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Mike Hammer Creator Mickey Spillane Obituary
Written by Paul Rance
Tuesday, 18 July 2006

Mickey Spillane, creator of iconic American detective Mike Hammer, passed away on July 17th, at the age of 88. He died at his home in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, of cancer.

Spillane was a larger than life character, who was a fighter pilot in the Second World War, an employee of the FBI working on cracking drug rings, and he also worked in Barnum and Bailey's circus as a trampoline artist. Spillane was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 9th, 1918, and grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. His writing career began in the mid-1930s, when he wrote stories for comic books, with Superman, Batman, Captain America, and Captain Marvel getting the Spillane treatment. Mike Hammer evolved from Mike Danger, who was intended to be a comic book character. When that failed to materialise, Spillane turned to novels, and Mike Hammer first surfaced in a novel which took Spillane just nine days to write - 'I, The Jury', which was published in 1946. Spillane's novels were very raunchy for the times, and were often criticised by critics, but he was to he became one of the most popular American authors of the 20th Century.

The novels of Mickey Spillane were inevitably made into movies, notably 'Kiss Me Deadly (1955)' and 'The Girl Hunters (1963)'. In the latter, Spillane actually played Mike Hammer. There was also a TV series, with Stacy Keach as Hammer, and 1980s detective spoof, American TV show 'Sledge Hammer', was also based on Mike Hammer.

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