Action Heroine Fans discussion

I posted something on this topic in the Pulp Fiction group earlier today, but thought it might interest some people in this group (so if you've gotten the earlier post, excuse the near-duplication!) A while back, on one of my rare visits to Facebook, I ran across an action heroine character named Femme Noir (there's a fan group on Facebook, the Port Nocturne Irregulars). She's a tough, no-nonsense lady P.I., clad in trench coat and fedora, and her exploits are a tongue-in-cheek (but affectionate) homage to the old adventure pulps of the 30s and 40s, in comic-book format; she takes on mobsters, espionage rings, mad scientists, the occasional killer returned from the dead, etc. on the mean streets of an urban jungle called Port Nocturne. Her adventures have been collected in the graphic book Femme Noir: Dark City Diaries, which is available on Amazon but not yet listed on Goodreads, by her creator, Christopher Mills (with, I think, a Joe Staton as co-author). I haven't read it; but you can browse some Femme Noir yarns at the website, http://www.femme-noir.com . Even though I haven't read comics since I was a kid, and never have been into graphic novels, I did get a kick out of these; and maybe some of you will, too. :-)

That sounds very cool, Werner.

Interesting.

Otherwise i did get Money Shot by Christa Faust because it was a noir about female heroine. Not PI version but other kind of noir.

Money Shot was OK. It could have been better, as I said in my review, but overall I liked it. Gritty.

Yeah it doesnt have be the second coming of noir novels to be enjoyable.

Myself im looking for noir from female POV.

Mohammed, the other day I was going through some old tear sheets from Library Journal, from several years ago, and ran across a review of This Dame for Hire by Sandra Scoppetone. I haven't read it, but the reviewer regarded the heroine there, Faye Quick, as a PI very much in the noir mold. She's a detective's secretary in World War II New York, who takes over the agency's investigative work when he's drafted into the army. That might be up your alley!

Of course, the noir writers of the classic era (at least, from the little I've read in that mold, and about it) didn't have a view of women that saw them as action heroine material; they often portrayed them as scheming, murdering villianesses, oversexed sluts or fragile embodiments of purity who needed a lot of rescuing, but usually not as heroines who could think and fight. (That was one of their blind spots. :-) )

Noir writers of the classic era lived in a time the readers male or female wanted Marlowe,Spade over female PI heroes. They wanted dangerous woman but not heroines. You cant blame them for the time they lived in. James M Cain wrote strong,modern female leads. They are femme fatale and not heroine but he wrote no detective stories but the other kind of noir.

Hammett wrote a story that was from female POV i read that was strong not PI but noir lead but of course he didnt sell it in his life time. Like Howard writing proto feminist swordswoman that his fantasy editor didnt want to print.

Its the editors/publishers/readers that decide what get published.

All good points, Mohammed!

People tend to forget writers had to publish for a limited magazine market and not just go around sell their work to any publisher like today.

Hard to be artistic,fight for your creations when its depression era and you have to sell to make a living,survive. It like some fans today they think they wrote and self published whatever they liked to write.

Ebooks might just be very cool for writers once everything shakes out. Length of stories was quite a problem for some. Now that won't matter as much. Some stories I might have liked a lot were either chopped down or padded up, much to their detriment.

Jim wrote: "Ebooks might just be very cool for writers once everything shakes out. Length of stories was quite a problem for some. Now that won't matter as much. Some stories I might have liked a lot were e..."

Ebooks is good for books that are not too commersiel to get out there. But also shouldnt be a way to realese every crap people think they can write. Being a writer isnt as simple as selfpublishing.

Editing is part of the shaking out process. Unfortunately, we're not there, yet.

Mohammed, you're quite right about the editorial and market constraints that the first, classic generation of noir writers had to contend with; and I apologize to that group collectively for not taking that factor into account as fully as I should have!

Werner wrote: "Mohammed, you're quite right about the editorial and market constraints that the first, classic generation of noir writers had to contend with; and I apologize to that group collectively for not ta..."

Nothing to apologize for Werner i was thinking about non regular readers that dont know noir,other pulp era genre writers. Not readers like you who know older works,writers.

We've sort of expanded the scope of this thread to include any of the distaff portrayals of characters in a noir kind of milieu. Obviously, that whole tradition is what shapes Mills and Staton's Femme Noir character, and her adventures are a kind of homage to it.

For those interested, the link for the Femme Noir graphic story collection is: Femme Noir: Dark City Diaries

From what I remember from the time they were released the aim of the Dark City Diaries was to create a sort of hybrid between the noir series and Will Eisner's "The Spirit" - I seem to recall one of the storylines being about a crazed mad scientist looking to freeze New Port City. I'll have to see if I've got it still in my various boxes of graphic novels...