Max Allan Collins (born March 3, 1948) is an American mystery writer, noted for his graphic novels. His work has been published in several formats and his Road to Perdition series was the basis for a film of the same name. He wrote the Dick Tracy newspaper strip for many years and has produced numerous novels featuring the character as well. Biography Writing career Collins has written novels, screenplays, comic books, comic strips, trading cards, short stories, movie novelizations and historical fiction. He wrote the graphic novel Road to Perdition (which was developed into a film in 2002), created the comic book private eye Ms. Tree, and took over writing the Dick Tracy comic strip from creator Chester Gould. Collins briefly wrote the Batman comic book in 1987 and crafted a new origin for the Jason Todd character. Collins and artist Terry Beatty created Wild Dog at DC that same year in a self-titled limited series. The character later appeared as a feature in the Action Comics Weekly anthology. As of 2016, Wild Dog became a recurring character in the Arrow television series and is portrayed by actor Rick Gonzalez. Another Collins contribution to the Batman franchise was scripting the English-language translation of Batman: Child of Dreams in 2003. He wrote books to expand on the Dark Angel TV series. He has written books and comics based on the TV series franchise CSI. In 2006 he wrote Buried Deep (also released as "Bones Buried Deep"), based on the TV series Bones. He has written two sequel novels to Road to Perdition: Road to Purgatory and Road to Paradise. He wrote three more graphic novels starring the characters from Road to Perdition. These graphic novels, called collectively On the Road to Perdition, form the basis of the film. He co-founded the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers with Lee Goldberg. The IAMTW is an organization for writers of tie-ins and novelizations. Collins studied in the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Collins is a fan of the mystery writer Mickey Spillane from childhood and later became friends with him. The two collaborated on a comic book series in the 1990s called Mike Danger. Upon Spillane's death in 2006, Collins was entrusted to finish several uncompleted works by Spillane including Dead Street, The Goliath Bone, and The Big Bang. In 2021, he and Canadian actor/writer Dave Thomas teamed to write