Now Online, UNDERTOW PODCAST #9 with a Look at Kill Or Be Killed #5!

The newest episode of The Undertow Podcast has just been released and is, as always, available on iTunes and Podbean.

Robert and I take a close look at Kill Or Be Killed #5 in an episode that was recorded just prior to the release of issue #6,  Listeners can see how well our analysis and speculation holds up in light of the latest issue -- and, in addition, we discuss Ed Brubaker's new TV project Too Old to Die Young and give some recommendations for other crime comics and creator-owned works.

Recording this podcast has become a great part of the reading experience for us, and we hope that other fans of Brubaker and Phillips join us, not only by listening in but by giving us your feedback, on Twitter or by email -- undertowpodcast@gmail.com .

Kill Or Be Killed #6 On Sale Today, Preview Online!

While recording the upcoming episode of The Undertow Podcast, I speculated that last issue's cliffhanger might be left hanging for a couple months, since the upcoming issue may focus on the police investigation of Dylan's murders and the next issue is being told entirely from Kira's perspective.  It looks like, instead, we're picking up right where the last issue left off.

Kill Or Be Killed #6 is on sale today, and yesterday Image Comics posted a preview, evidently of the first four pages of the issue, where we see the immediate fallout from the confrontation at the core of KOBK #5.

We already know this issue features a bonus essay by Kim Morgan, about a 1962 episode of Naked City -- and we remind everyone that this issue features two covers by Sean Phillips, most notably the variant cover celebrating the 25th anniversary of Image Comics and paying tribute to the debut issue of The Walking Dead.

Careful readers will notice that the same cop appears in both covers.

Advance Preview of Kill Or Be Killed #7.

In its most recent extended forecast for Image Comics, ComicList confirms that issue #6 of Kill Or Be Killed -- along with its Walking Dead-tribute variant cover -- is on-schedule for its release next week.  In yesterday's email newsletter about Too Old To Die Young, Ed Brubaker reports that Sean Phillips is already close to finishing the artwork for issue #7.

Brubaker included a few preview pages of Phillips' artwork for the March issue, which is told entirely from Kira's perspective, and we would be remiss if we didn't highlight this artwork in a separate blog post.

Kill Or Be Killed #7 interior art, in-progress detail,
  From the Desk of Ed Brubaker

We're quite curious how this issue's change in POV will affect the overall structure of the series:  so far, the story has only been told from a single perspective, and its narration has been surprisingly and humorously direct in addressing the reader with the suggestion that Dylan knows that person is reading a monthly comic book.  That changes with issue #7, and we wonder if the issue will shed any light on just how unreliable a narrator Dylan has been.

The entire newsletter is worth reading, not least for a link to an excellent article on that killer Criminal arc, "The Last of The Innocent."

As always, the newsletters are archived online, and fans can subscribe here:

http://tinyurl.com/edbrubaker-list

Coming From Brubaker, Refn, and Amazon: Too Old To Die Young.

At least since year's end, Ed Brubaker has been hinting about a few TV projects in various stages of development, including one that could be announced "at any moment."  That announcement came yesterday in an exclusive report from Variety.

Amazon has greenlit Too Old To Die Young, a crime series of at least ten episodes. Shooting will begin this fall in Los Angeles, and the series will be released through Amazon's streaming service.

Brubaker followed up by sending out his email newsletter, confirming today that this is the project that's been keeping him busy for the last few months.

It's a TV series that Nicolas Winding Refn and I co-created and are co-writing every episode of, and he's directing the entire thing. And yes, it is a crime series. Other than that, I am sworn to secrecy. 

I will let you know about further details as they're released, but I'm guessing they will be very spare.

Variety elaborates that Brubaker will be an executive producer and Winding Refn will produce the series -- and it reports that three big-name actors have already been offered roles.

And who is Nicolas Winding Refn?  He's a Danish filmmaker known for his stylized crime movies, including the Pusher film trilogy (1996-2005), for which Too Old To Die Young is being compared.  The former "looked at Danish criminals caught up in the drug trade," and this new TV series will explore "various characters’ existential journeys from being killers to becoming samurai’s [sic] in the city of angels."

Since that trilogy and his early crime film Bleeder (1999), Winding Refn has moved to English-language films, including the darkly comic biopic Bronson (2008), starring Tom Hardy -- a movie I still need to catch.  More recently, the Dane directed the critically acclaimed Drive (2011) and the polarizing Only God Forgives (2013), both starring Ryan Gosling. 

Last year, Winding Refn released another polarizing movie, the horror film The Neon Demon, released domestically by Amazon Studios with Broad Green Pictures.  And, as we reported last June, his company Space Rocket is producing the Maniac Cop remake written by Ed Brubaker, which began filming last summer.

We'll have more news as we find it, sparse as it may be in the lead-up to its release.

In the meantime, Brubaker highlighted a few articles about the new series, including an AV Club article that mentions some high hopes for the series, that it might become "the Miami Vice of the new millennium."  

And he writes that he laughed pretty hard at the Screen Rant headline:

Ed Brubaker & Drive Director Team For Amazon TV Series

Today: Image Day, with the Return of Planetoid!

Undoubtedly, there has never been a better time to be the writer, artist, or reader of creator-owned comics.  There are great titles to be found from other publishers -- including Dark Horse and IDW -- but we think it's clear that Image Comics has become the premier publishing house for creators.  Image is also the home for the creator-owned collaborations of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, with their flexible five-year deal; the debuts of Fatale, The Fade Out, and Kill Or Be Killed; a new hardcover edition of Scene of The Crime; and reprints and new stories from our all-time favorite series, Criminal.

(And that's to say nothing of Velvet, Brubaker's other creator-owned title with longtime collaborator Steve Epting.)

Today, the publisher is celebrating the exact 25th anniversary of its founding with Image Day, with events all across the Anglosphere, from the British Isles to Australia, and coast-to-coast in North America.

As we previously reported, Image Comics is producing fifteen variant covers this month, in which current titles honor memorable covers from other works.  Eleven of the 15 covers were revealed in the original, January 13th press release -- including Sean Phillips' homage of The Walking Dead #1, for this month's Kill Or Be Killed #6 -- and last week, Image announced the "final four" covers, including a Manifest Destiny to one of our other favorite titles, Chew.

Even without a new issue from Brubaker and Phillips and without any extraordinary events at our own local shop, we find that there are plenty of reasons to visit the shop today, on New Comic Book Day.

We hope everyone is finding comic books that are worth the cover price, particularly those that most fully express the creators' vision -- and most fully benefit them financially.  This week, we're most excited about Planetoid: Praxis, continuing one of my all-time favorite sci-fi books, created by Ken Garing and published by Image.

A six-page preview is available online, at the Image website.