Fly Paper: A Short Story Introduction by Art Spiegelman

A ravishingly illustrated version of Dashiell Hammett's Fly Paper--his first truly hard-boiled story--with over two hundred water-based monochromes, that reimagine and recreate in unexpected ways the unsettling atmosphere and sensibility of Hammett's tale.

Hans Hillmann (1925-2014) was a German graphic illustrator and teacher, widely known for the 130 movie posters he designed between 1953 and 1974 that accompanied the release in Germany of many of the most important postwar films by internationally celebrated directors such as Buñuel, Bergman, Eisenstein, Huston, Hitchcock, and Godard. In 1974, Hillmann became obsessed with the idea of making a film on paper based on Hammett's story about a wealthy young girl who runs away from her family to live the hard and fast life, and the Continental Detective Agency operative who's hired to find her. That project would consume seven years of his life would include traveling to the United States, photographing and drawing many of the locations and neighborhoods in San Francisco that Hammett frequented. The result is this extraordinary book: the realistically rendered surfaces of the interiors and streetscapes only a thin facade on the distorting and menacing shadows and phantasmagoric motifs that brilliantly evoke the psychological and emotional undercurrents of Hammett's story.

INTRODUCTION BY ART SPIEGELMAN
PART OF THE PANTHEON GRAPHIC LIBRARY

DASHIELL HAMMETT (1894-1961), is the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America, and is universally recognized as a literary pioneer of the highest distinction. Among his many works of noir fiction are Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Glass Key (1931), and The Thin Man (1934).

HANS HILLMANN (1925-2014) was a major German graphic artist and illustrator; he is best known for designing 130 film posters between 1953 and 1974 for Neue Filmkunst, the film distribution company that introduced the films of Bergman, Buñuel, Antonioni, Goddard, Eisensten, and Fellini to German audiences. Hillmann's posters won many design awards and were featured at national and international exhibitions. With the demise of the film distribution company, Hillmann conceived of doing a graphic version of Hammett's Fly Paper.

ART SPIEGELMAN was cofounder/coeditor of RAW, the acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comics and graphics, and has been a staff artist and contributing editor at The New Yorker. He is the author of Maus (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and twice nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award), Breakdowns, and In the Shadow of No Towers. He lives in New York City with his wife, Françoise Mouly.