duo-tone indie—black-and-white images with shades of one color added, sometimes blue, sometimes red, depending on Terry Beatty’s mood. We also did several 3-D Ms. Tree comic books for Loubert’s Renegade Press, and a three-issue mini-series, The P.I.s, for First Comics.

Along the way came a number of Hollywood movie and TV options, perhaps initially fueled by our female sleuth starring in a high-fashion layout in trendy Interview magazine. But Ms. Tree’s most memorable Hollywood adventure came in 1993, when at the last minute, after investing in scripts and a big-time play-or-pay producer, ABC—fearing two really violent TV shows for one season was one really violent show too many—dropped Ms. Tree in favor of something called NYPD Blue. (Adding insult to injury, I was eventually hired to write two NYPD Blue TV tie-in novels for Signet Books.)

After fifty issues of the Ms. Tree indie comic book (not counting the Eclipse serial or the 3-D and other special issues), we were approached by DC Comics, where over the course of several years for editor Mike Gold we did, arguably, our best work: ten 48-page full-color graphic novels.

Ms. Tree ran non-stop for fifteen years, and was—and is—the longest-running private eye comic book in comics history. In 1992, we were nominated for the comic industry’s highest honor, the Eisner Award, for Best Writer/Artist team. We were the first crime comic book of any note since the early ’50s purge of comics by Dr. Fredric Wertham, and undoubtedly changed the landscape to allow the entry of a new generation of creators of crime comics—notably Frank Miller and his own Spillane-influenced work, Sin City (Frank did a “Mike Hammer” pin-up for the first issue of the Ms. Tree comic book).

We’re proud of all that, but we are probably prouder of two other aspects of Michael Tree’s long run.

First, we anticipated the tough female detective craze of the later ’80s and ’90s, predating both Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone. (Other female P.I.s came before us, of course, including G.G. Fickling’s aforementioned Honey West and Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone, but neither Honey nor Sharon really opened the floodgate on tough female detectives in the way V.I., Kinsey and...just maybe...Ms. Tree did.)

And, second, we dealt with contemporary crimes so controversial that even though our most recent graphic novels to date appeared in the early ’90s, their subjects remain relevant: date rape; gay bashing; abortion clinic bombings; and on and on. The reason we went down the road of relevance was my frustration at certain modern crimes being taboo for the family newspaper-oriented “Dick Tracy” strip. Often stories we did in Ms. Tree I had, in some form, pitched for “Dick Tracy” only to have them rejected as “too adult.”

Terry and I are often approached about doing new Ms. Tree graphic novels, and that remains a possibility, although both of us are busy with numerous other projects, meaning time and money concerns come into play. (Eisner Award winner Terry has been inking Batman comic books ever since we did our last comic book together—ironically Mickey Spillane’s Mike Danger.)

We also have explored repackaging the Ms. Tree graphic novels, which in the wake of Road to Perdition would seem a no-brainer, but somehow nothing has come together yet, despite overtures from numerous publishers, big and small.

But it’s the Hollywood interest in Ms. Tree that keeps her contemporary and not just a footnote in recent comics history. And this novel is a byproduct of the most recent television sale for Ms. Tree, deriving from material I prepared for the Oxygen Network. At this writing, we are still involved in that deal, though whether my take on my own characters winds up in any way, shape or form on the screen remains, typically, unresolved.

For the comic book fans out there, the Ms. Tree loyalists, you should have long since figured out that this book does not fit neatly into the continuity of the graphic novel series. It is a sort of contemporary re-boot, based in part on the first two graphic novels, “I, For an Eye” and “Death Us Do Part,” but largely a new story, presenting a revised origin (to use comicbook terminology) for the character, her friends, her enemies, and her world.

This is not, however, the first time Ms. Tree has appeared in prose form. Four short stories have been published over the years, notably the Edgar Award-nominated “Louise” (1992) and “Inconvenience Store” (1994), which was the basis of my independent film, Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market (2000). (Ms. Tree does not appear in Real Time, due to yet another Hollywood deal that had been pending at the time of filming; but a strikingly similar character does, played by B-movie queen Brinke Stevens, looking and behaving very much like Michael Tree.)

Whether Deadly Beloved will lead to more Ms. Tree novels is the cliffhanging note I’ll end on. That will depend on my whim, as well as the desires of Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai...and with you, gentle reader (I always wanted to say “gentle reader”—sorry).

I’ve already implied my thanks to those who made Ms. Tree’s tenure in the comics world a success— Dean Mullaney, Dave Sim, Deni Loubert, and Mike Gold—but they deserve another thank you, and this is it.

In the meantime, I will thank “Ms. Tree” co-creator Terry Beatty, who seemed to be sitting inside my skull drawing the images that appeared there during the writing of this novel; editor Ardai for this opportunity; my agent and friend Dominick Abel for making it happen; my producing partner, attorney Ken Levin, for his continued pursuit of Ms. Tree’s Hollywood destiny; and my in-house editor, my wife Barbara Collins, who is at least as tough as Ms. Tree.

M.A.C.

December 2006