Who is Samantha Panther?
She's a super-tough, super-cool, super-crime-fighting detective on a raw, brawling hunt to nab the woman and get the man. Clawing her way through a web of gorgeous men, blazing guns, blackmail, and deadly music, Panther discovers that sometimes - in a world of corruption - it's sing or be killed.
This play was written as a tribute to Mickey Spillane on his 80th Birthday. It was greatly influenced by Spillane’s writing style, particularly I The Jury, the first Mike Hammer novel. The twist is, of course, that the tough as nails detective is a woman - and all of the lovely but deadly sex objects are men. The poster art concept was based on a different Spillane novel, called The Delta Factor.
The novel that inspired Samantha’s posters - please don’t beat us up, Mr Spillane’s lawyers - next to the book version of the play.
Angus Kohm introduces...
Samantha Panther, P.I.
in her first adventure...
Tough Girls Don’t Sing
...at least this is what the posters were supposed to read back in 1998, thereby mimicking the cover of a classic Mickey Spillane novel. But the poster designer didn’t feel that the name Angus Kohm was as recognizable as Mickey Spillane, he downplayed it, as you can see. He had a point, but I think the concept was still a good one...
"Canadians are especially good at moving into a form and filling it up with unexpected, unruly content. That's what Angus Kohm does with the "guy" world of private investigators. He literally makes it broad-shouldered and has his female hero live inside all the clichés of macho P.I. land. It's good parody.”
- Robert Enright, CBC TV