Friday, June 22, 2012

Forgotten Books: Speed Walker Private Eye -- Chris Hammond

This is the first of two collections of comic strips by Chris Hammond. Anybody remember it? Michael Shonk discussed it in some detail on Steve Lewis's Mystery*File a year or so ago, and you can click the link to read that post. There's even a comment from Chris Hammond.

I'll just add a couple of thoughts. I like the artwork in the strips, and some of the gags are pretty funny. I read the strip in the newspaper we subscribed to 30 years ago, so it must have run in either the Dallas Morning News or one of the Houston papers. I can't remember. Anyway, I must have liked the strip because I picked up this collection. I didn't know there had been a second collection until I read Shonk's essay.

As you can tell from the cover, Speed's not exactly the world's greatest detective. He's more like Maxwell Smart (yes, I know he wasn't a detective) than Mike Hammer. He looks good in his fedora, though. If you're looking for some really light reading and something different from the usual p.i. fare, here it is. Check it out.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nope, never saw it. I'm sure I read the review on Steve's blog but I don't remember that either.

Sounds fun.


Jeff

Glen Davis said...

I have both collections. Pretty good strip. Better than a lot of the stuff in the paper today, tat's for sure.

Richard West said...

Thanks very much for the link to Steve Lewis's review. While I never saw the strip in any newspaper, I bought the two paperback collections of Speed Walker when they came out, and found them very funny. I'm not surprised that the strip didn't last long, but I'm glad to have found out the dates of its run (May 2, 1983-Aug. 26, 1984).--Richard West, Madison, WI

michael said...

Cris Hammond and I exchanged emails after I did the review. The strip was in 150 newspapers when he ended it to take a job designing sfx for Lucas Films Industrial Light & Magic where he made lots of money doing stuff he enjoyed.

He did start a weekly web comic called "Rainbow's End" but it has not been updated since April. You can find it here:
http://www.bargephaedra.com

michael said...

Correction for website:

http://www.bargephaedra.com/index.html

Hope this works.