Spillane, Mickey
Entry updated 31 August 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1918-2006) Working name of US author Frank Morrison Spillane, whose career began with early-1940s work in Comics including Blue Bolt, The Human Torch and USA Comics; he wrote scripts for Superhero characters including Batman and Namor the Sub-Mariner, and at least two text sf stories for the comics, "The Man in the Moon" in All-Winners Comics #5 (June 1942) and "The Sea Serpent" in Sub-Mariner Comics #6 (July 1942).
His bestselling thrillers starring private eye Mike Hammer, beginning with I, the Jury (1946), notoriously featured much Sex and extreme (for that era) violence, often against women: Fritz Leiber responded with an acid Parody centred on the PI character "Slickie Millane" in "The Night He Cried" (in Star Science Fiction Stories, anth 1953, ed Frederik Pohl). Spillane's Hammer novel Kiss Me, Deadly (1952) was transformed into ultimately apocalyptic sf when filmed as Kiss Me Deadly (1955). The non-Hammer The Erection Set (1972) features a somewhat irrelevant Antigravity device. Spillane's one outright SF Magazine credit, the unremarkable novella The Veiled Woman (November/December 1952 Fantastic; 2018 dos), was ghost-written by the magazine editor Howard Browne; he claimed that Spillane's own sf submission was unusable. [DRL]
Frank Morrison Spillane
born New York: 9 March 1918
died Murrell's Inlet, South Carolina: 17 July 2006
works (highly selected)
- Kiss Me, Deadly (New York: E P Dutton, 1952) [Mike Hammer: hb/]
- The Erection Set (New York: E P Dutton, 1972) [hb/]
- The Veiled Woman (Medford, Oregon: Armchair Fiction, 2018) ghostwritten by Howard Browne [dos: first appeared November/December 1952 Fantastic: pb/]
links
- Mickey Spillane at Thrilling Detective (archived)
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Picture Gallery
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