Criminal Macabre: A Cal McDonald Mystery

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Criminal Macabre: A Cal McDonald Mystery is a comic book series starring Cal McDonald, an antihero American comic book character created in 1990 by Steve Niles (writer). The character's adventures have been published by Dark Horse Comics and later IDW Publishing.

Cal himself is akin to Hellblazer/Constantine, a DC Comics paranormal detective. He takes illicit drugs, and befriends a network of ghouls to assist him in his cases. Policemen do not really care to be involved with Cal.

1 Publishing History
2 Film
3 Series titles
4 Collections
5 Novels
6 Notes
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Publishing History

Cal McDonald's first story, entitled "Big-Head", was released in 1990. That story led directly to the four-part "Hairball", serialized in Dark Horse Presents #102-105 in 1996. Hairball was later printed as a one-shot comic.

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.

Following the novels Cal made his debut again in comic book form in the Dark Horse Comics series, Criminal Macabre (2003) with Ben Templesmith as artist. The two would pair up again for a one-shot comic titled "Love Me Tenderloin" in 2004. Cal's adventures have continued in other mini series such as "Last Train to Deadsville" and "Supernatural Freak Machine", both with artist Kelley Jones, where he re-encountered the decapitated head. Next, he starred in the miniseries "Two Red Eyes" with artist Kyle Hotz, where he does battle with the vampire Nosferatu. He also made a brief appearance in short story format in the Dark Horse Comics released title Drawing on your Nightmares, again with Ben Templesmith as artist. From there, he went on to current series, "My Demon Baby", with artist Nick Stakal, in September 2007. The series "Two Red Eyes" started a trend continuing in "My Demon Baby", where action film actor Thomas Jane would portray Cal on the issue's covers, stylized by artist Tim Bradstreet.

During the release of some of the comic book series there was another novel released in 2003 titled Dial M for Monster: A Cal McDonald Collection. This novel included several short stories featuring Cal.

Criminal Macabre: The Complete Cal McDonald Stories will collect the entire catalogue of Cal McDonald short stories (not the comic stories) until this point. It was released on December 26 of 2007.

[edit] Film

A Cal McDonald film is said to be on the way, however due to the nature of the character Steve Niles does not want to compromise or "water down" Cal McDonald, making it tough to find a studio that will finance the film as is.^[1]

[edit] Series titles

Hairball (series of back-ups, collected as one-shot)
Criminal Macabre (Dark Horse mini series)
Love Me Tenderloin (one-shot)
Drawing on your Nightmares (short story)
Last Train to Deadsville (Dark Horse mini series)
Supernatural Freak Machine (IDW series - issues 4-5 were never published. Soon to be collected in trade paperback by Dark Horse)
Two Red Eyes(Dark Horse mini series)
My Demon Baby (Dark Horse)

[edit] Collections

Title	ARTIST	ISBN	Collects
Criminal Macabre	Ben Templesmith	ISBN 1-5697-1935-7	Issues 1-4
Last Train to Deadsville	Kelley Jones	ISBN 1-5930-7107-8	Last Train To Deadsville 1-4 (Criminal Macabre 5-8)
Supernatural Freak Machine	Kelley Jones	ISBN 1-5930-7731-9	Supernatural Freak Machine 1-4 (Criminal Macabre 9-12)
Two Red Eyes	Kyle Hotz	ISBN 1-5930-7843-9	Two Red Eyes 1-4 (Criminal Macabre 17-20)
My Demon Baby	Nick Stakal	ISBN X-XXXX-XXXX-X	My Demon Baby 1-4 (Criminal Macabre 21-24)

[edit] Novels

Title	Publisher	ISBN	Release date
Savage Membrane	Idea & Design Works	ISBN 978-0-9712282-3-8	April 2002
Guns, Drugs & Monsters	Idea & Design Works	ISBN 978-0-9719775-2-5	February 2005
Dial M For Monster	Idea & Design Works	ISBN 1-932382-05-4	September 2003
Criminal Macabre: The Complete Cal McDonald Stories	Dark Horse Books	ISBN 1-5958-2118-X	December 2007