Mike Danger

Danger Becomes Hammer

One of the legends of comic book lore has it that the character of that Mickey Spillane would turn into the paperback gold mine, and 50’s literary icon Mike Hammer was originally meant to be a comic book character called Mike Danger.

In 1947 a few stories about Danger were written by Spillane and drawn by Mike Roy, no one however was interested in the character and so eventually Mickey took the essence of the character, changed his name to Mike Hammer, and put him into I the Jury, the rest is history.

The two Mike Danger stories however did get used eventually, appearing 7 years after they were written in the minor Timor, Crime / Horror comic, Crime Detectors in issues # 3 and 4 (copies of # 4, as far as can be told, may no longer even exist.)

That it seems was the end of Mike Danger.

Danger Gets Dull

Except that just a few months after Crime Detectors was canceled another character called Mike Danger appeared.

This one was in issue # 24 of Danger and Adventure, published by Charlton in a magazine that had started out as a horror comic by the title This Magazine is Hunted which then became Danger & Adventure reprinting the adventures of Ibis the Invincible, Nyoka the Jungle Girl, and Lance O’Casey.

Like the short lived first Mike Danger, and Mike Hammer, this Mike Danger was also a private detective, however he was a rather generic tough, but mild comic book private eye, nothing about which was ever likely to stand out.

And nothing did, so Mike Danger 2 and his sometimes partner Johnny Adventure (no really that was the name they gave him) disappeared after just four appearances.

And that it seems would be the end of Mike Danger.

Danger in Tomorrow

Until 1995, when mystery writer, creator of Ms Tree and Wild Dog, and one time writer of the newspaper comic strip Dick Tracy, Max Allan Collins brought us another version of Mike Danger.

In this series we find that the original Mike Danger of the late 40’s has pulled one hundred years into the future where in a office set up in the Statue of Liberty he is the only working private eye in a world where smoking, sexist words, and eating meat is a felony.

He and that world are, to say the least, not a good mix.

Eventually however he returns to the past, and takes up a set of adventures involving commies, flying saucers, and mysterious high jinx’s involving the government.

This series however is canceled before any of this can be resolved, and this time we have seen really seen the last of Mike Danger.

But with this character you never can tell.

Johnny Adventure however we can pretty much count on never showing up again.