The Mammoth Book Of Best Crime Comics!

The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics is a real feast. All in glorious black and white, this anthology brings together crime stories from across the globe and from many decades. I will admit that some of the experimental stories, such as two by Alan Moore that form a beginning and ending for this collection elude me somewhat, but the bulk of the material is totally accessible. The beauty of a collection like this is if you don't much like the story you're reading, you are confident that the next one will strike your fancy. 

Some of the highlights of the collection for me are Jack Cole's "Murder, Morphine and Me!", Will Eisner's "The Spirit: The Portier Fortune", Alex Toth's "The Crushed Gardenia", and Johnny Craig's "The Sewer". There is a large section of the book dedicated to Secret Agent X-9 by Dashiell Hammett and Alex Raymond, and Ms.Tree story "Maternity Leave" by Max Allen Collins and Terry Beatty gets a large hunk as well. There are two stories featuring art by Bernie Krigstein, one dandy tale titled "Lily White Joe" and a later totally strange yarn form the 87th Precinct titled "Blind Man's Bluff". The notes indicated the sheer oddball nature of this yarn drove Krigstein away from comics for good.

Likewise, artist Ed Robbins left the field when his comic strip with Mickey Spillane "From the Files of Mike Hammer" was censored and ultimately cancelled for the bondage scene above. Sanchez Abuli and Jordi Bernet turn in a classic with a Torpedo 36 story called "The Switch". Neil Gaiman and Warren Piere create one of the most depraved comics I've ever read with "The Court". El Borbah created by Charles Burns is a ton of fun, weird and offbeat fun in the story "Love in Vein". Our old friends Joe Simon and Jack Kirby check in with "The Money-Making Machine Swindlers" and Bill Everett turns in a great artistic effort on "The Button". And I've always been a fan of Paul Grist's Kane series represented here with the story "Rat in the House". 

Below are some of the covers for the comics and such in which many of these stories originally appeared. As you can see, it's an eclectic gathering of artistic styles as are the stories themselves. At a cool twenty bucks (when I bought it anyway) this collection is an entertaining bargain.

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