May Solicitations, Other Phillips Projects, and a Behind-the-Scenes Video!

Kill Or Be Killed #16 came out two weeks ago, and in the back pages Ed Brubaker confirmed what Sean Phillips had previously mentioned in a video interview, describing the team's upcoming schedule in very broad strokes.

Mentioning that the team starts a new project every year or two, Brubaker confirmed that KOBK "does have an ending coming up," and he wrote that -- "right now" -- the team is working on an even shorter project, a "novella OGN" (original graphic novel) to be released later this year.

We were wondering if this year's Image Expo might shed some more light on at least one of the upcoming projects from Brubaker & Phillips, but evidently not.  Instead, all of last week's news was to be found in the May solicitations.

First up is Kill Or Be Killed #19, described as the fourth arc's finale and featuring rather psychedelic colors in Sean Phillips' cover portraying Dylan, still institutionalized but wielding deadly force.

We're also surprised to see Sean Phillips' name in the list of credits for Where We Live, a 256-page anthology about last year's mass shooting in Las Vegas.  All the creators donated their time and effort to the book, and all proceeds are going to a fundraising campaign for survivors.

Both books are scheduled for a May 30th release.

We have some details on a few other projects for Phillips.  A few weeks back, we highlighted an interview where the artist mentioned research on World War I, and we guessed (wrongly) that it related to the upcoming graphic novella that Ed Brubaker is writing.  On Twitter, the great Kevin Sels filled us in on what the work is for, a collaboration with crime writer Ian Rankin for an anthology commemorating the centenary of the armistice that ended WWI.

(Thanks, Kevin!)

Here's how the official press release describes the book.

Traces of the Great War is an ambitious anthology of new illustrated short stories by internationally acclaimed comic book artists, graphic novelists and writers, all of which explore the continued relevance and resonance of the First World War and its aftermath in our lives today.

The book will debut in October, in England and in France -- in the former, at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival -- to be followed by touring exhibitions.

As this project was being discussed on social media, Sean Phillips elaborated that his contribution will be illustrating an eight-page story written by Rankin.

There's one more project we noticed over the last month, and we would be remiss not to mention Sean Phillips' latest contribution to film, creating the cover art for Arrow Academy's Blu-ray release of Smash Palace, a 1981 drama from New Zealand filmmaker Roger Donaldson.

Phillips posted some work-in-progress details online -- here, here, and here -- and Arrow Films has the completed cover, shown below.

We love seeing these pieces of work in-progress, but there's an even closer glimpse behind the scenes, in a rare video interview with Sean Phillips, at his home studio.

Just last week, the Japanese tech company Wacom posted this "artist profile," in part to highlight some of the tools he uses in his work.  The company specializes in graphics tablets, pens, and styluses, and -- quite justifiably -- they take great pride in the professionals who use their tools; the week prior, they posted a similar interview with Charlie Adlard.

Online, Phillips writes that the producers condensed "four hours of waffling" to produce this seven-minute video.  We see the artist work on the roommates' fight toward the end of KOBK #15 -- which probably places the interview around New Year's -- and walk through various files for another cover for Arrow Academy, The Hired Hand, a 1971 Western and directorial debut by Peter Fonda.

We see just how much Sean Phillips still uses a traditional approach even with the latest tools -- starting with a physical sketchbook and even using blue coloring for the page's initial sketches and reference images -- and Phillips showcases his favorite part of the job, the inexhaustible work of drawing people.  We see the emphasis not just on drawing, but on storytelling, as Phillips walks us through the books in his library and a few of the artists he loves.

It's great stuff and a must-watch for fans.

New Undertow Podcast, New Kill Or Be Killed, New Twitter Feed, and Catching Up for the New Year.

It's a big week:  Robert has recorded and released an abbreviated episode of The Undertow Podcast, reviewing Kill Or Be Killed #14, and issue #15 is in stores today with a four-page preview already online.

(Preview pages without the obscenities obscured -- and a fifth page -- can be found in the latest newsletter from writer Ed Brubaker; see below.)

The third trade paperback, collecting issues #11-14, is also in stores today.  Ireland's Big Bang Comics and the UK's Forbidden Planet has an exclusive variation on this third volume, with a different cover and a mini-print bookplate signed by the writer and the artist.  Both covers are shown below, along with the eerie artwork for the bookplate.

International orders can be placed at the Forbidden Planet online store or at Big Bang's eBay listing.  (And Big Bang tweets that they still have stock of their previous two trade paperbacks, with variant covers and signed bookplates.)

Interestingly, Forbidden Planet lists a "virgin wraparound" variant for the upcoming KOBK #17, but currently the page has no image preview and no additional details.

In the meantime, we have issue #15 out today. Last Saturday, John Jack at Comic Watch offered a brief "First Watch" advance review of the issue, awarding it a 9 out of 10.  The review has no spoilers beyond what can be gleaned from Image's official preview, with the exception of a single two-panel image, with the Demon suddenly back in the story, following Dylan.

And for those who are looking for a quick refresher after the series' brief hiatus, our good friend Robert Watson covers the previous arc, along with the previous issue, in The Undertow Podcast Episode #19.  As always, as always, the podcast is available on iTunes and Podbean.

--

I'm looking forward to joining Robert again for the next podcast, and it's been far too long since we've last blogged.  As the classic U2 song puts it, we've been "running to stand still" in real life, and there has been a lot of big news over the past few months.

For one thing, we have just created a dedicated Twitter account for the blog, @CriminalBlog, to separate our focus on all things Brubaker/Phillips from our personal account @TigerBeasley and my more idiosyncratic interests in faith, politics, movies, music, sports, and humor.

We do hope to blog much more frequently in the upcoming year, and we recommend that readers "follow" our new Twitter account to be notified of new posts and interesting retweets.

In the meantime, here is a very succinct timeline of the past few months, with the biggest news items highlighted in red.

• OCT 19, Page 45 Comics posted an extensive essay of reviews and photos from the Lakes International Comic Art Festival; among the featured festival-exclusive books is the Spirit newspaper curated by Sean Phillips (and featuring a one-page Brubaker/Phillips story) and Starting, a "one-day collaborative comic" that includes a four-page story from Sean's sun Jacob, and both products are available for international orders at Page 45's online store.

• OCT 30, Arrow Academy announces the upcoming Blu-ray and DVD release of Viva L'Italia, a 1961 documentary by Roberto Rossellini; the film is scheduled for a January 29th release and features cover artwork by Sean Phillips, shown below.

• NOV 13, Delcourt releases a 17-page preview of Fondu au Noir, the publisher's French translation of The Fade Out, in advance of its November 29th release.

• NOV 15, Image Comics announces its partnership with the Madefire digital program; details remain scant, but the press release includes Criminal in its reference to the publisher's back catalog.

• NOV 16, Marvel cancels two upcoming books from Brian Michael Bendis, a week after the writer announced his move to DC, effectively signaling the end of Marvel's Icon imprint for creator-owned works, at least for now; the imprint was the original home for Criminal and Incognito.

• NOV 16, Sean Phillips provided more information about the upcoming Criterion Collection release of Night of the Living Dead on DVD and Blu-ray February 13th; Sean Phillips painted the artwork for the cover, the wraparound sleeve, and the booklet -- the cover repurposes the poster for the recent 4K rerelease (also available at Criterion's online store) and the sleeve is the full artwork that Sean previously previewed in October and is reproduced below and on the artist's Twitter profile.

• NOV 21, director and co-writer Nicholas Winding Refn used his Instagram account to announce the main cast of Too Old to Die Young, highlighting the addition of Billy Baldwin; co-written by Ed Brubaker, the series stars Miles Teller and is apparently already in production.

• NOV 21, Image posted its February solicitations, listing a Valentine's Day release for KOBK #16; the cover art is the completed piece we saw as a work in progress, and the solicit confirms a literal interpretation of the artwork, mentioning Dylan's plight in a mental hospital.

• NOV 27, Robert and I released Undertow Podcast Episode 18; the podcast featured a review of KOBK #13 and recommendations for the comic books Whiteout -- artist Steve Lieber put the entire first issue online -- and Slots.

• NOV 29, Image Comics released KOBK #14 with a three-page preview; Hero Collector posted an essay explaining why people should be reading the title.

• DEC 14, The Hollywood Reporter exclusively announced that Chad Stahelski, the director of the John Wick films, is a directing a Kill Or Be Killed film adaptation; the script will be written by Dan Casey, who has written the script for the Incognito adaptation (not yet produced), and Ed Brubaker will be an executive producer.

• DEC 18, subscriber's received the latest installment of Ed Brubaker's email newsletter, his first in more than six months; the issue includes preview pages for KOBK #15, production work for the cover to issue #16, info on the KOBK movie, reposted news on a Velvet TV series, production photos from Too Old to Die Young, confirmation on his absence from Westworld's season two, and info on his research into the upcoming follow-up to The Fade Out.

(Not a traditional sequel, the story will be set in the late 1950's, when television became big in Hollywood, and it features "a side character" from the first story.  In earlier interviews, Brubaker specifically named Phil Brodsky, the studio's fixer.)

• DEC 18, DC Comics' March solicitations include an advance solicit for Sleeper Book One, in trade paperback; scheduled for April 25th, the book collects Point Blank and Sleeper Season One, both written by Ed Brubaker with the latter drawn by Sean Phillips in an early collaboration.

• DEC 18, Delcourt releases a French translation of KOBK #1, available for purchase online at Sequenicity.

• DEC 19, Image posted its March solicitations, with KOBK #17 listed for March 21 and described as "turning-point issue of the series so far;" perhaps meaningfully, the cover art has Dylan removing his now iconic red ski mask.

• DEC 20, Sean Phillips announces his work on the cover art for the Arrow Academy Blu-ray release of the 1947 Western Ramrod, starring Veronica Lake and scheduled for March 5th.

• DEC 20, Phillips also announces his work on a variant cover for Hellblazer #19, written by Tim Seeley; it appears that the issue has been solicited and is still scheduled for a February 28th release.

• JAN 10, the UK's Ink magazine publishes a retrospective review of Brubaker and Phillips' Sleeper, rightly describing the early work for DC's Wildstorm imprint as "a self-contained gem."

• JAN 15, Phillips announces new original artwork at Splash Page Comic Art, including paintings for covers of Kill Or Be Killed and Hellblazer.

• JAN 17, Phillips just announced that he's selling signed posters for Night of the Living Dead, at his Big Cartel store; it looks like quantities are very limited, possibly only two posters.

That just about covers it, but we'll have another blog entry up soon.

Bullets: New Undertow Podcast, New Kill Or Be Killed, Solicitations, and More!

The newest episode of The Undertow Podcast came out just last week, and the newest issue of Brubaker and Phillips' Kill Or Be Killed reaches stores today, hot on the heels of a four-page preview -- one which promises that we'll finally reach the flash forward from the first issue, which was repeated in issue #11.

We have details about both new arrivals below, along with news on solicitations for January and much more.

One of these days, I'll actually blog often enough that I won't need these massive posts of bullet points...

• Undertow Podcast on KOBK #12.  We had a blast recording episode 17, which is now available available on iTunes and at Podbean.  After discussing what we agree is the best issue of the series, so far, we covered a few news items that we're repeating below (along with some we omitted), and offered a couple recommendations for our listeners.

I recommended The Hard Place, a crime comic mini-series from Image Comics, written by Doug Wagner (Plastic) with art by Nic Rummel and Charlie Kirchoff.  The story is about an former wheelman who gets caught up in a bank robbery and the kidnapping of a crime kingpin's daughter: I wouldn't normally recommend a book after only two issues, but so far the title is just that good, and I do hope it sticks the landing.

Meanwhile, Robert recommended a list of (about) five deep cuts from Tom Petty, who passed away earlier this month.  For convenience, here's his list along with YouTube links, some from official channels and some that may stretch the definition of fair use.

• "The Wild One, Forever" from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' self-titled 1976 debut
• "Insider" featuring Stevie Nicks, from 1981's Hard Promises
• "Change of Heart" from 1982's Long After Dark
• "Straight Into Darkness" also from Long After Dark
• "Hard On Me" from the 1994 "solo" album Wildflowers
• "Room at the Top" from 1999's Echo
• "Trailer" from the 2016's Mudcrutch album 2

It's truly great stuff, though personally I'm hoping that we'll soon see the long-awaited additional material from the Wildflowers sessions, perhaps with the hard-to-find b-sides like "Girl on LSD."

• KOBK #13 On Sale Now, Preview Online.  The new issue's four-page preview was released just yesterday, it can be found at the link above, and the accompanying image is a detail from the first page.  In the preview, we see the promise that the timeline will reach the series' explosive opening -- "really soon," and "by the end of this chapter... for sure."

Presumably that means we'll see it this issue, but we also see Dylan giving more thought to the demon whose curse started this journey into vigilantism.  The issue's description hints that his investigation into the supposed hallucination might prove fatal to his mental health.

"Caught in the crossfire between the police and the Russian mob—and his sanity—Dylan begins to realize his problems are more dire than he thinks." [emphasis mine]

And, in the preview, Dylan acknowledges his rambling narration and alludes to The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, an 18th-century novel written by an Irish, Anglican clergyman named Laurence Sterne.  The book was published in nine(!) volumes over the course of nearly a decade, and Dylan's apparent graduate studies in liberal arts is probably why he's familiar with the notably digressive work.

• The Spirit Newspaper Comic, Available for Online Orders.  We were ecstatic with last month's announcement that the Spirit newspaper comic -- overseen by Sean Phillips, with a single-page contribution written by Ed Brubaker -- would be available for online orders and international shipping.

The comic was initially available at this past weekend's Lakes International Comic Art Festival, which Phillips attended, and it is now available for purchase for a mere 5 pounds at Page 45 Comics, a store in Nottingham, England.

In an extensive, somewhat spoiler-heavy review on the product page, Stephen from Page 45 notes that the project was "directed and edited by Festival Patron Sean Phillips" -- and he notes that Phillips "also paid for its printing from his own pocket."

The product listing includes a few preview images, no doubt provided by Phillips, and one image evidently gives us the entire page produced by Brubaker and Phillips -- with Phillips doing the uncommon task of providing his own colors, and with almost a great enough resolution to make out the text.

Even if we could read the story on this page, we'd want to hold the work in our hands and see the other contributions from what the Page 45 reviewer calls "a breath-taking, broadsheet-sized spectacle at a whopping 23 x 14.5 [inches]."

The reviewer notes that sales proceeds will benefit the festival's Creators' Development Fund, but we're just as glad to have pre-ordered a couple copies for our own enjoyment.

• Femme Fatales Prints at Sean Phillips' Big Cartel Store.  On Twitter, Sean Phillips mentioned his trip to Kendal for the Lakes festival, and that he would only be selling The Spirit newspaper in the Page 45 room.  But he also pointed readers to his Big Cartel online store, where he has just added prints of the four pieces of artwork that were featured on the Femme Fatale beer.

The prints' names include a numbering order -- the reverse of which the prints were featured at Phillips' blog -- and we wonder if this was the order in which the works were created.

• #1 Rita Hayworth
• #2 Lauren Bacall
• #3 Gene Tierney
• #4 Veronica Lake

• Maniac Cop and Velvet: One Brubaker Project Possibly Scrapped, Another Announced.  In less than a fortnight, two news items broke regarding Ed Brubaker's projects outside of the printed page, with both items receiving plenty of coverage beyond their original publication.

On September 24th, Birth.Movies.Death exclusively reported some details from an interview with filmmaker Larry Cohen, the screenwriter behind the original Maniac Cop trilogy.  Ignore the reporter's hyperventilating about contemporary politics, and you'll see that Cohen appears certain that the Maniac Cop remake is dead:  the film, to be penned by Brubaker, was earlier given a green light to be filmed over this past summer.

While not detracting from Brubaker's skills as a comic-book writer, Cohen was not complimentary of Brubaker as a screenwriter or his script for the remake -- but the reporter seems both confused and even skeptical about some of the claims that his subject was making.

(So are we, and we hope this isn't the last we hear about the movie.)

On October 4th, The Hollywood Reporter exclusively reported a television series adapting Velvet, the spy comic created by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting.  Writer, producer, and showrunner Kyle Killen will adapt the comic to be the first original drama for the Paramount Network, the cable network that debuts on January 18th, a rebranded Spike TV.

No date was given for the series premiere, but the show is described as "in development."  Killen will write and serve as executive producer, along with two executive producers from Anonymous Content, which produces True Detective and Mr. Robot.

We suspect that this is entirely separate from the "still top secret" project by Brubaker and Epting, which the writer mentioned in his email newsletter in June, 2016.

• Phillips Projects: Office Drones and Other Zombies.  Like Brubaker, Sean Phillips works on several projects at any given time, and here again we see that some bear more fruit than others.

(As the nearly comatose sailor put it in Master & Commander, the Lord taketh, and the Lord giveth away.)

On Twitter, Phillips posted cover artwork he did for The Apartment, the 1960 Best-Picture Oscar winner from Billy Wilder.  The film stars Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray as office drones in what Mark Steyn brilliantly describes as "a sad but true urban Christmas fable."

The artwork was for Arrow Academy, a label for the British company Arrow Films, for which Phillips has produced artwork for at least four other films in the last few years.  As with Audition before it, Arrow ended up going in another direction, but a close look at Phillips' Twitter feed will reward fans with some in-progress pics from August, from digital pencils to "real" inks to colors.

We haven't yet seen what artwork Arrow went with, but we finally get to see what "Pink Shirley" was intended for...

...and we wonder if there are plans for that signed-and-dated drawing of Shirley MacLaine.

It seems Phillips is getting a reputation for his artwork of Hollywood stars -- I especially love his cover for the Criterion Collection's Sweet Smell of Success, another black-and-white classic set in NYC -- but the artist might always be known for zombies, and Phillips tweeted that he created the movie poster for the 4K re-release of The Night of the Living Dead.

At the end of September, the website Rue Morgue exclusively released the poster for the 4K restoration, which is being shown in select theaters throughout North America, now through January.

We're reposting the watermarked image below, and close readers can see Sean Phillips' signature and the year in the lower right:  we have no idea whether there are plans to make a print of this poster  available for purchase, but one could always talk to the theater owner where the movie's playing.

And this isn't the only zombie-related work that Phillips has produced recently:  two weeks back, he posted the following work-in-progress, and we're quite interested to see what it's for.

• January Solicitations and More Preview Art.  Finally, we turn back to Kill Or Be Killed and look forward to its future releases.  Image's January solicitations were released just yesterday, and they confirm our guess of a New Year release for the the third trade collection and the new arc's next issue, with both scheduled for a January 17th release.

Issue #15 is solicited with a full 40 pages, the full artwork for the detail which we previously noted, and a vague but intriguing description, that "Dylan is forced to confront the reality of his violent actions and his sanity...and nothing will ever be the same again!"

Sean Phillips used the same artwork to create a personal sketchbook, which he showed Twitter followers on Monday.  Even before that, he's treated fans to preview art of what appears to be the thematically similar cover for issue #16 -- created in acrylic paint, with red for the iconic ski mask, grays for the straitjacket, and an appropriately manic stare in the final version.

It's yet to be seen, how much of these images are literal or merely symbolic, and we hope readers don't go crazy waiting for the answer.

Bullets: Undertow Podcast on A.D. After Death, Spirit Preview Art, New Inventory and a New Vertigo Collection, and Much More!

New releases for Kill Or Be Killed are just around the corner -- issue #11 and the Volume 2 trade paperback are both due on August 11th, and Sean Phillips has already tweeted a photo of the comp copies he's received -- but we'll kick off the month with quite a few items of interest.

• Undertow Podcast Bonus Review of A.D. After Death. In lieu of our usual segment of monthly recommendations, Robert and I recorded a bonus episode of The Undertow Podcast to discuss a previous recommendation:  A.D. After Death, a combined comic book and illustrated prose novel written by Scott Snyder with art by Jeff Lemire.

A hardcover collection of the three-issue mini-series was released at the end of June, our podcast discussion recently came out, and I couldn't sum up both any better than Robert did in the description for episode 14:

"Great sci-fi, with a touch of crime, and gorgeous watercolors made this a fun to book to read and break down."

As always, The Undertow Podcast is available at iTunes and on Podbean.

• Preview Art of Brubaker and Phillips' The Spirit.  As we reported in May, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are contributing a one-page story to The Spirit of Eisner, a 12-page newspaper-sized comic honoring The Spirit, on the centenary of the birth of its extraordinary creator.

Phillips is also coordinating the publication of this comic, to be released by the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in October, and in subsequent tweets he's treated fans to previews of eight different pages.  In addition to a signed drawing by Michael Cho and the distinctive cartoony style of Sergio Aragonés, we see a panel crediting Chris Samnee, who was not listed in the March press release.

Perhaps even more exciting for Brubaker and Phillips fans, the artist has announced that he's finally underway with their contribution to the project, and he has posted more than a dozen preview photos, from thumbnails and photo reference, to digital pencils subsequently transferred to paper and inked.  Over the weekend, Phillips tweeted that he has completed the inks and will do his own color work for this story (confirming his role as colorist on Twitter), and he's posted a partial preview of the vibrant neon colors with some completed lettering.

We've seen quite a bit of the first few panels -- including photos of the artist holding up the single page, in pencils and again in partial inks, shown in the collage below -- but we're sure that, for both his work and for the others, Sean Phillips is saving a lot of surprises for the book's readers.

• New Art By Sean Phillips, for Rawhead Rex and JD's Revenge.  We mentioned that Sean Phillips has been creating artwork of Rita Hayworth in our previous post, and Phillips relayed that the work is for a separate project and not for a bonus essay.  This project has still not yet been formally announced, but it appears that Ms. Hayworth is not the only subject.

In the meantime, other projects have been officially announced.

First, AICN reports the return of the 1986 British horror film Rawhead Rex, with a screenplay by Clive Barker and based on a previously published short story by the horror writer.  The film is getting a 4K restoration for a limited summer run and a Blu-ray release in the fall, and Sean Phillips created the poster for the re-release.

AICN provided an exclusive look at the resulting work, which we're including below.  The distributor's official site lists ten North American theaters screening the film between August and October.

And, at his own blog, Sean Phillips has posted both a preliminary draft and the final version of the menacing artwork for Arrow Video's release of a 1976 blaxploitation horror film JD's Revenge.  The release is due in October but not yet listed on the distributor's official site.

Phillips will apparently be reusing the artwork in a promotional banner for his artwork, shown below and making its debut at September's Thought Bubble festival in September.

• Kill Or Be Killed & Criminal Fall Short at the Eisners.  The winners of the 2017 Eisner Awards were announced at Comic-Con last Friday night, and Brubaker, Phillips, their collaborators, and their collaborations all fell short in the five categories in which they were nominated -- all against very tough competition.

We congratulate the winners, and we're happy to see Black Hammer win the award for Best New Series: according to The Beat's live blog of the awards ceremony, writer Jeff Lemire said the award was won only because of artist Dean Ormston's incredible recovery from a stroke after finishing the first issue.

We weren't aware of the stroke, we're so glad that Ormston is recovering, and we've been enjoying the series thoroughly.

• Westworld Second-Season Preview.  The Eisner Awards weren't the only big news from Comic-Con, as a lot of film and television projects have been promoted with new footage.  Along with an elaborate installation promoting the fictional, futuristic resort, producers of HBO's Westworld debuted a two-minute trailer of new footage from the upcoming second season.

Ed Brubaker was quite heavily involved in the first season, joining the writer's room, being credited as a supervising producer for five episodes, and receiving a writer's credit for one episode.  It's not clear whether Brubaker is working on the second season, but we're sure we'll find out soon enough.

• New Inventory for Older Hardcover Collections -- and a New Hardcover of Brubaker's Vertigo Comics?  On Twitter, an online friend Kevin Sels has been telling us about some interesting new listings he's found on Amazon.

The Criminal The Deluxe Edition Volume 2 hardcover (the listing has the cover art from volume 1) and Incognito: The Classified Edition hardcover are both scheduled for a January 2nd release date.  These listings might have been the first hints of new printings by Image Comics, but Sean Phillips explains that the books are "just old stock that was found in a warehouse somewhere."

We're even more intrigued by Kevin's tweet about a February listing, for a 272-page hardcover, scheduled for a February 27th release:  Vertigo by Ed Brubaker.  This is the very first we've heard about this.

Classic Vertigo tales by Eisner Award-winning author Ed Brubaker collected for the first time in hardcover edition. The best Ed Brubaker's Veritgo stories are collected together for a wild and sometimes supernatural ride!

It begins with reprinted material from VERTIGO VISIONS: PREZ #1 in election year '96, with the country coming apart at the seams. Prez Rickard, long missing and presumed dead, has been sighted at a roadside diner in the American heartland. A trio of restless young misfits, one of whom believes he is Prez's son, sets out across America in search of answers for their country's woes--answers that only the former Chief Executive can provide. Then, from WINTER'S EDGE #2, a gang of suburban kids devises a fool proof get-rich-quick scheme. Followed by stories from the best supernatural detectives that are not alive, in DEAD BOY DETECTIVES.

These amazing tales from one of the great voices in the comics industry today are collected together in hardcover in VERTIGO BY ED BRUBAKER! Collects VERTIGO VISIONS: PREZ #1, WINTER'S EDGE #2, GANGLAND #3 and DEAD BOY DETECTIVES #1-4.

These kind of listings are always subject to change, but this may give serious fans a second chance to get some oversized hardcovers, stuffed with bonus features, and a first chance to get some of Ed Brubaker's earliest stories, collected for the first time.

We will certainly relay more info about these books as we find it.

And big thanks to Kevin for sharing these discoveries with us and eliciting more info from Sean!

• Solicitations and Preview Art for Upcoming Issues of Kill Or Be Killed.  Finally, Image Comics have released their October solicitations, and they include another issue of Brubaker and Phillips' ongoing vigilante comic.

Caught in the crossfire between the police and the Russian mob—and his sanity—Dylan begins to realize his problems are more dire than he thinks. BRUBAKER & PHILLIPS’ multiple Eisner-nominated series keeps racing from hit to hit in this action-packed third arc!

Lucky number 13 of Kill Or Be Killed continues the connecting cover art which Brubaker previously described as "one long cover image of escalating violence," and the issue is scheduled for an October 18th release.

But even more interesting is a bit of artwork that Sean Phillips posted on Instagram on July 17th, which we're including below.  In a previous tweet showing the work in-progress, we learn that the work is a watercolor, and the artist subsequently reveals that it's for the "Next issue of Kill Or Be Killed."

We're intrigued, to say the least.

Ides of March Bullets: New UNDERTOW Podcast, New KILL OR BE KILLED, Sean-centric Solicitations, and More!

It's the Ides of March, and we have a lot to cover from the past few weeks.

• UNDERTOW Podcast #10 on KILL OR BE KILLED #6!  The latest episode of The Undertow Podcast was released late last week, and Robert and I take and in-depth look at last month's issue of Kill Or Be Killed.

It was a good discussion on a dense issue, with the resolution of the cliffhanger in KOBK #5, the callbacks to every previous issue, the introduction of two antagonists for our vigilante Dylan, and an unexpected Easter Egg involving a previous work of Brubaker and Phillips.

As always, episodes are available at iTunes and Podbean.

• KILL OR BE KILLED #7 In Stores Today! Our podcast is a great way to review the last issue before diving into the next one, which focuses on Dylan's best friend and former lover Kira. 

In February, Ed Brubaker provided an advance, black-and-white preview of the issue, and Image Comics has recently posted the same three-page preview, completed with Elizabeth Breitweiser's subtly increasing colors as Kira's scrapbook photos become more recent.

...and we see that Brubaker just sent out another email newsletter, describing this issue as his favorite for the series, at least so far.  The newsletter includes an additional preview page, proof that "the entire issue isn't all photo album pages."

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

And we can find one more preview image on Sean Phillips' blog, for the artwork accompanying the essay at the back of the new issue.  Writer Kim Morgan describes the subject as the "psycho-superb" Pretty Poison, and it's another crime story starring Tuesday Weld, this time paired with Anthony Perkins in a 1968 film.

• Advance Preview of KOBK #8.  In today's newsletter, Brubaker also treats readers to a few in-progress pages from the next issue, since he anticipates that some readers will miss Dylan this month.

Kill Or Be Killed #8 interior art, in-progress detail,
  From the Desk of Ed Brubaker

With the pages, Brubaker provides some insight into the production, noting that Sean Phillips moves directly from layouts to the final drawing.  For his part, Phillips has posted bits of a few other in-progress pages through Twitter and Instagram -- all evidently from the same issue, including a sketch of Dylan with the demon, the militarized NYPD, and "too much detail" of Dylan leaving the newsstand.

• KOBK #9 and More Sean Phillips in May Solicitations.  Toward the end of February, Image Comics released its May solicitations, and it includes Kill Or Be Killed #9. 

"Time is running out, and the demon won’t wait for the police to stop hunting him. Trapped between his curse and his own survival, Dylan takes to the streets."

With no gaps planned since issue #5, we infer that the second trade collection will probably include more than the first volume's four issues.  Since Brubaker and Phillips tend to produce ten issues a year, we're guessing that the typical trade will collect five issues: there will be a one-month gap after the conclusion to each "arc" in this ongoing series, and the following month will feature that arc's trade collection and the first issue in the next arc.

Phillips is also listed for another book, a hardcover reprint of User, an award-winning three-issue miniseries originally published through DC's Vertigo imprint in 2001.  Written by Devin Grayson with art by John Bolton and Sean Phillips, the story "explores sexual identity and online role-playing in the text-based MUDs [Multi-User Dungeons] of the nineties."

• KOBK #10 Cover Art.  We recommend subscribing to Ed Brubaker's newsletter -- and those who read the latest issue will find very interesting news about Fraction and Zdarsky's Sex Criminals and an homage to Brubaker and Phillips -- but there's one more item we'd like to mention here, on the subject of advance looks at Kill Or Be Killed.

In answering a question about the design of the comic's demon, Brubaker talks about the pleasant surprises that can result from collaboration, and it appears he gives us a first look at the next cover.

Kill Or Be Killed #10 probable cover
  From the Desk of Ed Brubaker

Those who follow Sean Phillips' Twitter feed will recognize the motif of the demon and Lady Liberty, featured in several work-in-progress Instagram posts from February: one, two, three, and four.

• More Sean Phillips in Movies for Criterion and Arrow!  We've previously reported on the artwork Sean Phillips has done for home video releases, both for the Criterion Collection and for Arrow Films.  We really should account for all his work in a single, organized list, but for now it suffices to note that, in February, both companies released work with art design by Sean Phillips.

On February 6th, the UK company Arrow Films released Willie Dynamite, a 1974 blaxploitation film.  The Blu-ray and DVD release features a reversible sleeve that has both the original artwork and newly commissioned artwork, the latter from Sean Phillips, who posted the full piece through Twitter.

On February 21st, the Criterion Collection released Mildred Pierce, a 1945 noirish melodrama starring Joan Crawford:  on his blog, Sean Phillips shared some artwork including the cover and additional sketches.

• Sales Surging for KILL OR BE KILLED?  Finally, we noticed that KOBK makes an interesting appearance in CBR's February sales report.  Apparently, KOBK led the month in gained sales for continuing titles, as shown in the excerpted graph below.

We might have to do some digging about just how good the title's sales have been...

Bullets: UNDERTOW PODCAST #4, Brubaker Essay, Solicts, and More!

It's September already!  Let's kick things off with a few brief items.

• UNDERTOW PODCAST, New Episode Now Online.  Our latest episode of The Undertow Podcast is now available on iTunes and Podbean.  Robert and I have a very interesting discussion following the debut of Kill Or Be Killed, talking about its unexpected premise and where the new series may be going next.

We hope our readers here enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed recording it.

• Ed Brubaker in This Week's Image+.  We've been digging the inexpensive magazine Image+ since its May debut.  The second issue featured a cover story on Kill or Be Killed, and there was a pleasant surprise in the latest issue.  Out yesterday with a November cover date, issue #5 features a two-page "Industry Perspectives" essay by Ed Brubaker.  On Matt Fraction's suggestion, Brubaker penned an open letter to a younger version of himself, at the beginning of his career.

The entire thing is worth reading for its perspective on the last couple decades on comics, and it touches on creator-rights issues that Brubaker has been covering in his email newsletter, but there's also the more general word of wisdom that became the article's pull quote:  "Sorry, but your career doesn't go the way you thought it would (turns out almost no one's does)."

Ed adds, "you're happier, if it's any consolation."

• Kill Or Be Killed Keeps Rolling in November.  Image Comics' November solicitations came out early last week, Newsarama has the complete listing online, and Sean Phillips reposted the details for KOBK #4 -- "The shocking end to the first arc, as Dylan's secret collides with his home life."

The 40-page issue is scheduled for a November 16th release.

• More Details on Upcoming books.  We're eagerly anticipating October's deluxe edition of The Fade Out, and Ed Brubaker has shared some details on Twitter as the book went to print last week.

Brubaker describes the book as "the nicest hardback we've ever done."  We had guessed at least 30 pages of extra content, but the 400-page book contains more than 50 pages of bonus content, including research, production essays by Phillips and Breitweiser, and two of the bonus articles from the monthly issues.  Readers "keep asking" about these articles, but it's long been the creators' practice to reward those who support their projects by specifically buying the monthly issues.

Also on Twitter, Brubaker does mention that "you never know" about an eventual return of Incognito:  the film rights were sold to Fox in 2010, and a film adaptation is apparently still in development.

And on the subject of films, Sean Phillips recently highlighted a high-resolution version of the cover artwork for The Hired Hand, a 1971 western directed by Peter Fonda, out on Blu-ray and DVD this November from Arrow Films.  The dual-format release includes a "Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sean Phillips."

A little closer on the horizon, Phillips' Twitter feed confirms a few arrivals for next week:

• Kill Or Be Killed #1, 2nd printing
• Kill Or Be Killed #2
• Criminal Volume 7 TPB: "Wrong Time, Wrong Place"

(A photo of his comp copies, reprinted above, confirms the title's comma, which was missing from the solicited cover art.)

We haven't seen any extended previews of KOBK #2 online yet, but this week, on his blog, Sean Phillips posted a single panel in-progress, evidently from page 8.

He writes, "This is probably my favourite panel from this issue, Bettie did such a beautiful colour job here..."

We can't wait to see more!

Bullets: The Calm Before the Storm.

We've finally wrapped up our extended look at The Fade Out, and none too soon:  April promises to be an exciting month for fans Brubaker and Phillips. 

Ed Brubaker will apparently announce their next project tomorrow at the 2016 Image Expo in Seattle.

...on a related note, Brubaker has just tweeted that copies of the magazine variant for last year's Criminal Special Edition will be available at the Image booth at the Emerald City Comic Con, this weekend in Seattle.

Later this month, the next one-shot will be released, the Criminal 10th Anniversary Special, which has its own magazine-sized variant featuring Fang the Kung-Fu Werewolf!

The creators have been releasing a few glimpses of the artwork for this done-in-one story, including the image shown above, a work-in-progress panel of Teeg and Tracy Lawless on the road and possibly on the run.

And, hilariously, Ed Brubaker has shown fans a detail from the one-shot, of a cover to the "Deadly Hands" comic from the 1970's.

We have a few items that we'd like to cover as briefly as we can, as we clear the decks for this busy month.


• A Comprehensive Retrospective. Early last week, David Harper at SKCHD posted an extensive essay called "This Noir Life," looking back at Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' long and successful partnership through DC Comics, Marvel's Icon imprint, and now Image Comics. 

Harper talks with Brubaker about the origins of what Harper praises as "the finest and most consistent creative partnership in modern comics," and the wide-ranging discussion is worth reading by everyone.  Newer fans can learn about what books they need to hunt down, long-time fans can recommend the essay to friends to expose them to Brubaker and Phillips, and there are insights that even I didn't know.

For instance, I learned that Sean Phillips designed Holden Carver even though the character was first drawn by Colin Wilson for Point Blank, the WildStorm comic that led directly to Sleeper.  Proud as he is of the series, Brubaker's not sure that he'll return to the world of Incognito, and he still hasn't met the newest addition to their team, the fantastic colorist Bettie Breitweiser.

I was heartened to see Ed Brubaker acknowledge the fact that, while many of us dig every project they do, we have a special place in our heart for their purest crime comic: "I'm sure a lot of them would be happy to see us put Criminal out every month."

But looking ahead, "Brubaker said their next project 'has an even more complex narrative than The Fade Out did,' before adding, 'but it’s very different.'"

We're looking forward to it.


• Brubaker Interviews, Recently Collected.  Courtesy of Sean Phillips' Twitter feed, we see that the University Press of Mississippi has recently expanded its Conversations with Comic Artists Series to include a book on Ed Brubaker.  The series features an impressive list of artists -- including Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, Will Eisner, Charles M. Schulz, Carl Barks, Alan Moore, and Art Spiegelman -- and it says something that the series now includes Brubaker.

Published in early March and edited by Judson University professor Terrence Wandtke, the 172-page hardcover on Brubaker features "often little-known and hard-to-find interviews, worthwhile conversations in their own right as well as objects of study for both scholars and researchers."

Going by the back cover preview, the cover art was from a portrait of Ed Brubaker by Sean Phillips, which first appeared on the cover of the Comics Journal #263, published in October/November 2004.

• Under the Radar: Sonic Noir by Ed Brubaker. We mentioned everything else that's on the horizon, but we had completely missed a new series from Brubaker, a licensed property for another publisher with art from unlikely collaborator: Sonic the Hedgehog: Noir, from Archie Comics, by Brubaker and Bill Sienkiewicz.

The first issue was evidently released on the first day of this month -- a Friday, oddly enough -- and on the same day Comicosity published just about the only (spoiler-filled) review I could find online, but it is more than enough to pique my interest.

"You will not look at the world in the same way after reading Sonic The Hedgehog: Noir #1. There are life changing experiences in comics, and this is one of them. Brubaker and Sienkiewicz have crafted something that is equally beautiful and horrifying and while I am scared to read the next issue, I can tell you right now, I won’t be able to avoid it. You thought you’d seen noir with The Fade Out or Criminal…they are nothing compared to this epic story."

I'm not sure my local shop ordered any copies of Sonic Noir #1, but I'll be sure to ask them about it.


• Velvet in Recent Solicitations.  In the middle of March, Image Comics released its most recent solicitations, for the month of June.   Our guess is that the books announced at the Image Expo, including the latest Brubaker-Phillips collaboration, will be released no earlier than July.

In the interim, we can expect a few releases of Brubaker's other title Velvet, the creator-owned spy comic with art by Steve Epting.  ComicList's most recent extended forecast has issue #14 out on April 27th, issue #15 out on May 25th, and the third trade paperback advance solicited for July 20th.

Velvet Volume 3, "The Man Who Stole the World," collects issues #11-15 for the discounted price of $14.99.


• Sean Phillips' Art for Arrow Films.  Regular readers will already know that Sean Phillips has created striking artwork for several movies, including six home video releases for the Criterion Collection -- most recently for two films on colonialism by Bruce Beresford -- and the poster for We Gotta Get Out of This Place, a crime thriller that debuted at the 2013 Toronto International Film.

In our post on the Beresford artwork, we linked to Sean's announcement on his blog. There he included preliminary and final artwork for the first of apparently three projects for the British distributor Arrow Films -- artwork for a DVD and Blu-ray release of an old spaghetti western.

Sean has now worked on at least four Arrow projects: we're linking to his blog posts below, where each post features work by the artist.

• Cemetery Without Crosses (1969) - released by Arrow in July, 2015
• Sheba, Baby (1975) - released in February, 2016
• Dillinger (1973) - evidently scheduled for April, 2016, not found on the official site
• Black Mama, White Mama (1973) - released in April, 2016 (specifically, yesterday)  

Phillips also submitted cover artwork for Takashi Miike’s Audition; it was rejected for different artwork, but he hopes it will be used in some other way, and meanwhile he's given fans a look at his submission.



• Sean Phillips' Convention Appearances.  We saw the Sean Phillips was present at the London Super Comic Con in late February, with a few prints from The Fade Out and Fatale, shown below -- and we also saw that Ed Brubaker was at LA's WonderCon just a few weekends back.

Since the LSCC, several more scheduled appearances have already been announced for Phillips, for later this year.

• May 14th-15th, TCAF: the Toronto Comics Arts Festival
• September 19th, ICE: the International Comic Expo in Birmingham, England
• November 1st-6th, Thought Bubble: the Leeds Comic Art Festival

Only the first few guests have been announced for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Kendal, England, October 14th-16th, but we wouldn't be surprised if Sean returns to the festival: he's made appearances there for the last three years, and last year he curated an exhibit of album covers created by comic artists.

• Recommended Reading and Viewing. Finally, we have a short list of online articles and videos that our readers might find worthwhile.

Sean Phillips retweeted a link to an blog post about the disturbing trend of unpaid work in media, with Phillips noting that the phenomenon "applies to illustrators and designers too."  The UK editor-in-chief for the Huffington Post had made the absurd and self-serving argument that paid content is inauthentic, and the essay's writer strongly suggests that artists should never provide others with content at no charge -- at least, not unless it's for charity or they can afford to.

(A commenter to the blog entry pointed to a short video clip of the irascible, often entertaining, and here quite astute writer Harlan Ellison -- NSFW.)

The author of numerous essays in the back of the Brubaker and Phillips' comics, including The Fade Out, Devin Faraci is also editor-in-chief of his own website Birth.Movies.Death.  He's recently written two very interesting pieces, one on the death of Superman as a truly heroic character, and one on the death of Jesus of Nazareth, prompted by the non-believer's visit to the popular holy sites in Jerusalem -- both articles are somewhat frustrating but well worth reading.

Faraci's best article I've seen is probably his defense of George Lucas as an auteur.  His opinion echoes my own in light of the recent Star Wars sequel by J.J. Abrams, that the vision behind the prequel trilogy -- deeply flawed films, apparently based on undercooked scripts -- is still more interesting than the mimicry driving that near pastiche of a sequel.

Fans of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian -- and Zangar the Valandrian, the warrior from last year's "Savage Sword of Criminal" -- might be very interested in the article published two weeks ago in Science magazine, about a "colossal" pre-historic Bronze Age battle, the remains of which were recently discovered.  The battle took place along the Tollense River in northern Germany, near the Baltic Sea, and an archaeologist at the dig reports, "They weren't farmer-soldiers who went out every few years to brawl. These are professional fighters."  He doesn't say so, but they seemed much like the fictional Conan.

At the end of last year, on the twentieth anniversary of the film's release, Rolling Stone published an extensive essay on Heat -- my all-time favorite crime movie -- where writer Jennifer Wood presents a first-person recollection by now 73-year-old director Michael Mann.  Among other aspects of the film, he discusses my favorite scene -- the confrontation in the coffee shop where, at the movie's halfway point, Pacino's cop and De Niro's master thief reveal more about themselves to their adversaries than to their partners or lovers.  Mann talks about how the scene was discussed but not rigorously rehearsed, about the characters' motivation for talking with a known enemy, and about the key insight that is learned in that scene which pays off in the climax.

On the subject of thoughtful and extremely well-made heist movies, Ed Brubaker recently highlighted a piece by The A.V. Club on how, through very clever movie-making techniques, director Christopher Nolan hid in plain sight the secret of his 2006 film, The Prestige.

(Both pieces, on Heat and The Prestige, heavily involve SPOILERS, as one might imagine.)

Finally, Brubaker retweeted a short but profound quote from author Salman Rushdie, posted by Jon Winokur.

"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."

As cited by Wikiquote, the statement was quoted in a 2004 BBC article, on a subject that remains distressingly current.

I'm sure that these two of my favorite writers would agree on much regarding politics -- perhaps more regarding culture, including Frank Sinatra and the "Great American Songbook" to which both have alluded -- but I find that, here at least, Ed Brubaker shares common ground with the profound (and profoundly funny) Mark Steyn.

On a recent Australian tour, Steyn gave a speech in Melbourne, defending the crucial right to free expression.  On his website, he points out that a slightly edited video of the February 19th talk has been posted online.  At the 19-minute mark, Steyn points out the importance of the seemingly trivial joke.

"A joke is a small thing but a large, profound loss."

We have lost some of the liberty to tell jokes that might cause the wrong people to be offended.  That kind of suppression of speech is what was found in the Soviet Bloc, and it should not be found in the supposedly free West.