Dave Richards assisted on this article.
Late last year Max Allan Collins relaunched a classic with the Hard Case Crime novel 'Deadly Beloved', featuring Ms. Tree, the comics character he created with artist Terry Beatty. Comics2Film had a chance to talk with Collins about the book, and the original movie that coincides with it.
"I didn't have any trouble falling back into the Ms. Tree groove," Collins told us. The book represents the first Ms. Tree story in over ten years. "I've created quite a few series characters, and have revisited them from time to time, and a lay-off is never a problem. Last year I returned to my hitman character Quarry in the Hard Case book 'The Last Quarry'; it had been twenty years since I wrote him, but he was right there, waiting for me.
"Ms. Tree is appealing because she is, frankly, a strong, well-realized character -- a true hero or heroine or whatever, but flawed. She really is a female version of Mike Hammer, but she's smarter than Mike. There's something eminently appealing about a woman taking the avenger role. I don't believe in overplaying the tough woman thing, though -- the mistake is thinking a female protagonist has to be tougher and meaner and more athletic and so on than a male protagonist, to measure up. Equal is plenty. Equal is interesting."
We asked Collins what special challenges writing the character as a prose novel, when all her previous stories have been in the comic book medium.
"It wasn't very challenging -- it was a vacation with pay. The only real challenge, I guess, flowed from re-doing the 'origin story,' as we say in comics," Collins said.
"I knew we'd have longtime Ms. Tree readers aboard, and I knew we'd have new readers. So I decided to present the origin itself pretty much as before, but added a new storyline -- the Event Planner, this manipulative hitman -- to give old-time readers more than a simple re-tread. There was some sense of updating, too, but that was mostly just adding in cell phones and computers.
"The trick of the narrative is the use of Ms. Tree speaking to her psychiatrist, which allowed me to jump back and forth between the past (the origin) and the present (the Event Planner). I'm delighted that readers, both old and new, are responding to the novel."
"Another challenge was being in Ms. Tree's first person point of view and yet doing a handful of scenes that happen out of Ms. Tree's presence -- Dan Green has a lengthy scene, for instance. This was tricky and I hope readers are okay with how I did that."
Collins also calls 'Deadly Beloved' a reboot, which repositions Ms. Tree in present day, a slight departure from her original stories.
"I saw no point in making it a period piece -- the '80s aren't long ago enough to be doing period, though some people are starting to, I guess," Collins said.
"There have been subtle changes, some that nobody's noticed. We have a new character, Bea, an Asian operative who doesn't have a lot to do in this novel but may if there are future ones. Dominique Muerta was Dominick Muerta's sister in the comics, and she's his daughter now -- I just liked that better, for some reason. I wanted her and Ms. Tree to be about the same age and mirror each other.
"If the novels continue they may or may not echo the existing graphic novels. I just don't know. We did a long, elaborate and frankly soap opera-ish storyline over the years, and it's a lot to compress. So whether Ms. Tree's adopted son would show up in a subsequent novel, I can't say; whether Dan Green will lose an eye and a hand, I can't say. I can't even say that there'll be more novels for sure. But this positive reception to 'Deadly Beloved' will certainly be taken into consideration."
Collins is reluctant to set up the characters and plot points too much in an interview like this one, preferring instead to let readers "meet it as it comes." However, he did say long-time readers would enjoy it on a different level.
"Keen fans of noir will note some call-backs to earlier stories, particularly Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novel, 'I, The Jury,'" The writer teased. He also said the tone of the book is identical to that of the comics.
"I did not soften what some might consider 'comic booky' aspects for the novel, such things as the punning names and the accelerated pace and the fast action.
"We often did very topical material [in the comics] -- date rape, gay bashing, abortion clinic bombings, and so on. That grew out of my approach to the 'Dick Tracy' comic strip, which I wrote from 1977 to 1993. Ms. Tree was where I went to do the stories, the topics, I couldn't touch in 'Tracy', because it was seen in 'family' newspapers.
"'Deadly Beloved' isn't on those same lines, exactly, but it does touch on mental illness in a fairly modern way. I liked the idea that an open-and-shut case involving a perp who was mentally ill might reflect manipulation of that perp's illness."
The story is set in Chicago, a common habitat for Collins' characters.
"Chicago is a natural, of course, with its Capone and Ness history, which I became fascinated with at a very early age, due to 'Dick Tracy' and 'The Untouchables.'
"When I started writing crime and private eye-type fiction in the early '70s, the common thing was to write about New York or Los Angeles. I'd grown up in the Midwest, in a small town where I still live (Muscatine, Iowa) and Chicago was the big city closest to me, and the one I'd spent some time in. So some of it was, write what you know," the author told us.
"But I really do think the Midwest has a rich, irresistible heritage in crime. Not just Capone and Frank Nitti, but Bonnie & Clyde and Dillinger and Ma Barker and Pretty Boy Floyd and on and on. I've dealt with that in my Nathan Heller novels, as well as my novels about Eliot Ness in Cleveland, including 'Butcher's Dozen', the novel that pre-dates the graphic novel 'Torso' by several years and covers the very same ground."
While many readers will enjoy meeting Ms. Tree for the first time in the novel, they may not realize the character's historic significance in comics and literature.
"I'd like new readers to understand what Terry and I accomplished, because frankly I think we've gotten precious little credit over the years. For strong, tough female private eye characters, we pre-date both Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone and Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski," Collins explained, continuing, "We were the first crime comic book in ages, and jump-started everything from '100 Bullets' to 'Sin City' -- Frank Miller drew Mickey Spilllane pin-ups for the first issues of Ms. Tree in the early '80s. And we are the long-running private eye comic book of all time."
As prominent as the comics are, the new book springs not from their four-color predecessors, but rather from TV work that Collins' recently completed.
"'Deadly Beloved' grew out of a screenplay and other materials I prepared for Oxygen Network, who optioned the property a while back. They have since put two other screenwriters on it, both female -- the network is oriented toward young working women -- and I knew my take on my own character would be whittled away at. So I decided to preserve my story and my vision via the novel."
Collins revealed that things seem to be moving forward with the planned movie.
"This has gone beyond an option into Oxygen paying the purchase price, which usually means they're going into production. It's a pilot movie with a fairly good expectation of a series to follow. I've seen two scripts, which only vaguely touch on 'Deadly Beloved', and the second of them wasn't bad -- was recognizably 'Ms. Tree'. How the Writers strike affects this, I don't know."
The hope is, that if the TV movies do well, a series will follow.
"Part of my deal is that I'll be doing a few scripts for the show, if it happens," Collins said. "Though the network brought in more writers on the script, their response to my writing was very positive."
While he's not in a position to cast the film, Collins has definite ideas about who he's like in the lead.
"I'd probably stick a brunette wig on Kristen Bell. 'Veronica Mars' MARS and Ms. Tree have to be first cousins," he said.
With a novel in stores, a movie in the works and a potential series on the horizon of possibilities, what of the comic book?
"Terry Beatty and I talk about doing Ms. Tree again from time to time, and there's been a good deal of effort to get the long run of the book reconfigured into graphic novels," Collins said. "We've had any number of the smaller publishers want to publish this existing material, but we're hoping for someone who can get it out there a little better, even to a mainstream audience.
"I do have a lot of affection for Ms. Tree and her world, and would be glad to revisit the character in more novels, graphic or prose. I don't think either Terry or I would care to do a monthly book again. We did around 75 issues, in various formats for various companies, from 1981 through the early '90s."
'Deadly Beloved' is available now wherever books are sold. For more information about the book visit the Hard Case Crime website. Look for more news about the 'Ms. Tree' movie right here on Comics2Film.
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