The Files of Ms. Tree volume 3: The Mike Mist Case Book


By Max Collins, Terry Beatty & Gary Kato (Renegade Press)
ISBN: 0-840031-02-7

Despite being one of the most popular genres in literature and the fact that most fiction books are bought and read by women, Private Eye yarns are desperately short of female protagonists. Marry that with the observation that “gumshoe” comics are also as rare as hen’s teeth and it’s a wonder that a series such as Ms. Tree ever got off the drawing board.

The secret – as always – was quality.

The black widow of detective fiction first appeared in 1981 as a serial in the anthology comic Eclipse Magazine, produced by Max Allan Collins (crime novelist and new writer of the Dick Tracy strip) with young humour cartoonist Terry Beatty.

She soon won her own solo title, Ms. Tree’s Thrilling Detective Stories (later simply Ms. Tree), and although the marketplace was not friendly to such a radical concept the series ran for 50 issues, and 2 specials, from three publishers (Eclipse, Aardvark-Vanaheim and Renegade Press) before finally dying in 1989. She was promptly revived as a DC comic in 1990 for another 10 magnum-sized issues as Ms. Tree Quarterly/ Ms. Tree Special; three more blood-soaked, mayhem-packed, morally challenging years of pure magic.

Astonishingly, there are no contemporary collections of her exploits – despite Collins’ status as a prolific and best-selling author of both graphic novels (Road to Perdition, CSI and prose sequences featuring his crime-creations Nathan Heller, Quarry, Nolan, Mallory and a veritable pantheon of others).

In the first volume we briefly met Mike Tree, an archetypal detective who married his secretary and partner Mike (“nobody calls me Michelle… twice”) Friday, only to be murdered on their wedding night. The Widow Tree hunted down his killer, setting herself on a path of blood-soaked vengeance. En route she uncovered a vast web of corruption and made an eternal enemy of Mob boss Dominic Muerta: locking together forever in a bloody vendetta.

This third volume, released in 1986, diverged from the chronological retelling of her adventures to re-present a selection of one-shots and specials that co-starred another Collins/Beatty shamus, one originally intended for a far more impressionable audience that gore-hardened Comic-book fans.

The Mike Mist Minute Mysteries began as a part of a tabloid section entitled The Comics Page, which was syndicated for a year or so (1979-1980) in a dozen small newspapers, and latterly in Mystery Magazine. The strip featured a cool, smooth PI who, in 12 panels or less, introduced a crime, deduced a culprit and caught the felon, in neat fair-play duels with the reader. He was generally not aided by the self-fulfilling cop Lieutenant Dimm. The feature was rife with sly in-jokes for fans of detective fiction: whether prose, TV or filmic…

Some of these little gems were collected into a comic-book by Eclipse in 1981 and a selection of those works-in-progress form the opening chapter of this red-handed collection, beginning with the very first conundrum, ‘Death Takes a Powder’, swiftly followed by ‘The Butler Didn’t’, ‘You Only Die Once’, ‘Silence Isn’t Golden’, ‘No Laughing Murder’, ‘Crime Takes a Hike’, ‘Damsel in This Dress’, ‘Too Damp Bad’ and ‘Death Has an Eerie Ring.’

When Ms. Tree launched Mist became an occasional guest: an associate and friend who handled over-spill cases, and eventually scored his own back-up strip in the monthly comic. Inevitably this led to a number of official team-ups – “Mist-Tree Tales” (the liberal use of atrocious puns as concealed and/or offensive weapons was a signature and standard M.O. of all Mist-adventures…)

‘Murder at Mohawk’, from Ms. Tree #9 found accidentally sharing a resort hotel, just a blizzard traps an unsavory cast of characters into an unsolved robbery/murder thirty years old… By this time Gary Kato had joined the team as letterer, art assistant and sometime penciller. Thus Beatty’s art took on a seductively Steve Ditko-esque appearance, especially in such Mist’ back-up teasers as ‘The Long and the Short of Death’ and ‘See no Evil…’, whilst Collins added some autobiographical verity by making Mist a comicbook and record collector in ‘Wertham Was Right’ and ‘Four Color Phony’. After the seasonal ‘Claus for Alarm’, ‘Suitable for Framing’, ‘Snow Job’, ‘Disappearing Act’, ‘Woman in White’ and ‘Blood Will Tell’ our second full-length feature begins.

‘Death, Danger and Diamonds: Dear, Dead Darling’ is a high-octane, hard-bitten hot potato which saw Mist looking to avenge a murdered client (so many of his paying customers ended up dead it became a running gag in the strip. As Tree used to teasingly point out – at least with her cases it was usually the bad-guys who ended up on slabs…) To that end the pair masqueraded as husband and wife; playing bait for a seasoned killer in the concluding ‘Hawaiian Ice.’

‘Death, Danger and Diamonds’ was released as a 3D comic during the brief revival of the form in the mid 1980s. Ray Zone’s eye-popping “separations” expertise is absent from this 2D, black and white collection, but the addition of a four page 3D thriller ‘A Pair of Eyes’ serves to keep the theme in the frame…

There’s another batch of Mist-only Minute Mysteries before the final long-playing tale. ‘Railroaded’, ‘Shattered Alibi’, ‘Staged Suicide’, ‘Blind Suspicion’, ‘No Shot in the Dark’ (with Ms. Tree in attendance), ‘Lucky Number’, ‘Overdrawn Account’ and ‘Tag! You’re It…’ all display the requisite observational antics before ‘Music to Murder By’ finds Mist and Tree hunting a murderer through the heady halls of a vinyl record convention (although to be fair this was produced in the time before CDs, let alone those infernal I-Poddy contraptions…).

The much-abused “more-valuable-dead-than-alive-rock-musician” plot gets an early but quite superior outing in this gripping, stylish thriller which closes the charming, chilling collaboration between two of the sharpest, deadliest gumshoes in the biz.

Despite the tragic scenarios, ruthless characterisations and high body-count, this is yet another clever, scathingly funny casebook steeped in the lore of detective fiction, stuffed with added asides and extras for the cognoscenti. In fiction absolutely no one can be trusted and since you get the chance to match wits with both scumbags and sleuths, these tales are simply steeped in the truly magical gratification factor that allows the reader an even chance to mete out some vicarious justice…

Ms. Tree is the closest thing the American market has ever produced to challenge our own Empress of Adventure Modesty Blaise: how she can be left to languish in graphic obscurity is a greater mystery than any described in this compelling collection. Track down all her superb exploits and pray someone has the street smarts to bring her back for good…

© 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986 Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty. All Rights Reserved.