Editing Mickey Spillane (section)

==Career==
===Comic books===
Spillane claims that he started being published as an author of [[Slick (magazine format)|slicks]] where he was credited under [[Pen name#Collective names|house names]], then went "lower" to the [[Pulp magazine|pulps]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.crimetime.co.uk/interviewing-mickey-spillane/|title=Interviewing Mickey Spillane &#124; Crime Time}}</ref> then went lower still as a writer for comic books.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Classic Era of Crime Fiction|last=Haining|first=Peter|publisher=Chicago Review Press|year=2002|isbn=1-55652-465-X|location=Chicago, Illinois|pages=124}}</ref> While working as a salesman in [[Gimbels]] department store basement in 1940, he met tie salesman [[Joe Gill]], who later found a lifetime career in scripting for [[Charlton Comics]]. Gill told Spillane to meet his brother, Ray Gill, who wrote for [[Funnies Inc.]], an outfit that packaged comic books for different publishers.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cronin |first=Brian |date=2023-04-24 |title=Was Mickey Spillane's Iconic Detective, Mike Hammer, Nearly a Comic Book First? |url=https://www.cbr.com/mickey-spillane-mike-hammer-mike-danger-comic-book/ |access-date=2024-08-07 |website=CBR |language=en}}</ref>

Spillane soon began writing an eight-page story every day. He concocted adventures for major 1940s comic book characters, including [[Captain Marvel (DC Comics)|Captain Marvel]], [[Superman]], [[Batman]], and [[Captain America]]. In the early 1940s, working for Funnies, Inc., he wrote two-page text stories which were syndicated to various comic book publishers, including [[Timely Comics]]. At one point, Spillane estimated he wrote fifty of these "short-short stories," which were intended to fulfill a postal regulation requiring comic books to have at least two pages of text to qualify for a second-class mailing permit.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}

While most comic books writers toiled anonymously, Spillane's byline appeared on most of his prose "filler" stories. 26 stories were collected in ''Primal Spillane: Early Stories 1941–1942'' (Gryphon Books, 2003). A new, expanded edition of ''Primal Spillane'' was released by Bold Venture Press in 2018, the new volume contained an additional fifteen stories, including the previously unpublished "A Turn of the Tide".{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}

===Novels===
[[File:Mike Lancer in Green Hornet Comics 10.jpg|thumb|Mike Lancer in ''Green Hornet Comics'' #10 (December 1942); art by [[Harry Sahle]]]]
Spillane joined the United States Army Air Corps on December 8, 1941, the day after the [[Pearl Harbor|attack on Pearl Harbor]]. In the mid-1940s he was stationed as a flight instructor in [[Greenwood, Mississippi]], where he met and married Mary Ann Pearce in 1945. The couple wanted to buy a country house in the town of [[Newburgh (town), New York|Newburgh, New York]], 60 miles north of New York City, so Spillane decided to boost his bank account by writing a novel. He wrote ''[[I, the Jury]]'' in just 9 days.<ref name="Obit1" /> At the suggestion of Ray Gill, he sent it to [[E. P. Dutton]].{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}

With the combined total of the 1947 hardcover and the Signet paperback (December 1948), ''I, the Jury'' sold 6-1/2 million copies in the United States alone. ''I, the Jury'' introduced Spillane's most famous character, hardboiled detective [[Mike Hammer (character)|Mike Hammer]]. Although tame by some standards, his novels featured more sex than competing titles, and the violence was more overt than the usual detective story. Covers tended to feature scantily dressed women or women who appeared as if they were about to undress. In the beginning, Mike Hammer's chief nemeses consisted of gangsters, but by the early '50s, this broadened to communists and deviants.<ref name="wld" />

In December 1942 an early version of Spillane's Mike Hammer character, called Mike Lancer, appeared in [[Harvey Comics]]' ''[[Green Hornet]] Comics'' #10.<ref name="Who">{{cite news |last1=Bails |first1=Jerry |last2=Ware |first2=Hames |title=Sahle, Harry |url=http://www.bailsprojects.com/(S(4pszsy20oexeeq55fizzo4ym))/bio.aspx?Name=Sahle%2c+Harry |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727190412/http://www.bailsprojects.com/(S(4pszsy20oexeeq55fizzo4ym))/bio.aspx?Name=Sahle,+Harry |archive-date=July 27, 2011 |access-date=September 5, 2008 |publisher=(entry), [[Jerry Bails#...Of American Comic Books|Who's Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999]] |authorlink=Jerry Bails}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Cronin |first=Brian |date=2023-04-24 |title=Was Mickey Spillane's Iconic Detective, Mike Hammer, Nearly a Comic Book First? |url=https://www.cbr.com/mickey-spillane-mike-hammer-mike-danger-comic-book/ |access-date=2024-08-07 |website=CBR |language=en}}</ref> In 1946, Spillane submitted in a script for a detective-themed comic book.<ref name="toonopedia">[http://www.toonopedia.com/mdanger.htm Mike Danger] at [[Don Markstein's Toonopedia]]. [https://archive.today/20240527184827/https://www.webcitation.org/6friLo7Jb?url=http://www.toonopedia.com/mdanger.htm Archived] from the original on March 8, 2016.</ref> "Mike Hammer originally started out to be a comic book. I was gonna have a Mike Danger comic book," Spillane said in a 1984 interview.<ref name=cbs>{{cite web|url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mickey-spillanes-state-of-mind/|title=Mickey Spillane's State Of Mind|website=[[CBS News]]|date=23 July 2006}}</ref> Two Mike Danger comic-book stories were published in 1954 without Spillane's knowledge. These were published with other material in "Byline: Mickey Spillane," edited by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers, Jr. (Crippen & Landru publishers, 2004).

The Mike Hammer series proved hugely successful during the 1950s and 1960s, but the books were excoriated by the literary establishment. [[Malcolm Cowley]] of ''[[The New Republic]]'' called Spillane "a dangerous [[paranoia|paranoid]], [[wikt:sadism|sadist]], and [[wikt:masochism|masochist]]" and even his own editors sometimes found his novels distasteful. Spillane for his part was unmoved by critics, saying "You can sell a lot more peanuts than caviar" and "The literary world is made of second rate writers writing about other second rate writers." Attractively low prices (25 cents for a paperback copy, later raised to 50 cents) helped sales, and the 1956 informative guide ''Sixty Years of Best Sellers'' found that the six novels Spillane had written up to that point were among the top ten best selling American fiction titles of all time.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}

The Signet paperbacks displayed dramatic front cover illustrations. Lou Kimmel created the cover paintings for ''My Gun Is Quick'', ''Vengeance Is Mine'', ''One Lonely Night'', and ''The Long Wait''. The cover art for ''Kiss Me, Deadly'' was by James Meese.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}

===Acting===
[[File:Mickey spillane 1973.JPG|left|thumb|Spillane in the 1974 ''Columbo'' episode "Publish or Perish".]]
Spillane portrayed himself as a detective in ''Ring of Fear'' (1954), and rewrote the film without credit for John Wayne's and [[Robert Fellows]]'s Wayne-Fellows Productions. The film was directed by screenwriter [[James Edward Grant]]. Several Hammer novels were made into movies, including ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' (1955). In ''[[The Girl Hunters (film)|The Girl Hunters]]'' (1963) filmed in England, Spillane himself appeared as Hammer, one of the few occasions in film history in which an author of a popular literary hero has portrayed his own character. Spillane was scheduled to film ''[[The Snake (Spillane novel)|The Snake]]'' as a follow-up, but the film was never made.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,874764,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050111222316/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,874764,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 11, 2005|title=Movies: I, the Actor|date=7 June 1963|magazine=Time}}</ref>

On October 25, 1956, Spillane appeared on ''[[The Ford Show|The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford]]'', with interest on his Mike Hammer novels.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ernieford.com/FordShow1-1.htm|title=The Ford Show, Season One|publisher=ernieford.com|access-date=December 28, 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101128164912/http://ernieford.com/FordShow1-1.htm|archive-date=November 28, 2010}}</ref> In January 1974, he appeared with [[Jack Cassidy]] in the television series ''[[List of Columbo episodes#Season 3|Columbo]]'' starring [[Peter Falk]] in the episode "[[List of Columbo episodes#Season 3|Publish or Perish]]". He portrayed a writer who is murdered.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071349/|title="Columbo" Publish or Perish (TV Episode 1974)|author=J. Spurlin|date=18 January 1974|work=IMDb}}</ref> In 1995 and 1997, he appeared in the low budget films [[Mommy (1995 film)|Mommy]] and its sequel, [[Mommy 2: Mommy's Day]].

In 1969, Spillane formed a production company with Robert Fellows who had produced ''The Girl Hunters'' to produce many of his books, but Fellows died soon after and only ''The Delta Factor'' was produced.<ref>p.77 Baker, Robert Allen &  Nietzel, Michael T.  ''Private Eyes: One Hundred and One Knights : A Survey of American Detective Fiction, 1922-1984 Popular Press, 1985</ref>

During the 1980s, he appeared in [[Miller Lite]] beer commercials.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/18/news | work=The Guardian | title=Mickey Spillane dies | date=July 18, 2006}}</ref> In the 1990s, Spillane licensed one of his characters to [[Tekno Comix]] for use in a science-fiction adventure series, ''Mike Danger''. In his introduction to the series, Spillane said he had conceived of the character decades earlier but never used him.<ref name=cbs/>