Kid Maroon -- Christopher Cantwell, Paperback

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer meets Encyclopedia Brown in the hard-boiled detective adventure KID MAROON, where big city crime and corruption can only be cracked by the Kid - or can it?

"Crimeville's always been a lousy scum stain." - Kid Maroon, the world's only hard-boiled boy detective.

Two years ago, Walden Maroon outgrew his small town slice of Americana known as Tiny Falls, his loving parents, and the low stakes mysteries involving missing butterflies and stolen cookies. Since then, he's dwelled within the gritty, gangster-ridden cesspit of a city known as Crimeville, where murders, vice, and corruption are the city's bread and butter. Where the unholy trinity of Greed, Squalor, and Despair permeates both the air the citizens breathe and the ground on which they walk - and die. But at 12 years old, Kid is weary. When a string of horrific killings and arsons spring up in the streets, can he crack the case with his quick wits and slingshot? Or does Kid Maroon secretly yearn for what he's never gotten to be ... a kid?

From bestselling writer Christopher Cantwell (Iron Man, Doctor Doom, The Blue Flame, Halt and Catch Fire) and star artist Victor Santos (Polar, Violent Love)!

For fans of:
Comics series, serials, and graphic novels: Dick Tracy, The Spirit (Will Eisner), Sin City (Frank Miller), Richard Stark's Parker series (Darwyn Cooke), Criminal (Ed Brubaker/Sean Philips), Reckless (Ed Brubaker/Sean Philips ), 100 Bullets (Brian Azzarello/Eduardo Risso), The Question (Steve Ditko/Denny O'Neil/Denys Cowan), Road to Perdition (Max Allan Collins), Powers (Brian Michael Bendis/Michal Avon Oeming), EC Comics crime/suspense stories, hardboiled detective genre, and Golden Age comics.
Novels: Richard Stark's (Donald E. Westlake's)Parker Crime novels (including The Hunter and Kiss of Death), Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer books (including I, The Jury), Dennis Lahane books (including Mystic River and Shutter Island), Hard Case Crime, Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe (Farewell, My Lovely and The Big Sleep), Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), John MacDonald's Lew Archer (The Moving Target), Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins (Devil in a Blue Dress), and Max Allan Collins.
Films and series: BRICK (2005 film), movies and series based on the classic hardboiled novels and characters

Author: Christopher Cantwell
Publisher: Vault Comics
Published: 09/23/2025
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.88lbs
Size: 10.07h x 6.68w x 0.38d
ISBN: 9781638492696

About the Author
Christopher Cantwell is an Eisner-nominated comic book writer of such titles as DOCTOR DOOM and IRON MAN for Marvel Comics, STAR TREK: DEFIANT for IDW, PLASTIC MAN NO MORE! for DC Comics, and original books such as SHE COULD FLY (Berger Books), BRIAR (Boom! Studios), and THE BLUE FLAME (Vault). He is also the co-creator, Executive Producer and showrunner of the critically acclaimed television series HALT AND CATCH FIRE, and is also currently serving as EP & showrunner of THE TERROR: DEVIL IN SILVER, set to air on AMC in 2025.

Victor Santos is the Eisner and Harvey nominee creator and co-creator of graphic novels like Filthy Rich, Rashomon, Bad Girls, Against Hope or Violent Love. His work has been published in countries like the USA, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, China and Japan. He has collaborated with companies like Netflix, Fnac, Porsche, the Corvus Belli game company and artists like Deadmau5.
His Polar quadrilogy, published by Dark Horse, has been adapted as an original Netflix movie production with Mads Mikkelsen and Vanessa Hudgens with a sequel in the works, while a number of his other works have been optioned and are in different stages of development. He is also currently working on new different IPs created by him for mediums like comics, TV and cinema.

Der-shing Helmer is the Eisner-nominated and Ignatz-award winning independent science-fantasy and educational comic artist from the CA Bay Area, now based in the San Diego Area. Der-shing is currently the Managing Editor at Vault Comics. She is a self-taught artist, and has a biology degree from UC Berkeley as well as a formal background in secondary science education.