Mike Hammer (character)

Hammer is a no-holds-barred private investigator whose love for his secretary Velda is outweighed only by his willingness to kill a killer.

While other hardboiled heroes bend and manipulate the law, Hammer often views it as an impediment to justice, the one virtue he holds in absolute esteem.

Hammer nevertheless has a strong respect for the majority of police, realizing they have a difficult job and their hands are frequently tied by the law when trying to stop criminals.

In One Lonely Night, where Hammer attends a communist meeting in a park, his reaction to the speaker's propaganda is a sarcastic "Yeah."

Spillane himself favoured ex-Marine and former Newburgh, New York police officer Jack Stang, on whom he based the character, to play him.

[7] In 1956 the Turkish comics artist Oğuz Aral created a parody of Mike Hammer titled Hayk Mammer.

[8] Walt Kelly wrote two parodies of Mike Hammer first published in collections of original work of his Pogo comic strip.

In 2013 Hermes Press reprinted the complete "Mike Hammer" comic strip, with a special introduction by Max Collins.

Later that same year, these four issues were collected as the graphic novel Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer: The Night I Died.