Reckless: Brief Biographical Timelines

Note: If you've received a copy of the Neo Noir comic book, see my previous post for more info.

Our friend Robert Watson has just posted the latest episode of the Undertow Podcast, where we focus on Follow Me Down, the fifth book in the Reckless series. This is the final book in this particular run as Brubaker and Phillips take a break to publish Night Fever and possibly other books, including perhaps the long-awaited follow-up to The Fade Out.

This seems as good a time as any for me to summarize some notes I've taken, to produce a timeline (or three!) for the main characters and the central location in the series. I'll try to avoid serious spoilers for the Reckless books.

Ethan Reckless

1950-1951, born

With his father in Naval Intelligence, Ethan lived in Sterling Park, Virginia; Berlin, Germany; Oahu, Hawaii; and "half of the 60's" in Gitmo -- Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Ethan was recruited by the FBI to infiltrate radical groups in college, using the alias "Donovan Rush" and working with Special Agent Frank Hancock.

1967-1968, ~age 17, spent his first year in college at UC Berkeley

1971, June, ~age 21, while working undercover, suffered a serious head injury from an explosion

Ethan soon left the FBI, and Ethan's father was never again promoted after 1972.

1975, ~age 25, began working for hire, as an unlicensed private investigator and fixer of problems

1979, ~age 29, befriended Anna

1981, ~age 31, Reckless (book 1)

Ethan revisits coastal town Santa Teresa, an apparently fictional town that was mentioned as a "vacation village" in the Criminal novella My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies.

Ethan stopped speaking with his father around this time; his father died before Christmas, 1984.

Frank Hancock retired from the FBI and suffered a stroke.

1985, Summer, ~age 36, Friend of the Devil

1988, April-August, age 37 (stated explicitly), Destroy All Monsters

1989, November, age 38, The Ghost In You & Follow Me Down

2004, Summer, age 54, concluding chapters to Follow Me Down

c. 2021, about age 71, during the pandemic, Ethan types his memoirs

Anna

1962, born

Anna's father worked as the projectionist at the El Ricardo theater.

1968-1972, ~age 6-10, watched Evilina on local channel 14

1975, age 12 (stated explicitly), father died

Anna's mother Sharon would have a series of unhealthy relationships with boyfriends and husbands.

1979, age 17 (stated explicitly), befriended Ethan; was previously a runaway

1988, age 26 (stated explicitly), had a brief falling out with Ethan, moved to east LA and then back

1989, age 27, works first case as the primary investigator, for Lorna "Evilina" Valentine

Christmas Eve, Sharon marries for at least the third time, with Anna as a bridesmaid.

the El Ricardo theater

The El Ricardo is located on Strand Street in Santa Monica.

1974, closes for the first time

1979, is given to Ethan Reckless by a client; Ethan moves into the theater

1988, is damaged and renovated; Ethan gives the theater to Anna, who reopens it for curated showings

c. 1999, closes for the second time

This second closing may have been prompted by the tragedy mentioned at the end of Destroy All Monsters.

To RZ, AB, & Others: Personal Recommendations & Free Comics!

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm using the $1 Image Firsts Neo Noir comic book to introduce friends to one of my great interests, the crime comics of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.

I'm sending them the comic book and directing them here for more info, at least to reveal something about my personality and hopefully to get them hooked on my favorite comic books!


What's the BLUF, the Bottom Line Up Front?

1. If a particular book by Brubaker and Phillips caught your eye in that Neo Noir comic or in our bibliography, do check it out: you can't go wrong, their books run from very good to jaw-dropping.
2. My personal recommendation would be Criminal: The Last of the Innocent, and I'll elaborate on my preferences below.
3. Or, you can always pick up the team's most recent book, as they strive to make every project accessible to new readers, even those who have never read comic books before! 

Their latest project is Reckless, a series of fairly self-contained graphic novels, and its most recent entry is Follow Me Down.

(UPDATE, DEC 16. In his email newsletter on Wednesday, Brubaker released the four-page trailer for the team's next project Night Fever, a stand-alone graphic novel expected this June.)

If you're still only half curious, issue #1 for several of the duo's books are available online, absolutely free from the publisher's official website: links are below.

Personal Background

As far as hobbies go, I tend to emphasize depth over breadth. I don't follow all major sports closely, just my one undergrad alma mater in its seasonal athletic endeavors. I don't devour all of Star Trek, just Deep Space Nine (its greatest series) and to a lesser extent The Original Series and The Next Generation. My musical interests focus on the magnificent singer-songwriter David Gray and, somewhat to a lesser extent, vintage U2. And I don't have shelves upon shelves of sophisticated board games, just a handful of games with an overwhelming emphasis on Monolith's Conan board game and its numerous expansions.

I'm a little OCD; I do obsess.

(Here, it's not all Conan games, neither its licensed RPG nor its computer games. And it's not all iterations of Monolith's "Tactical Homeostatic System," it's just the original implementation with Conan's milieu of Sword and Sorcery. Much as I adore Batman, the Gotham City Chronicles game holds no real appeal for me!)

I do enjoy comic books generally, but I adore the crime comics by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Consistently productive and always bringing new wrinkles to their work, the team is now responsible for two decades' worth of critically acclaimed noir comics.

Separately, Brubaker is a fine writer and Phillips is a skilled artist, but together, it's alchemy.

I didn't closely follow either creator at the time, but I was already a big fan of Gotham Central when Criminal was announced. I was hooked the first time I read the "trailer" for the first arc, and I've been a fanatic ever since, with each new project providing further validation for my enthusiastic support for the team.

I soon became a co-contributor to this blog, then its sole contributor (currently providing infrequent updates), and then the co-host of The Undertow Podcast. I maintain a complete bibliography for the team's collaborative works, and I occasionally(!) share my interest with friends.

My Favorites by Brubaker & Phillips

I recommend The Last of the Innocent as an excellent introduction to the team -- which it certainly is, even though it is, in some ways, a very unusual entry in their bibliography -- but that doesn't mean the book is my all-time personal favorite.

Indeed my favorite series is Criminal, easily, and I'm thrilled that the team keeps coming back to the title over and over again: three ongoing series, mini-series, an original graphic novel, and short stories. It's been close to two years since we've visited that world, but another short story is due before New Year's.

But within Criminal, my favorite book is Wrong Time, Wrong Place, which collects two extra-length one-shots. I particularly love the magazine-sized variant for each story, with covers and bonus material mimicking the vintage comic book that the main character is reading -- the "Savage Sword" of a barbarian pastiche or the "Deadly Hands" of a kung-fu werewolf!

Criminal is their first creator-owned series and my all-time favorite, but their most fun comic might be their first lengthy collaboration Sleeper, a self-contained spy story set in DC's WildStorm universe. It's pure noir, so it's plenty dark in its premise, characterization, and plotting, but it has the most laugh-out-loud moments -- and it has the most innovative page layout, to boot.

And I wouldn't describe The Fade Out as fun, but I suspect that it may be the team's magnum opus. It tells a single lengthy, self-contained story set in Hollywood's Golden Age, and in its scope and focus (movie-making rather than superheroes), I think it compares favorably to that epic from the Eighties, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. It may not be quite as intricately told, but it may actually be a better story, one with continued relevance for the new century.

Other Recommended Comic Books

There are other books that I adore, beginning with another of Brubaker's frequent collaborators, the late, great, and irreplaceable Darwyn Cooke.

Cooke's DC: The New Frontier is another book that I think demands comparisons to Watchmen; it's a more optimistic book, and I think optimism may be harder to get right. His Catwoman with Brubaker is a great compliment to Gotham Central. And Darwyn Cooke's Parker books are AMAZING, the best comic adaptations of crime novels just as Criminal is the best original crime comic.

As far as adaptations go, I also thoroughly enjoyed Lawrence Block's Eight Million Ways to Die, intelligently adapted by John K. Snyder III.

And a very original, very humorous crime comic I've enjoyed is Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory: it takes a bizarre food-related premise and runs with it at full speed. (You can read the first issue for free, see below.)

My life with comic books started with Batman and Star Trek, and I can still strongly recommend a few other comics set in Gotham or built on sci-fi premises.

• Batman Black and White is an excellent anthology series, particularly the first volume.
• Batman Year One remains the best Batman story, better than The Dark Knight Returns.
• Planetoid by Ken Garing is a brilliant sci-fi series, a great story beautifully told.
• Strange Science Fantasy by Scott Morse isn't for everyone, but I loved it.

Star Trek: Early Voyages may be the best Trek comic, despite its cliffhanger ending remaining unresolved when Marvel's Paramount imprint closed up shop. Star Wars Tales is an excellent anthology, and the best ongoing series was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, written by John Jackson Miller and quite satisfying from beginning to end.

And if you remember the cartoons from the early 1980's, you might just adore, as I do, the brilliant but bonkers Transformers vs GI Joe by Tom Scioli.

As much as I like Conan and first got hooked thanks to the Dark Horse anthology, Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword, I'm not sure there's a modern story that stands tall as a must-read book. My hopes are high for Titan's new series due in 2023.

And I do like comic strips wholly apart from comic books -- especially The Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes, with a fond spot for Peanuts and (more recently) Shoe.

A Brief Digression on Batman

Batman: Black and White was one of the first comic books I deliberately picked out for myself, and I distinctly remember getting it off a supermarket shelf. Along with Tim Burton's Batman from 1989 and the subsequent Batman: The Animated Series, this anthology kindled my enduring love of the Dark Knight, through Nolan's masterpiece trilogy -- yes, including The Dark Knight Rises -- to today, when just about the only Batman book I get is for the kiddos, the excellent Scooby-Doo team-up.

Gorgeous fan-made Dark Knight Trilogy posters by StudioKXX

Just as one can draw a straight line from Batman through Gotham Central to Criminal, I can see another line being drawn, with Scooby-Doo as the first crime comics for my kids.

FREE COMICS ONLINE!

Many creator-owned comic books find their home outside the "Big Two" publishers of DC and Marvel, and there's probably no bigger home than Image Comics. Image has found a few ways to advertise their books; in addition to their $1 "Image Firsts" reprints of #1 issues, they have an extensive online collection of free first issues, from The Walking Dead and Saga to some quite obscure titles.

Here are the ones I'd recommend.

Brubaker & Phillips

• Fatale
• The Fade Out
• Kill Or Be Killed

Artist Jacob Phillips, Sean's son and the team's current colorist

• That Texas Blood
• Newburn

Other Crime Comics

• Chew
• Gunning for Hits

Miscellaneous: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, & Humor

• Black Science
• Farmhand
• Gogor
• Shirtless Bear Fighter!

Wrapping Up

I certainly read more than just comic books; it was Criminal and Darwyn Cooke's Parker adaptations that led to the hard-boiled crime fiction of Hard Case Crime and Richard Stark's Parker series.

I also thoroughly enjoy the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, and I have fallen hard for Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels. And, on a most serious note, my faith has been strengthened by being mentored, in a sense, through the works of C.S. Lewis and John Stott.

But I can hardly overstate how much I love the crime comics of Brubaker and Phillips, and I hope that -- just maybe -- the Neo Noir comic and this little blog post will open the door to your discovering their books for yourself.

If not, at least you've had a glimpse into my little world.

Bad Weekend Exclusives at England's OK Comics and San Diego's Comic Con!

Last week we mentioned how had real trouble tracking down the signed bookplate included with Bad Weekend for retailers ordering a particular number of copies.  There are four stores on our own internal "radar" for the Atlanta metro area, and none had ordered enough.

(I have no doubt that more than enough had been ordered between them, and this would have been a perfect opportunity for the stores to have pooled their resources.)

But we noticed that a few exclusives have been offered through OK Comics out of Leeds, England:  their copies of Bad Weekend have included the bookplate we've already noted, a second bookplate -- a store-exclusive, also signed by the three creators -- and a store-exclusive postcard advertising Jacob Phillips' Past is Prologue, expected from Image Comics next year.

As of last week, they also still had signed copies of Criminal #1.

That second bookplate is apparently limited to 100 prints, and it bears a close resemblance to the candidate cover which Sean Phillips preferred but was rejected for a color scheme too closely matching the previous hardcover novella, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies.

OK Comics has been advertising the book on its A-frame sidewalk sign, shown below.  Apparently they originally ordered sixty(!) copies, and more than three-fourths of the store's initial stock sold that Wednesday. Even with putting a hold on mail orders that Friday, the store quickly sold out of its initial stock by Sunday.

The store now has more copies in stock and they're once again taking new orders by mail. We can confirm that they accept PayPal and they DO ship internationally.

If you're interested in ordering Bad Weekend from Leeds' OK Comics, email Jared at shop@okcomics.co.uk.

On the other side of the pond -- and a couple mountain ranges past that -- there's another Bad Weekend exclusive being offered at San Diego's Comic-Con International, which has a preview tonight prior to its official opening tomorrow.

Image Comics announced their con-exclusive merchandise, panels, and signing schedule just last Friday.  Among the exclusive items available at booth #1915 is a "jacketed hardcover" edition of Bad Weekend, with jacket art by Sean Phillips, for the usual retail price of $16.99.

Shown above, the jacket art simulates a "special collector's edition" collection of Danny Dagger stories from Hal Crane, the subject of Bad Weekend.  The jacket wraps around the covers, with the fake book's description and its author's bio folded inside, and the jacket features the same worn look -- and, we suspect, the exact same digital weathering effect -- found on previous magazine-sized variants for Criminal and The Fade Out.

Ed Brubaker is attending the convention this year, on its 50th anniversary, and he sent out a newsletter late yesterday with the schedule for his appearances at the Image booth.

It's mostly the same schedule as last week's press release -- with one additional 10:00 am signing on Saturday, July 20th -- and the Image story notes that the signings are 45-60 minutes, and are "ticketed" events requiring wristbands given out on a first-come, first-served basis.

Brubaker also notes that the jacketed copies of Bad Weekend will be available to people who buy the book "while they last."

Please note: there are only a few hundred of these printed for the convention, I believe, so they will go fast - I don't even have one yet. I hope to escape with a copy or two when no one at the booth is looking.

By our watch, the first signing is just about to begin.

It's worth mentioning that Friday night, July 19th, is awards night at Comic-Con, with the 31st annual Eisner Awards.  Image Comics made history sweeping the "Best New Series" category, and a couple other nominations caught our particular attention.

• My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies was nominated for Best New Graphic Album.
• Sean Phillips was nominated for Best Penciller/Inker for his work on Kill Or Be Killed as well as Junkies.

We're sure we'll have more later about the Eisners and a few other items from Brubaker's newsletter, which includes a three-page in-progress preview of Criminal #7, details on a couple August appearances, and a link to a his recent commentary-track podcast for Bad Weekend.

Criminal #4 Out Now: A Podcast, A Preview, and A Close Look at Coloring.

The next issue of Brubaker and Phillips' new ongoing Criminal comic is out today, and we have a few interesting links for the occasion.

It feels like we can't truly close the book on the previous issue without The Undertow Podcast, and, over the weekend, Episode 31 was released, featuring a review *Criminal* #3, the conclusion to "Bad Weekend" in its original "theatrical cut."

We also had a few recommendations.  Mine were short stories, starting with Lawrence Block's "One Thousand Dollars a Word," about a crime writer weary of being paid the scant rate of five cents a word, incidentally the same rate that Block was paid when the story first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in 1978.  More substantially, I also recommended Kwik Krimes (note the spelling), a 2013 anthology edited by Otto Penzler, featuring 81 crime stories, each in a bite-size length of no more than 1,000 words.  Both recommendations are currently available in Kindle format; Block's story sells for $2.99, and the Kwik Krimes anthology is on sale for the astounding price of $1.49.

Robert recommended a brand new crime comic from Titan Comics, Tyler Cross Volume 2: Angola, a self-contained sequel to another "Tyler Cross" comic, Black Rock.  Both comics are from Fabien Nury, the French writer of The Death of Stalin, a graphic novel adapted in a 2017.  Titan Comics has published the English-language translations of these comics, and the two Tyler Cross books have been released under the label of Hard Case Crime, the must-read imprint specializing in classic and new hardboiled crime fiction.

(In the podcast, I noted that HCC editor Charles Ardai contributed to Kwik Krimes, along with a couple other familiar names, such as Ken Bruen and Christa Faust -- both published by Hard Case Crime -- but I just noticed that Ardai actually contributed a second story under a familiar *cough* alias.)

Next up is info straight from the source, a new email newsletter from Ed Brubaker, sent out Monday.  It begins with an extended, six-page preview, which we exercpt above.

This preview is longer than what we saw in the newsletter from last month (still worth a look for in-process art from other pages), and we learn that this self-contained story is ominously titled "Orphans."

(EDIT: Also on Monday, Kim Morgan gave Twitter followers a look at Sean Phillips' illustration, below, for the issue's bonus essay, on "William Wellman's depression-era pre-code [film], the tough and sensitive and beautiful, 'Wild Boys of the Road'," from 1933.)

Brubaker also relays that the following story has a new title, just as the previous story's title changed from "The Longest Weekend" to "Bad Weekend."  This upcoming arc was referred to as "The Summer of '88" in the solicitations for issues #5 and #6, but it's now titled "Cruel Summer."

(That's the title of a top-ten pop song by Bananarama, released in 1983 and peaking in the U.S. in 1984, after its inclusion in The Karate Kid.  Ace of Base covered the song in 1998, and the cover also reached the top ten in the UK and the US.  But the closest tie to this long Criminal arc might be a "new jack swing" makeover by Bananarama, which charted throughout Europe.  That song was released in -- you guessed it! -- 1989.)

...now that we think about it, the newsletter didn't begin with "Orphans," it began with the artwork shown above, which we haven't seen before.  It appears to be an upcoming cover, and its monochrome coloring and black background fits with what we've seen for the first two covers to "Cruel Summer," repeated below.

We wonder if the image is of Ricky Lawless from that fateful summer of 1988, and I'm sure we'll find out soon enough; the August solicitations will likely be released in the second half of May.

Brubaker continues his newsletter with some inside info on the Bad Weekend hardcover.  The announcement seemed to come out of nowhere, and that's because the idea wasn't from the team, it was from Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson.  It sounds like the book is already complete -- finished very quickly during the production of issues #4 and #5 -- and Brubaker includes a few panels from the new content, which includes revised dialogue and narration.

Ed Brubaker is practically gushing over the upcoming hardcover, writing, "the book is gorgeous, and we're really proud of it, to the point we nearly killed ourselves getting it done in time."

He also discusses the other big project in the news, Too Old To Die Young, revealing that the Cannes screening will be of episodes 4 and 5 under the single subtitle of "North of Hollywood, West of Hell," and not as separate episode titles.

He also warns fans about the new series and has some recommended viewing in advance of the "hypnotic and surreal" Amazon series:

"Watch VALHALLA RISING, watch DRIVE, watch NEON DEMON, and ONLY GOD FORGIVES. Refn's movies are very divisive, and he's completely fine with that. They're more like insane European midnight movies from the 60s and 70s than anything you'd normally see on TV or a streaming platform, and this show is not in any way like a typical streaming show."

And, in addition to sharing a few random links -- some, very random -- Ed Brubaker strongly recommends that fans not take any chances in hunting down Criminal...

"[Criminal #4 is] out this week, and sadly, I've been getting a lot of emails from readers having trouble finding the issues. Lots of reports of first-day sellouts. So you may want to call your comic shop and make sure they hold one for you or place a standing order.

"I hate to be that 'pre-order your comics' guy, but the market is tightening its belt right now, and many retailers are ordering to sell out immediately. So if you want CRIMINAL every month, make sure your shop knows. Even comics' smartest retailers cannot read your mind."

...and he has a similar request regarding Bad Weekend, asking readers, "Please order it from your local comic shop or bookstore."

Finally, there's a great YouTube video from February that we had overlooked, and we can't recommend it enough:  Strip Panel Naked has a nine-minute video, embedded below, on the history of colorists in the collaborations of Brubaker and Phillips.

It's not comprehensive -- Dave Stewart isn't mentioned, nor is every work analyzed, including Incognito and Fatale -- but the video is surprisingly wide-ranging, from Tony Avina and Sleeper to Val Staples and early Criminal, to Elizabeth Breitweiser with The Fade Out and Kill or Be Killed, and now Jacob Phillips with Junkies and the newest incarnation of Criminal.

Strip Panel Naked takes a very different approach from The Undertow Podcast. While we tend to focus on individual works, Hassan compares and contrasts more than fifteen years of content, and while we're limited to audio discussions, he can show as well as tell, with eight example pages.

In short, the inks and the colors have slowly become less realistic and more impressionistic, but they continue to complement each other. 

(I would add that these different approaches have never been at the expense of clarity in storytelling and characterization, and the work of these talented colorists argues against any future black-and-white reprints.)

It's a helluva video, and we hope that we can get a few more eyes to this channel, which we're just beginning to explore for ourselves.

The Upside of Social Media: Sean Phillips Cover for Thunderbolt #1 and More.

Social media is, at best, a very mixed bag indeed -- Brubaker closed his Twitter feed a while back, and I've heard the whole thing is more accurately described as "anti-social" media -- but we do strongly recommend that fans of Brubaker and Phillips' crime comics "follow" the latter either on Instagram or especially on Twitter.

Again:  follow Sean Phillips on Twitter.

We say that because, between retweets and original posts, some of the more obscure or time-sensitive bits of news end up in his feed -- and that's to say nothing of the excellent preview art, the nature photography, and the vintage soundtrack selections.  We have a few examples of news items just from this past week.

• We saw and retweeted the announcement, but we didn't have the bandwidth to blog about a one-day sale at Phillip's Big Cartel online store; the sale took place on Sunday commemorating the artist's birthday.
• On his currently pinned tweet, Phillips notes that his online store includes books in which he has included a signature and a sketch, specifically My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies and the recent omnibus trade paperback for The Fade Out.  Just yesterday he announced that his store now includes signature-and-sketch copies of the first trade collection for Fatale, as this volume "has gone back to print."
• Sean's Big Cartel store isn't the only place to find signed items online, as England's OK Comics is now using their eBay store to sell books signed by Sean Phillips and Jacob Phillips; the easiest way to find all the books is to sort by "newly listed."
• Finally, Dynamite's Peter Cannon Thunderbolt #1 reaches stores this week, and one of its multiple variant covers -- one listed as Cover A, the apparent standard cover -- is by Sean Phillips.  I believe it's his first non-Brubaker comic cover since the series of six Hellblazer variants released in the early months of 2018.

Phillips' distinctive cover art, shown at the left above, heralds the second volume of this title, the first volume being a ten-issue mini-series from 2012 and 2013.  This new issue is written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Caspar Wijingaard; described as a "dark, humorous and relentless love song" to superhero comics, the issue marks Gillen's return to the genre.

Looking at the issue's webpage on the official site, we find a virgin variant of the cover, shown above on the right.  From the image's filename, we think it might be offered as a retailer incentive, and we see that ComicList identifies this "Sean Phillips Virgin Variant" as "Cover G" with no set price -- the price is marked "AR" for "Ask Retailer."

Bleeding Cool has a 12-page preview of the comic, composited from multiple previews for an story described as being 20 pages in length. In a blurb that Phillips has retweeted, Dynamic Comics hints that Watchmen fans might be particularly interested in this comic book.

Criminal #1 Ten-Page Preview, an Undertow Podcast, and More for the New Year!

We anticipate being much more active in the new year -- more blogging, meaning more frequent posts with more prompt news updates -- as Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips return to monthly comics with a new volume of our favorite series, Criminal.  The first issue is less than a week away, and we begin 2019 with a quick look back at the end of 2018.

• October Interviews for Junkies. Three print interviews with writer Ed Brubaker were published in a single month.  Released to coincide with the October 10th release of My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, the online articles also provide a substantial "fix" for those more obsessive fans of the writer and his work.

• Oct 9th, from The Hollywood Reporter, with an exclusive four-page preview of Junkies
• Oct 21st, from Salon 
• Oct 25th, from GQ, published exactly two years after an interview about The Fade Out and subsequently summarized by Tripwire Magazine

There's much more from these interviews than we'll summarize here -- some of which Robert and I discussed in the podcast (see below) -- but we found the biographical insights especially interesting. 

Brubaker's father was a commander in naval intelligence, and his mother and stepfather were therapists.  From age 4 to age 7, Brubaker lived at Guantanamo, where his father got his sons reading with a large box of used comics.  His parents got divorced, and from age 8 to age 12, he accompanied his mother to her Sunday-morning AA meetings.  He subsequently became a trouble-maker -- "scraping by" in his early 20's, socializing with "really bad crowds" and committing "small-time crime" -- until his life got out of hand and the young artist almost ended up in prison.

We can see the effect on Brubaker's writing, not just in the generally sympathetic approach to desperate and reckless criminals, but also in the details of stories -- from the setting for "An Accidental Death," one of his earliest works; through the protagonist of "Lawless;" to the focus of this most recent work, the Criminal novella Junkies.

• Phillips Sketchbook of Movie Stars. On November 8th, Sean Phillips announced a new item exclusive to his Big Cartel store.  My Heroes Have Always Been Movie Stars is a 32-page, US comics-size collection of some of the illustrations he has created to accompany the film essays featured in the back of Brubaker and Phillips' monthly issues. 

The artist explicitly writes that these works originally appeared "in the Criminal comics [made] with Ed Brubaker," but we wonder if some of the art was for Incognito, Fatale, or other titles.  It's a question that might only be answered with a copy of this sketchbook and a complete list of these bonus-feature essays.

The book is priced at £20, in a signed and numbered limited edition of 300 copies.  It appears that copies are still available, but there's no telling how long that will last.

• The Fade Out Single-Volume TPB Released. On November 14th, the anticipated single-volume trade paperback edition of The Fade Out was released.  This will probably serve as the definitive wide release of the 2014-2016 mini-series, as the story is better told as a single work than in three four-issue "acts." 

We examined a copy at a local shop, confirming that the book is a bare-bones release without the bonus content found in the hardcover.  The book includes the "Screen Views and News" clipping which serves as a kind of epilogue to "Maya's story and Valeria's story," but it omits the fictional promotional images featured on the back-cover art of the monthly issues. 

And, we're disappointed to report that the cover lacks an amusing detail found in a print that Phillips has made available at his online store and which is shown above, describing the book as "An Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips production."

• Image Solicitations for the Next Criminal Arc. On November 20th, Image Comics released its February solicitations, including the second issue of the new volume of Criminal -- all just in time for us to discuss as late-breaking news on the podcast.  Issue #1 is evidently a self-contained done-in-one tale, and this new story features an artist named Archie Lewis, and we recall that this fictional character was briefly mentioned in the narration of the 2008 arc "Bad Night."

Archie Lewis was the artist’s artist in his heyday, although that’s not what he’s famous for. He’s famous for being a nightmare to work with—and dangerous. So when an old assistant is forced to chaperone his one-time mentor to receive his lifetime achievement award, well... let’s just say things don’t go well.

We wondered if the story will touch on Jacob Kurtz, the main character and narrator from "Bad Night," as perhaps this "old assistant" to the evidently infamously difficult Lewis is Jacob himself.  That suspicion was confirmed on December 21st, with the release of Image's March solicitations and a very brief description of the next issue.

Jacob’s weekend taking care of his old mentor takes a turn for the worse.

That original narration made it seem that Jacob knew Archie Lewis only from a distance -- it mentioned a productivity trick as "an old Archie Lewis method, according to his biographer" -- but it may just be that he knew that reality didn't live up to the myth.  We're also curious how Jacob's aspiration to be an artist (this assistantship, for instance) collided with his criminal background, hanging out with Leo and Tracy and becoming an expert counterfeiter.

It's not clear when this story takes place chronologically, but it does appear that "The Longest Weekend" is a companion to "Bad Night."  In his recent newsletter (see below), Brubaker even referenced this new story as "Bad Weekend."

• Undertow Podcast on Junkies.  November 26th saw the release of the most recent episode of The Undertow Podcast, Episode 27 reviewing the Criminal novella My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies.  Robert and I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion, and we soon plan to release a new episode taking a broader look at the Criminal chronology.

The novella features a mixtape Ellie's mother made for her then-incarcerated father, and so I ended the episode recommending a kind of mixtape of my own:  The Best of David Gray Disc 2, from the two-disc deluxe edition. 

In the liner notes, the British singer-songwriter tells readers that he selected the tracks for this bonus disc "for no other reason than that they occupy a special place in my heart and have meant a lot to me down the years."  They serve as a kind of mixtape for his fans, I find these songs particularly compelling, and I've just made a five-song playlist from that disc, to share with our readers.

Gray's repertoire spans from traditional love songs to more abstract, ethereal music, and his lyrics capture the tragic beauty of both the mundane and the transcendent: "From Here You Can Almost See the See" contains a great example of both with its prosaic verses and its unexpected coda.  He will soon be touring in support of a new album out on March 8th, Gold in a Brass Age, and he's just followed up "The Sapling" with the release of the second song from the album, "A Tight Ship."

• Exclusive Image Deal Extended for Another Five Years. I believe we've discussed Brubaker and Phillips' five-year deal on the podcast, making the assumption that the agreement would be extended.  On December 6th, Image Comics posted a press release making it official:  the exclusive deal has been renewed for another five years, effective immediately.

Described as "previously unprecedented," the original deal was announced in January, 2014, and it allowed the pair "to do anything they want with total freedom, total control, and total ownership over their projects."  As a result, Brubaker says that the previous five years have been "the most successful time of our long career together," and publisher Eric Stephenson adds that, over that period, "Ed and Sean have done some of the best work of their careers."

This extension coincides with the return of Criminal as a new monthly series, and the article mentions a renewed emphasis on monthly storytelling, with Ed Brubaker saying that he wants the new series to be "a monthly comic that would stand apart by really embracing the format, and trying to be something surprising every issue."  Publisher Eric Stephenson chimes in, saying that the series "serves as a welcome reminder of just how potent monthly comics can be."

The press release mentions some of the praise the team's most recent work has received, from Library Journal and Vulture/NY Magazine.  This is in addition to the accolades Image Comics compiled in a December 18th release, where Junkies made the year-end best-of lists for Newsweek, Thrillist, and Multiversity Comics.

• Ten-page Criminal preview in Brubaker newsletter. Finally, Christmas came early for Criminal fans, when Ed Brubaker sent out an email newsletter on December 24th, featuring a ten-page preview of the first issue -- a substantial excerpt of the double-length issue, a few panels of which we're highlighting below.

 

Brubaker also looked back on the previous project, Junkies, announcing that the hardcover novella has sold better than expected: "as of this writing I think [the book] is almost sold through a printing that was meant to last a few years."

Looking ahead, Brubaker also provided an advance look at the next story, the two-part Criminal tale "The Longest Weekend," aka "Bad Weekend."  From what we gathered in the solicits mentioned above, we take it the panel features a flashback scene of young Jacob Kurtz serving as an assistant artist to a pro named Hal.

And, along with the three October interviews we listed above, Brubaker mentioned a CrimeReads interview published on December 12. 

In this most recent interview, he reveals some details about the story in Junkies (Ellie is 18 years old) and about the book's creation (a tight deadline resulted in Jacob Phillips becoming the colorist after the first few pages).  He discusses his influences and his process, his early work writing Sleeper, and the very recent decision to follow up Junkies with more stories set in the Criminal universe.

Strangely enough, the interview also includes what Brubaker said about monthly comics in the prior press release on the renewed five-year deal, with some additional elaboration

"The single issue itself has started to become an afterthought. At the big two, you have tons of ads in them, and they’re on cheap paper now. It’s like this amazing little package that gave us all decades and decades of joy as comic fans is being neglected by the market that was built on them."

And, Ed Brubaker gives us a quick synopsis of what we can expect with the new monthly Criminal series:

"The first issue is basically the ultimate Criminal story. It kind of shows you everything that the book does, all in one long and winding oversized story."

Criminal #1 is due in stores this Wednesday, January 9th.

Bullets: a Virgin Variant, an Eisner Nod, and The Next Project Announced!

It's been one very busy week, not even counting a news item that we previously overlooked.

• Virgin Variant for KILLED OR BE KILLED 20.  Looking at ComicList's advance forecast for Image Comics, we saw an intriguing second entry for the upcoming final issue to Kill Or Be Killed, for "Cover B Sean Phillips Virgin Variant", linking to a TFAW product page with the second image shown below.

We reached out to the artist himself, and Sean Phillips confirms the listing:  the final issue of Kill Or Be Killed reaches stores with a second, "virgin variant" cover with all the trade dress removed, allowing readers to enjoy the homage to Romita's Spider-Man in all its undiluted glory.

Phillips has since posted a pic of what appears to be his comp copies of both versions, telling readers that the issue "includes a teaser for our new book," which we'll cover further down.

Both versions of the issue -- standard cover and virgin variant, both shown above -- are due next week, on June 27th.

• Brubaker & Phillips Interview for KOBK Finale.  As we were investigating the variant cover this past week, CBR was doing its own work of journalism, posting an extensive interview with the primary creators of Kill Or Be Killed as the vigilante series wraps up.  We think this is the first interview with Phillips since January, and we can't remember the last time Brubaker talked with the press.

Ed Brubaker doesn't want to spoil the final issue -- or even confirm Dylan's fate and "reveal whether he actually did die" -- but he describes it as "the weirdest comic I’ve ever written, probably."  Still being wary of spoiling the issue, he also says it deals "in some ways" with the question of whether the antagonistic Demon is real.

Sean Phillips, meanwhile, describes his characters' evolution, his use of Fairburn's popular reference book series from the 1970's, and Bettie Breitweiser's contributions in adding color to New York through all four seasons.

As coy as the pair is about how the series wraps, the interview includes pages from the upcoming issue, presumably from the opening act, constituting a three-page preview that we're including below.

Brubaker mentioned that he's learned, "never say never," regarding a return to any fictional world, and he's "keeping his fingers crossed" on the film adaptation involving members of the creative team behind John Wick: "I’m helping to produce the movie, but not on a day-to-day level like I am with my current TV show at Amazon [Too Old to Die Young]."

Sean Phillips, meanwhile, is working on covers for home video, film soundtracks, and a Glasgow band, and his eight-page WWI comic with Ian Rankin is still due in October.

And what about the pair's next collaboration?  It's evidently a pair of projects, first an original, hardcover graphic novel, due in October, and then another serialized book which we believe to be the anticipated return to the world of The Fade Out.

Phillips is returning to drawing on paper for the former -- this graphic novella -- and Brubaker said that this project "will be announced soon."

He wasn't kidding.

• Due In October, MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES. The CBR interview was posted on Monday, June 18th.  The very same day, Image Comics released its September solicitations, which included an advance solicit for the pair's upcoming graphic novella.

MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES OGN HC 

WRITER: ED BRUBAKER 

ARTIST / COVER: SEAN PHILLIPS 

OCTOBER 10 / 72 PAGES / FC / M / $16.99 

The first original graphic novel from the bestselling creators of CRIMINAL, KILL OR BE KILLED, THE FADE OUT and FATALE. Teenage Ellie has always had romantic ideas about drug addicts, those tragic artistic souls drawn to needles and pills have been an obsession since the death of her junkie mother ten years ago. But when Ellie lands in an upscale rehab clinic where nothing is what it appears to be... she’ll find another more dangerous romance, and find out how easily drugs and murder go hand-in-hand. MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES is a seductive coming-of-age story, a pop and drug culture-fueled tale of a young girl seeking darkness... and what she finds there. A gorgeous must-have hardback from the award-winning team of ED BRUBAKER and SEAN PHILLIPS, with acclaimed color artist ELIZABETH BREITWEISER.

The title may be a riff on the melancholic country song popularized by Willie Nelson. I wonder how often I'll conflate the titles here and on the podcast -- or combine them and reference the Cowboy Junkies.

The next day, Image posted a press release for the book, which Sean Phillips reposted at his blog.

In the release, Brubaker describes the book as their version of a romance comic, confirming that it's also a crime story: "But it's one that allows me to mine some of my own pop culture obsessions and delve back into my teen years and the kind of trouble you can only get into when you're young."
This is evidently the "romance comic" that Phillips reference in an earlier interview, and we do wonder if this started out as that Criminal novella.

On Twitter, Phillips adds that, along with returning to paper for this project, he'll be providing the colors along with his son Jacob Phillips.  I believe this will be only the second time Sean Phillips has been a colorist, the first being the pair's contribution to The Spirit Newspaper.

• Eisner Nod for The Spirit Anthology.  On the subject, we had earlier overlooked the late-April announcement -- covered by the LA Times among others -- of the 2018 Eisner Award nominations.

We found the following among the nominees for Best Anthology:

• The Spirit Anthology, edited by Sean Phillips (Lakes International Comic Art Festival)

By our reckoning, this is the first year since 2014 that a Brubaker and Phillips collaboration hasn't been explicitly nominated for any Eisners, but they did have a one-page contribution to The Spirit newspaper-sized comic.

The Eisner Awards will be announced Friday night, July 20th, at Comic-Con International in San Diego. Between the Spirit comic's subject matter and rationale (the centenary of its creator Eisner's birth) and the murderer's row of creators, we're expecting good things.

On Twitter, Sean Phillips has a pinned tweet to remind readers that this anthology he edited is exclusively available through worldwide mail order from Page 45 Comics -- and here is the direct link.

• New Prints for Upcoming Works from Brubaker & Phillips.  Finally, Sean Phillips very recently announced new prints at his Big Cartel store, for artwork from this fall's big releases:  the cover for the single-volume trade collection for The Fade Out and the cover for the new novella, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies.  In the case of the latter, two options are available, with and without the creators listed.

The Fade Out Single-Volume Softcover -- and More Kill Or Be Killed?

With the new issue of Kill Or Be Killed, we got some news on what comes next.  We still have other news we'd like to cover, but they'll have to wait -- hopefully not too long.

The Fade Out returns to stores this fall, perhaps October or November, this time in a single-volume trade paperback.

We guess that, around the same time of this new collection, we'll see the sequel to The Fade Out, as the team's next monthly title.

---

While we were finishing our most recent blog post, Ed Brubaker was sending out his latest email newsletter, the first in just over four months.  There's a ton worth reading there, in addition to an extended, five-page preview of the new issue, KOBK #18.

Revealing nothing else about the upcoming project, Brubaker writes, "today I will finally be reading the script for the KILL OR BE KILLED movie adaptation."

He also briefly mentions Too Old To Die Young -- now at the midpoint of its ten-month shoot, "which is I believe the longest shoot ever for a ten episode show with a single director" -- and he directs readers to the show's Instagram feed, which is now quite active. 

And he addresses a reader's question on the changing (and possibly declining) retail market of local comic stores, in a slightly longer answer than what he gave in the back pages of the new issue.

(In the email and in print, he concludes the mini-essay in almost exactly the same way, assuring readers, "Sean and I will keep doing our books as long as people keep buying them... And I hope that’s at least another decade or two.")

The biggest reveal is about this new single-volume softcover for The Fade Out.

I've been researching and planning for a new book, a follow-up to THE FADE OUT for the past six months or so, and I'm happy to announce that in the fall (in time for Christmas shopping even) we'll be releasing a complete edition of THE FADE OUT in paperback. This will collect all 12 chapters under one cover, and a lot of extra stuff, as well... 

This should be out in October or November this year, and I just love this cover Sean did. So keep your eyes peeled and tell your retailers if you want it.  

We previously reported, from his December newsletter, research into the 1950's and television's early golden age for the unconventional sequel to The Fade Out, and, in a subsequent interview, Sean Phillips revealed that this would be the first of two follow-up stories set in the same fictional universe.

If the team's next monthly title starts no earlier than October, it will presumably carry over into the new year.  We seriously doubt Ed Brubaker would commence lengthy research, at the end of 2017, for a book to be created in 2019 or later, so we think it's very reasonable to conclude that their next monthly title is this first follow-up to The Fade Out.

Since this new single-volume trade paperback would be a great way to promote the new series, we'd further speculate that the new title's first issue will come out no more than a month afterward -- and perhaps as early as the very same day.

But even apart from that, we're thrilled to see the story collected as the single graphic novel which it comprises, in an softcover edition presumably priced for a wider readership.

And while the choice of characters and their position is a bit surprising, Ed Brubaker is quite right that the new cover is gorgeous, as is the new design for the title.

---

In the newsletter, Ed Brubaker also writes about the project preceding this next monthly title.

As I mentioned in the recent issue's text pages, KILL OR BE KILLED is ending with issue 20 and we'll be announcing our next thing very soon (you'll in fact probably hear of it in issue 20 or this newsletter first). I already have said before one of the things Sean and I have started working on is an OGN - which will be an original hardback, novella length. But I don't want to reveal anything more about it yet.

We're looking forward to the announcement.

---

And, in the back pages of KOBK 18, Ed Brubaker drops one more bit of interesting news.

...I think it's been announced already, but some of you may have missed that issue 20 is our final issue (for now, at least).  This arc is actually where a lot of the threads come together, as you'll see the next three [sic] issues.  We may return to KILL OR BE KILLED at some point down the line, but it's time to move on to other stuff.  We have two new things coming out later this year -- first an OGN hardback and then the launch of our next monthly serialized thing.  I'll have more information about this stuff in issue 20.

The planned film adaptation would presumably be limited to this first volume of twenty issues, and we're quite intrigued about the possibility of returning to this world. 

Dylan's story might not end in June -- and even if it does, we may not have seen the last of that demon.

Either way, we do look forward to "another decade or two" from Brubaker and Phillips, reading whatever stories they'd like to tell.