Monday, June 12, 2017

THE MALTESE FALCON Comic Book - Chapter XVIII: If They Hang You





THE END!
Today's last two pages look odd because the story continued onto the inside back cover, and finished on the back cover itself. Never seen that before, but this is the one and only real Golden Age comic I possess.
See the whole shebang HERE.

11 comments:

Rick Robinson said...

It's been great having an installment to read each day, and I enjoyed this take on the story. Thanks very much for taking the time to scan and post it!

Evan Lewis said...

Glad you liked it, sir. Too bad the rest of the Hammett novels - and the Chandlers - never made it the funny books.

Barry Ergang said...

There is, however, a graphic novel version of The Little Sister. Illustrated by Michael Lark and published by Simon & Schuster, it came out in 1997. In 2003, Ibooks, Inc. put out Raymond Chandler's Marlowe, which contains graphic renderings of the short stories "Goldfish," "Trouble Is My Business," and "The Pencil." It was distributed by Simon & Schuster.

If there are any other illustrated Chandler novels or stories, I'm not aware of them.

George Freeman said...

The whole shebang isn't there. It stops at Chapter 17.

Evan Lewis said...

True, George. I'll fix it.

Cap'n Bob said...

The stuff that dreams are made of. Thanks for scanning this.

Matthew Clark said...

The lack of color on a page was not uncommon in 1940s comic books. Usually appearing in magazines published by the smaller companies. It's nice how the ending is faithful to the novel and not the John Huston movie, where the line about "the stuff that dreams are made of" comes from. By this time there had been a couple radio presentations of the film version with members of the movie's cast on the Lux Radio Theater, and others. Also, Howard Duff began his run as the radio Sam Spade around this year, 1946.
One could almost use these panels for a storyboard to video their own remake?

Matthew Clark said...

While writing my comment, I started looking around to make sure I had the right year for when Howard Duff started as Sam Spade on CBS. It turns out that he also appeared as Spade on a couple episodes of Suspense, once as part of the narration for The House on Cyrus Street, and on the January 10, 1948 episode, The Kandy Tooth Caper. An hour long sequel to The Maltese Falcon. It is hosted by Robert Montgomery, so the opening is a sort of Philip Marlowe meets Sam Spade dialog.
Here is a link to the page at the internet archive for this show. It looks like a great lineup of other adaptations were also presented on Suspense that year.

https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Suspense_Singles_By_Year_1948/Suspense_480110_279_The_Kandy_Tooth_128-44_56411_59m50s.mp3

Evan Lewis said...

Thank you, Mr. Clark!

TC said...

IIRC, Dell Four Color #641 (Steve Canyon) and Jungle Jim #5 had the story continued on the inside back cover and finished on the back cover itself. With the Jungle Jim comic, the last two pages were B&W. With Steve Canyon, the outside back cover was in color.

Jungle Jim #5 was reprinted by King Features in 1967, when they were trying to publish their own comic books instead of licensing them to Harvey and Gold Key.

Those are the two that I know of.

TC said...
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