The Fractal Hall Journal

I tagged Siskoid, and he tagged me right back, so let’s talk about writers some more. This time, let’s take a look at people who’s work is mostly, if not entirely, outside the comics industry.

George Pelecanos on Batman.

Or Daredevil, or any crime comic. I mentioned Pelecanos as part of the original challenge as an example of switching someone in from a different media, but it didn’t occur to me that people probably won’t recognise his name. He’s a crime novelist and screenwriter who’s been involved with The Wire, and I think a couple of films.

When I worked in the bookshop way back when I ran the crime section as well as Dragons, Spaceships and Underpants Guys. Outside of the Rebus novels (and more on them shortly), I hadn’t really read that much crime fiction, so I got through a lot in a short time to avoid looking like a slack-jawed shelf-filler should someone who knew their stuff appeared, because no one wants to be that guy who works at the Local Comic Shop but isn’t aware of more than two publishing companies.

Pelecanos was one of a set of American crime writers who do a specific kind of work, not so much mysteries or serial killers as examinations of police officers and the criminals they hunt. It’s very, very good stuff, and I don’t think I’d be too far off in suggesting that Ed Brubaker’s Criminal owes a lot to that school of writing, if not Pelecanos himself. And he doesn’t deal with small issues, either. The racial politics of Washington, D.C. (the actual living city rather than the white stone buildings of the capital, mostly) feature heavily, in novels set in the present and the 60s and 70s.

Although he’s not one of the biggest sellers in the field, I think there’s an objective argument to be made that he’s the best crime writer currently working, not to mention one of the best writers, period. So, yeah. Stick him on Batman.

Ian Rankin.

While I think Pelecanos is probably the best working crime writer, my favourite is Rankin, author of the John Rebus novels. Again, he’s in the top tier of British novelists writing anything, never mind crime, concentrating more on the study of people involved in both the police and the criminal community of Edinburgh rather than straight up murder mysteries, although there’s a lot of that too. And Rebus is the classic archetype of dogged, alcoholic investigator without any self-awareness or ability to play at politics, who pisses off (sometimes deliberately, sometimes not) damn near everyone he meets and will not let anything drop when he’s got his teeth into it.

It’s hardly surprising that the one comic Rankin’s been connected with is Hellblazer, via fellow Scot Denise Mina. I’m really looking forward to the run, should it ever appear, and there’s plenty of other titles I’d like to see him take a crack at. Maybe Marvel’s horror line, actually. Hellstrom, say, certainly as the last Max series seemed to take its cue from Contantine. Maybe the Question, too: original, rather than Montoya.

Alan Heinberg.

And speaking of the Question, last year at the Bristol convention, in a panel on telly writers in comics with Paul Cornell, Alan Heinberg mentioned that he was once involved in an attempt to make a Vic Sage Question series, although it fell through. He’s obviously a big fan of the character, and it would be interesting to see what tack he’s take. Although it would never come out.