The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics

This huge collection is great value at £12.99 for nearly 500 pages, and it’s nearly all top quality material, from a range of periods.

The largest feature at 80 pages is around 120 dailies from Secret Agent X-9 by Dashiell Hammett and Alex Raymond, which is marred slightly by having a couple of pages out of order, but is otherwise energetic and inventive, with countless double crosses. It’s also really beautifully drawn, Raymond capturing people and movement superbly.

The one artist to appear twice is Bernie Krigstein, and the two make quite a contrast. One is in his clean EC style, and the other, apparently his final comics work, is very different. It’s a totally ludicrous original story set in Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct, drawn in a far sketchier mode. I totally love it for one stunning page of an artist at work for a dozen panels – check out page 61 if you see this book in a shop.

Another favourite of mine is a drug story by Jack Cole, with one of the most notorious panels in comic history, of a syringe about to puncture an eye. It’s all very lurid and the ending is pretty silly, but I adore it for the sheer emotional energy Cole’s cartooning generates in every single panel.

I was less delighted with some of the longer pieces. A Ms Tree story gets 50 pages, and while it’s not at all a bad story, as usual I found Max Allan Collins’ dialogue rather stiff, and Terry Beatty’s art a lifeless match for it. Two Mike Hammer stories by Mickey Spillane get 42 pages, and seemed unexceptional to me. A Paul Grist Kane story gets 36 pages – I enjoyed every moment of this, every imaginatively constructed page, but it does feel very like an excerpt from a series that doesn’t stand alone terribly well. The one other longer piece I was entirely delighted with was a very strong Alack Sinner story by Munoz & Sampayo.

There are plenty more highlights among the shorter pieces. A 1953 Alex Toth story is a masterpiece of composition, control and character, some of the best work by my favourite comic artist ever. There’s a fine 1948 Simon & Kirby swindle story, a delightfully vicious El Borbah story by Charles Burns, a nice P’Gell Spirit story by Will Eisner, and a gorgeous EC tale by Johnny Craig. Of the few items by people with whom I was unfamiliar, I was very taken by an intelligent Commissioner Spada story by Gianluigi Gonano and Gianni Di Luca.

I should also mention some other major names that appear, even though I didn’t think this was particularly great work by them: two Alan Moore pieces, an Abuli/Bernet Torpedo tale, Neil Gaiman, Jacques Tardi, Bill Everett.

Despite not liking every story, this is an exceptional collection, impressive in range of styles, periods and sources, with plenty of comics’ best creators, a convincing summary of the range of crime comic material as well as a fine collection of often great comics. Even if you don’t love every story, I can’t imagine any comic fan wouldn’t find enough great stuff in this to make it a terrific bargain.