Cal McDonald
Created by Steve Niles

Booze and pills are the least of his demons...

CAL McDONALD is another eye chasing things that go bump in the night, a sort of unlicensed private occult detective who appears in a string of novels and decidedly adult comic books by Steve Niles. With his zombie traveling companion Mo'lock by his side, Cal takes on assorted creeps, ghouls and other monsters.

What makes the series stand out is creator Steve Nile's full-tilt embrace of the horror genre in all its bloody, gory glory. Cal's world is nasty and violent, full of vermin and eyeball-gouging and flesh-chomping zombies who really sink their teeth in.

Cal's pretty much your typical comic book private eye -- the usual almost-parody: a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed, and excessively violent son of a bitch who's haunted by tragic events in his past. Only difference is that he sees dead people... and then he blows them away.

"Cal is written in a sparse, gruff first-person narrative which is a nod to writers like Chandler and Hammett who are huge influences on me," explains the author. "I kind of think of Cal McDonald as the screwed-up cousin of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, but now that it's 2003 and the tough talk and hard-drinking just ain't hard enough so Cal is a total fuck-up, a drunk, a pill-popping fool and an ex-junkie. It's not gratuitous, or a lame attempt to be shocking. This is how the character has tried to deal with his life, with the horrors he sees on a daily basis."

Uh-huh...

When we first meet Cal, in a 1990 story called "Big-Head," he's a less than scrupulous gumshoe shooting heroin in his office at McDonald Investigations in Washington, D.C. That story led directly to the five-part "Hairball," serialized in Dark Horse Presents in 1996.

Cal's subsequent appearances were in two 2002 novels Savage Membrane, and Guns, Drugs and Monsters. In the latter, Cal relocated to Los Angeles, after following a living, decapitated head searching for its body. (Mo'lock followed soon after, driving a U-Haul cross-country -- now that musta been a trip!).

So now the boys are in LA, and hanging out at The Black Cat Club. It's about the strangest joint you've ever seen, full of vampires, werewolves, zombies and people who watch way too much reality TV. So far Cal and Mo'lock have appeared in several mini-series, Criminal Macabre (2003), Last Train to Deadsville (2004) and the latest, Two Red Eyes (2006).

Fortunately, a lot of the excesses of this series are tempered by Niles' wacky sense of wit and dark humour. Honest! But damn, lay off the Chandler comparisons, already!

Steve Niles worked in comics (Spawn, Hellspawn, etc.) and film (Spawn 2), and even had his own publishing company where he edited and co-published several anthologies and adapted works by Clive Barker and Richard Matheson before hitting it big with his mini-series 30 Days of Night, about a band of vampires descending on an unsuspecting Alaskan town, which Wizard magazine dubbed the "#1 Breakout Event of 2002." Originally from Washington, he now lives in Los Angeles.

UNDER OATH

• "To me, Cal McDonald is the logical progression of the hard-boiled detective," commented series writer Niles. "Instead of the 40's hard-drinking tough guy, Cal is a hard, self-medicating guy with enough personal and emotional problems to fill a file cabinet. Oh, and there are monsters."
  (Steve Niles)

OH YEAH?

• "Logical? Cal is frequently compared to Chandler's Philip Marlowe, though he's almost as frequently described as being excessively violent, foul-mouthed and hard-living -- I wish people wouldn't throw Marlowe's name around without having ever read Chandler. Marlowe may be a lot of things, but excessively violent? Foul-mouthed? Hard-living? Sheesh! He drank alone, mostly, and he solved chess problems. I enjoy the Cal McDonald stories, but he ain't Marlowe. Not even close."
  (Kevin Burton Smith)

NOVELS

• Savage Membrane (2002; illustrated by Ashley Wood). Buy this book
• Guns, Drugs and Monsters (2002; illustrated by Ashley Wood) . Buy this book

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

• Dial "M" for Monsters (2003) . Buy this book
  A collection of Cal McDonald short stories, written by Steve Niles, and featuring illustrations by a variety of comics artists.

COMICS

• DAUGHTERS OF FLY IN MY EYE
  (1990, Dark Horse)

• "Big Head"
  Written by Steve Niles
  Art by Jim Whiting.

• DARK HORSE PRESENTS

• "Hairball: A Cal McDonald Monster Mystery" (1995; #102-106)
  Written by Steve Niles
  Art by Casey Jones.

• CRIMINAL MACABRE
  (2003, Dark Horse)
  5-part mini-series
  Written by Steve Niles
  Art by Ben Templesmith
  
  
• CRIMINAL MACABRE: LAST TRAIN TO DEADSVILLE
  (May 2004, Dark Horse Comics)
  4-issue mini-series
  Written by Steve Niles
  Art by Kelley Jones
  
  
• CRIMINAL MACABRE: SUPERNATURAL FREAK MACHINE
  (2005, IDW)
  6-issue mini-series (only three released)
  Written by Steve Niles
  Art by Kelley Jones
  This aborted mini-series ran aground after three issues, and was ultimately released in its entirety in 2007 as a graphic novel.
  
  
• CRIMINAL MACABRE: TWO RED EYES
  (2007, Dark Horse)
  4-issue mini-series
  Written by Steve Niles
  Art by Kyle Hotz

GRAPHIC NOVELS & COLLECTIONS

• CRIMINAL MACABRE . Buy this book
  (May 2005, Dark Horse Comics)
  
  CRIMINAL MACABRE: LAST TRAIN TO DEADSVILLE . Buy this book
  (May 2005, Dark Horse Comics)
  
  
• CRIMINAL MACABRE: SUPERNATURAL FREAK MACHINE . Buy this book novel
  (2007, Dark Horse)
  Collects all five issues of aborted mini-series that ran aground after three issues.
  

RELATED LINKS

• SteveNiles.com
  The author's official site.
  .
• "Big Head"
  The complete 1990 comic book story, from Daughters of Fly in My Eye, that unleashed Cal on an unsuspecting world. Bizarre, twisted, kinda fun. Really.
  .
• Other Eyes from Dark Horse Presents
  I mean, really, who knew?
  
  
• I Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts: Fantasy and Occult Eyes
  Just to show Cal ain't alone...

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.