It's The Stuff Mentally Unstable Dreams Are Made Of

The same day I bought Archer's Goon, I also bought The Bogie Man. I thought a story about an escaped mental patient who believed he was Humphrey Bogart running around Glasgow, acting out some weird collage of Bogart's films, sounded like an interesting premise. I didn't realize until I got home with it that it was actually a comic. Sure, I recognized the name Alan Grant, but I figured he was taking a break from comics to write prose with a friend (co-writer John Wagner).

Not that being a comic hurt it any. I don't know if Robin Smith's version of Glasgow is accurate, but it seemed like a real place. Smith's Francis Clunie does bear a strong resemblance to Bogart, or the artist shorthand for Bogart. The trenchcoat, the nose, the sort of sunken eyes with the bags under them.

There were two stories in the collection, The Bogie Man and Chinatoon. In each case, Bogey/Clunie stumbles into a real criminal operation (not very competent ones, really, but actual crooks) while on whatever imaginary trail he's cooked up. In each case, he helps bring those criminals to justice, but also causes massive property damage, endangers many lives, and wasn't in it to stop those guys anyway (which seems accurate for a Bogart character). The stories feature a bit more violence and car chases than Bogart's films tended to, plus there's some humor, so it's Bogart crossed with, I don't know, maybe Bruce Willis? Or Beverly Hills Cop? Something that's not taking the proceedings entirely seriously. I would have liked one of the stories to not involve actual crooks, to simply be Bogey/Clunie running amok, causing trouble for innocent people caught in his path. Considering he'd think of them as "suckers" anyway, it wouldn't play out any different, except none of the people would deserve the hell being around "Bogey" brings to them

I'm not a Bogart expert, but in the few detective films of his I've seen, he didn't seem quite as mean-spirited as Clunie behaves. Cynical, certainly, but that seemed to present itself as appearing not to care about anyone, because he thinks they'll betray him. Which isn't quite the same as agreeing to work with someone while planning from the start to double-cross them. Perhaps it's because Grant and Wagner give us Clunie/Bogey's internal monologue, so we know he regards a rookie detective he's paired with as a sucker. Or it's an extension of pretending to not care, eventually a person really does stop caring. Or it's how Clunie demonstrates Bogart's characters from other films, like Treasure of the Sierra Madre, in his greed and willingness to use and discard others for his own ends.