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Release Date: 18 July 2008

Paul Gravett edits and Peter Stanbury designs The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics. This is a 480-page collection of 24 mean, moody masterpieces, many painstakingly restored by Stanbury. They range from classic newspaper strips and notorious uncensored pre-Code comic books to the finest in American, British and European graphic novels.

The line-up includes:  Dashiell Hammett & Alex Raymond, Will Eisner, Johnny Craig, Mickey Spillane, Bernie Krigstein, Alan Moore, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, Neil Gaiman, Alex Toth, Jacques Tardi, Jordi Bernet, Paul Grist, Jack Cole, Charles Burns, Max Allan Collins, and José Muñoz & Carlos Sampayo. Highlights include the first comic book appearance by Mike Hammer's prototype written by Spillane and shot from the original comic book artwork, and the never-before-reprinted last ever comic book by EC genius Bernie Krigstein, a bizarre 87th Precinct tie-in to Ed McBain's famous characters.

Paul Gravett discusses The Mammoth Book Of Best Crime Comics:

"My new book, once again sharply designed, by Peter Stanbury is The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics, officially out July 18. You may have seen their previous fine comics anthologies, clocking in at around 500 pages, like Best New Manga 1 & 2 (the all-colour third volume is coming this autumn), or Best War Comics and Best Horror Comics.

When Constable approached me to do a Crime collection, they were still looking at doing this book, as well as War and Horror, in the same smaller manga format, which would have seriously shrunk the comics pages down way too small. Thanks to our insistence, they enlarged the format of this series, and in fact for Crime Comics, expanded it a little further still, letting the pages breathe and fill the page area far better.

Stories by Alan Moore top and tail the book perfectly and other contributors include Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, Will Eisner, Jack Cole, Jack Kirby, Jacques Tardi, Muñoz & Sampayo, Neil Gaiman and more. Another distinction is in Peter's exemplary graphic design, which lends the whole 480-page compendium class and atmosphere. Peter also put in amazing effort to restore and refurbish the comics pages, which appear mainly in crisp black and white with no murky greys, to suit the strong, black-and-white noir style. And the contents really are some of the very best, no padding, no also-rans, but two dozen of the cream of crime comics, first-class throughout."

Panel Borders:
Alex Fitch talks to Paul Gravett about his new anthology The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics. More...

I think we can now safely say that the Mammoth Book Of Crime Comics has been the hit of the series so far, and by a very wide margin. Anthologies are a difficult sell unless you're McSweeneys - or, it now transpires, edited by Paul Gravett.  After just two weeks it's already sold five times as many copies here as the last three Mammoth Books combined.

Considering crime comics as featured in this collection span some 80 years of the medium's history, I can't begin to imagine how hard it must have been for Paul Gravett, editor of The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics, to whittle his choices down to the excellent selection featured in this book.

Sandwiched between two great crime-inspired stories by Alan Moore (Old Gangsters Never Die, drawn by the much-missed-from-comicdom Lloyd Thatcher - where is he now? - and I Keep Coming Back Oscar Zarate) are 22 more top tales. These feature the work of creators such as Neil Gaiman, Will Eisner, Max Allan Collins, and Mickey Spillaine, the latter at his nastiest with the truly hard boiled Mike Hammer, just one of a host of characters many will recognise such as The Spirit, Ms. Tree and Agent X-9.

Superbly restored, albeit for one unfortunate page transposition in the X-9 story, the choice of stories is a delight, from straight mystery with Bernie Kriegstein adapting an 87th Precinct Mystery, Blind Man's Bluff, originally penned by Ed McBain, to the creeping horror of crime-does-not pay tales from Johnny Craig (The Sewer) and Jack Cole (Murder, Morphine and Me). These veteran tales are neatly balance with modern stories from the likes of Paul Grist (Kane: Rat in the House) and Gianluigi Gonano and Gianni De Luca (Comissario Spada: The Street).

This is the kind of well put together, lovingly designed collection that not only delivers a great rad but leaves you wanting to track more from the creators featured. If crime comics are new to you but you fancy more than superhero fare, you'd be well advised to give this a try and find out what you've missed. If you are a crime comics fan, then The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics may well send you hunting for creators you'll discover here for the first time. Recommended.

I don't do 'bedside books' because I'm always far too busy having sex, but let's pretend for a moment that I was like you poor fellows who lead a life of solitary vice and, most likely, wear pyjamas and comfy tartan slippers; then I'd have no hesitation in snuggling up in bed with a steaming hot cup of cocoa and a copy of The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics because it's epic!

Only intended to flick through it for the time being but I wasn't reckoning with the irresistible pull of Jack Cole's drug soaked Murder, Morphine And Me (True Crimes, 1948), masked wrestler El Bordah (reluctantly dragging himself away from his copy of Bongo Butt magazine to investigate a bad show at the Sperm Bank in Charles Burns' Love In Vein, 1987) and the squelchy horrors of Johnny Craig's suitably malodorous The Sewer (William M. Gaines' Crime Suspense Stories, 1951).

Ruthless Mr. Big's, ultra-violent hoods, double-dealing dames, unscrupulous PI's, cops of all stripe, stacked broads, the occasional juvenile delinquent - they're all present and up to no good. I've not spotted any blackmailer's or fat guys called 'Mo' yet, but chances are they're in here. When I get time, I'll try and give you the full table of contents for this and the companion volume of sorts - Mammoth Horror Comics - but hopefully this taster will at least give you some idea of the sickly treats in store.

Crimes & Crooks on the Comic Page:
Gathering bullets all over the international comics world, Paul Gravett has compiled a who's who of crime comics.

Oh, how I envy Paul Gravett... and how I pity him at the same time. To dive into the world's cellars of crime comics, reading, dissecting and selecting a worthy crop of steel hard tales that have been produced over the ages to show the general public all those international hidden gems. To spend years on that selection, ever cropping, ever choosing the finest weeds over the gmo's. Oh, how I envy him.

And how I pity him. Those dank cellars full of moldy tales with their never ending descriptive captions, explaining what we see in the art in excruciatingly flowery detail. Oh, how horrible those captions must have seen to him before the assassination of captions and thought balloons in more later years. The never ending barrage of true crime stories in the fifties, formulaic written and abysmally drawn. The horrendous downpour of the worst humanity has to offer and having to read it all.

But Paul Gravett seems to be a proud man. Proud enough to never give up and rise from that dank cellar, covered in dust, face and hands smudged in printing ink; holding just one magnificent monstrous tomb off 480 pages!  The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics. Truly an explorer's treasure.

Let me run off a list of names here: Alan Moore, Bernie Krigstein, Neil Gaiman, Jack Kirby, Jordi Bernet, Johnny Craig, Bill Everett, Alex Toth, Dashiell Hammett, Alex Raymond, Jose Munoz and I'm not even half yet. From the thirties to nineties, from crime to cop drama, from the mystery twist to the detective. This is a pretty thorough sampling of the crime genre.

Paul Gravett is one of the great comic historians of not only American but also European comics (and other continents too no doubt, wait until you see him perform next to Stan Lee in "Who wants to be a comic historian?"). And he has a good eye for a good moody crime story.

The tales are presented in... well not chronologically or alphabetically... I have to guess that they are presented in an order which makes them a joy to read, therefore making the book a nightmare for an anal retentive list person. But the system works. It was a smart move to alternate modern and old tales, I found myself reading through it in almost one go, not an easy feat for someone who reads four books intermingled during different hours of the day. There's a hypnotic rhythm involved in reading Jordin Bernet followed by Simon and Kirby followed by Krigstein or Jose Munoz followed by Bill Everett followed by Paul Grist and so on.

I can't even begin to pick a few of them out to be honest, they're all that good. Jack Cole's infamous  Fredric Wertham's fetish 'needle to the eye'-tale is in there, Krigstein's last comic story ever, Alex Raymond's Agent X-9 tales impossible to find in reprint, Alan Moore's The Sinister Ducks' record sleeve comic and so on. Going from hyper realistic to cartoon, all drawing genres are present but all filtered through either the noir twist or the criminal reflection in a sharp knife.

If I have to hold one thing against this book, it is that some of the art reproduction is either of a low quality or the paper just isn't intended to reproduce fine lines on. I get it, grainy paper reminds us of the pulp tales of yesteryear we all so love but that's trash paper if you're going to celebrate the artistic achievements made in the crime genre. Alex Raymond's lines seem to have suffered the most due to his fine rendering but looking at it from the other end of the spectrum, thicker line work like Johnny Craig also suffers a bit because of the tendency of the paper to bleed a bit when dealing with large gobs of ink.

Paul Gravett is a career criminal comics historian. He is known for picking the difficult jobs and getting it done. He expertly dissects a comic story in 6.6 seconds, judging it's worth based on dialogue, plot and drawing skills. Though he is known for his dusty cellars holding hostage immens volumes of obscure comics, his one flaw is that he also likes to showcase his 'loot' in affordable books, presenting only the best and brightest of whatever genre he has focused on in his genius mind, his latest being The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Stories. Highly recommended.

Anthology collections of comics have been appearing from Mammoth for the past couple of years, amongst them the very successful, Ilya-edited Mammoth Book of Best New Manga series which has seen two titles in print and a third due in November 2008. David Kendall has edited The Mammoth Book of Best War Comics and the upcoming Mammoth Books of Zombie Comics and, to hand, we've perhaps the best of the bunch, Paul Gravett's Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics.

The best anthologies are in equal parts wonderful and frustrating: wonderful to be able to dip into a wide variety of comic strips that you might not otherwise see; frustrating that you only get a taste of something when you want to read more.

Paul's anthology is full of goodies: I'm a crime noir fan so I've dipped into quite a few of the strips on offer but I've still come away from the book with an overwhelming desire to see more. More of Dashiell Hammett's Secret Agent X9, beautifully drawn by Alex Raymond, because the 240 daily strips reprinted here have whetted my appetite. More of Will Eisner's The Spirit because one 7-page story is never enough. More of Torpedo 1936 by Sanchez Abuli & Jordi Bernet because their little 8-page yarn makes me want to find the 17 albums that have appeared in Europe (the first two drawn by Alex Toth, also present), not one of which is available in the UK (although the first seven were reprinted by Catalan in the 1980s).

Even with 479 pages to play in, Paul has had to be mightily selective. So while you won't find, say, a Frank Miller Sin City story - which I would have thought an obvious choice and probably precisely the reason Paul avoided it - you will find a couple of short examples of work by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, good names to have on any cover. Both stories appeared in the It's Dark In London anthology, although Moore is also represented with a very scarce (and here remastered) strip that has only previously appeared as a fold-out cover for The Sinister Ducks' single, Sinister Ducks/Old Gangsters Never Die (1983). From crime fiction there's Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer and Mike Lancer, Ed McBain's 87th Precinct (drawn by Bernie Krigstein) and Hammett's aforementioned Secret Agent X. Max Allan Collins - champion of Spillane - is present with a 'Ms. Tree' yarn. From the much-maligned crime comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s there are a handful of tales (including the classic Murder, Morphine and Me by Jack Cole) and, from the UK, a Denis McLoughlin Roy Carson tale that imports American gangsters to Blackpool plus an episode of Paul Grist's Kane. There are stories by Simon & Kirby, Sanchez and Munoz, Charles Burns, Grange & Tardi... it's an amazing line-up of talent and the quality of the stories justifies every inclusion.

Like all good compilations, you're definitely left wanting more by this selection. Let's hope it takes off in the same way that the New Manga series has and, next year, we can look forward to a second volume... and then a third...

One of the finest books on sale at the moment, and one of the best bargains in the shop, is the Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics, edited by comics historian Paul Gravett, and showing the extent of his knowledge and research. It's 24 of the best thrillers in comics history, containing an extended Spirit story from Will Eisner, Jordi Bernet's Torpedo, a story written by Dashiell Hammett and drawn by Alex Raymond (I know, right?), and a couple of out-of-print yarns from comics grandmaster Alan Moore. There's even more than that, but if I went through them you'd never believe it's only £12.99! Which it is. Pick one up and while you're there, check out the rest of our Crime Comics Spotlight display, showcasing what we reckon is the best in police procedurals, heist thrillers and car chases.

What a rich and loamy mix is here! Comics authority Paul Gravett is the perfect guide for the reader through one of the richest and most subversive genres of comics, taking us from the hyper-violent American crime comics of the 1950s (the very tales that brought the wrath of the moral guardians of the day down on the industry) right up to modern-day masters such as Brits Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. Despite an interesting selection of material, the last book in this series (devoted to horror comics) was compromised by the reduced format and artwork that suffered when shrunk to the smaller page size: no such problems here: the wonderful black-and-white artwork is given room to breathe. And the list of artists is matchless: from the legendary Jack Kirby to EC giant Johnny Craig, from Alex Raymond (working from a Dasheill Hammett script, no less) to the bizarre and surrealistic Charles Burns. An unmissable collection.