Road to Perdition is out at cinemas this week. But it started life on paper.

Despite the casting of cuddly Tom Hanks in Sam Mendes’ mobster movie Road To Perdition, hitman Michael Sullivan is a pretty bad man. Even more so in the original graphic novel.

According to its writer, Max Allan Collins, Road To Perdition is “an unabashed homage” to Lone Wolf And Cub, a manga graphic novel by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima about a samurai executioner who, wronged by his shogun master, kills his way across Japan with his young son in a pram. Collins also built on elements from the life of 30s mob boss, and Capone-ally, John Looney who had betrayed one of his lieutenants.

Collins, writer of true-crime novels Dick Tracy and Batman, created a detailed period tale of revenge and paternal love. With artwork painstakingly created over four years by Briton Richard Piers Rayner, Road To Perdition is a gem of latter-day pulp fiction, its murderous anti-hero a darned site harder than Hanks will ever be. DE 19 September 02

Road To Perdition, written by Max Allan Collins and illustrated by Richard Piers Rayner, is available from Titan Comics.