Bullets: Final Issue Before the Fatale Finale, and More!

A pretty calm month has concluded with a quite busy week.

• Preview for Fatale #23, Out This Week.  Tomorrow sees the release of the penultimate issue of Fatale, which Ed Brubaker describes as the "all sex issue."  Understandably, the preview pages have been censored, and the six-page preview is available at Comic Book Resources and Comicosity.  We recommend the CBR preview, as Comicosity appears to have posted the increasingly psychedelic pages in reverse order.

The issue features a quite eerie cover, above, and Geekality has already posted a positive review of the don't-miss issue, writing that readers will "relish how Phillips carries on the plot with seductive illustrations" as we discover more secrets about Josephine.

• First Velvet Trade, Also Out This Week, with Brubaker Signing Copies in LA.  Brubaker has also reminded fans that the first trade paperback collection of his espionage comic Velvet is out this week.  Featuring artwork by longtime collaborator Steve Epting, the volume collects the first five issues and is featured in Comicosity's "trade waiting" list of weekly recommendations.  "Before The Living End" sells for the introductory price of $9.99, and Ed writes that there are "no excuses" not to try the espionage series.

Image Comics recently reported that Ed Brubaker will be appearing at Skylight Books in Los Angeles on July 5th, for a live reading from Velvet and to sign copies of this first trade collection.

• The Fade Out #2 Solicited for September, with Fatale's Final Trade and the Latest Velvet.  Brubaker and Phillips' next work has already been listed in Previews as a Gem of the Month for Image Comics in August, and Sean Phillips has relayed that, after finishing Fatale this week (check out the art he uploaded), he'll be going "straight into The Fade Out!"

Just today, Image Comics released their September solicitations with a September 24th release date for The Fade Out #2 and "Curse the Demon," the fifth and final trade paperback for Fatale.  The week prior should see Velvet #8, continuing the second arc, "The Secret Lives of Dead Men."

(I still suspect the second deluxe volume of Fatale will be out by the end of the year.)

Also today, Sean Phillips has posted an extra-large version of the cover art for the second issue of the noir period piece.  It's beautiful -- and not a million miles from the brutal painting of Teeg Lawless that graces the cover of the first deluxe volume of Criminal -- and we're re-posting the cover art above.

 • Brubaker Interview About The Fade Out.  On June 5th, Previews posted an online interview with Ed Brubaker along with reprinting the recent "trailer" for the upcoming series.  Brubaker discusses the story's origins, the five-year deal with Image Comics, and the idea behind the over-sized "movie magazine" variant that we covered last time.

"It's for our more die-hard fans, for sure, and we're only doing it for the first issue, and it'll probably end up being collectable because we're only printing what we get orders for, so anyone who wants one had better tell their retailer."

Along with the elasticity of the crime genre and how it differs from superhero stories, Brubaker mentions the "expansive" scope of the new series:  the series revolves around an ensemble of six main characters "who are all demanding time in the spotlight" of the book.

Brubaker hopes to attend the San Diego Comic-Con for at least a few days, but no convention appearances are currently scheduled:  we're humbled that the interviewer mentioned this blog as a reliable source of info for Brubaker and Phillips.

(As currently listed on the side of his blog, Sean Phillips will be attending at least two UK conventions this fall: the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in October, and the Leeds Comic Book Festival in November.)

 • Brubaker Pens Introduction to Jason Starr's Twisted City for Kindle.  Crime writer Jason Starr recently tweeted (and Brubaker retweeted) that Brubaker has written an intro for a new Kindle edition of his novel Twisted City.  The e-book is currently available for $2.99, with more than a million copies in print and a screen adaptation in development.

Starr has written or co-written four books for the stellar Hard Case Crime imprint, and if those books are any indication, Twisted City should be a good read:  you can catch Brubaker's introduction in the online preview, and the book is less than the vast majority of single-issue comic books.

(On the subject, Lawrence Block has had nine books published by Hard Case Crime, and one of his Matthew Scudder books is being adapted later this year:  A Walk Among Tombstones reaches theaters in September and will star Liam Neeson, but in the meantime, Block's blog and email newsletter remind readers that the original novel is on-sale and selling well in Kindle format and all other major e-book formats.)

 • A Couple Worthwhile Essays.  Finally, we've seen two essays posted over the weekend that fans of Brubaker and Phillips should check out.  The first is an essay at the horror site Bloody Disgusting, about Fatale and the surprisingly rare combination of horror and noir.  Mystery is essential to both genres, and "the horror-noir is a mystery you’re afraid to solve, because the truth is so much more horrible than anything you can imagine."  This leads directly to cosmic horror, to Lovecraft at its origins and Brubaker and Phillips in their exploration of cosmic horror-noir.

The second is a photo essay at FilmGrab, or perhaps more accurately an arresting archive of stills, from 1961's Blast of Silence.  Patton Oswalt (yes, that Patton Oswalt) wrote an essay praising the cult classic noir in the bonus essay for Criminal #4, back in 2007, and Sean Phillips created the artwork for the Criterion Collection DVD, released in 2008.

Followers of Ed Brubaker's Twitter feed will recognize the protagonist of Blast of Silence:  the hitman Frankie Bono serves as his profile image.

Bullets: Incognito Reviews and More.

Lots of links from the past few weeks.

• A Criminal Comeback, Part 1. From my point of view, the best thing about the Newsarama interview that ADD highlighted earlier is the eminent return of Criminal.
  
  Ed Brubaker relayed that we will soon see the story that might still be titled "Coward's Way Out" -- and even that story might not the last we'll see of Leo.

  "Depending on how I feel by the time I finish Issue #5 of Bad Influences, we may do an Incognito Annual first, before we go back to Criminal, but we'll be going back to Criminal as the next thing. Right now, it's looking like it's going to be the sequel to Coward, which is Leo in prison. But until I actually sit down to write it, it could change. I've had that mapped out since before I wrote Coward. I've had the idea for three stories with that character."

  Brubaker reiterates this plan on his Twitter page, telling Brad Meltzer that Criminal will return "As soon as Incognito is done."
  
  I really like Incognito, and along with titles like Chew and Scott Morse's Strange Science Fantasy, it's a book I look forward to reading every month, but it's no Criminal, and I wish Brubaker and Phillips didn't have to choose between the two titles. Their straight-up crime comic is like a pure, uncut narcotic, and I've been having withdrawal symptoms for far too long.
  
  
• Bad Influences, Mostly Good Reviews. Quite a few reviews have been posted for the debut of Incognito: Bad Influences, and the ones I've seen have been mostly positive, but not without reservations.
  
  The most enthusiastic review I've seen is at A Comic Book Blog, where John Barringer admits that he would pay double for the issue.
  
  Comics Alliance lauds the issue as "a great read that's a welcome return to a well written, beautifully drawn and colored series." The critic notes the emerging similarities with Sleeper but trusts that the story will stand on its own.
  
  At IGN, the issue is given an "impressive" 8.0 review: compared to previous collaborations, the story "doesn't quite sing as loudly or as beautifully," but the issue "succeeds largely because Brubaker and Phillips again compliment each other so wonderfully."
  
  The Comics Panel at The A.V. Club gives the issue a solid B: "In spite of the rehashed plot elements, Incognito: Bad Influences has enough of its own identity to set itself apart from its predecessors, and looks to be the start of another memorable Brubaker-Phillips partnership."
  
  In their "Best Shots" reviews, Newsarama praises the artwork of Sean Phillips and the "seedy, subversive" colors of Val Staples while noting the issue's relative inaccessibility to new readers.
  
  And, Comic Book Resources gives the issue only two-and-a-half stars, praising it as "skillfully constructed" but describing its plot as mostly set-up and exposition.
  
  Even at our sister blog, Trouble With Comics, Christopher Allen praised the book as "better than a lot of what’s out there," but he still couldn't shake the similarities to earlier work.
  
  
• An Award Nod, a Feature Article, and Preview Art. A few more miscellaneous links regarding Incognito, things I noticed from following Brubaker's Twitter posts and Sean Phillips' blog.
  
  First, the original mini-series has been included in the Official Selection for Angoulême 2011, a French award from the world's largest comic-book convention. Other noteworthy nominees are Asterios Polyp, The Walking Dead, and Darwyn Cooke's The Hunter. Awards will be presented at the end of January.
  
  Prompted by the sequel "Bad Influences," Comics Alliance posted an article listing some of the more notable instances of comic-book villains becoming heroes.
  
  And, while Incognito: Bad Influences was absent from Marvel's February solicitations, Sean Phillips has already posted the striking cover art to the fifth and presumably final issue.
  
  
  
  
• Phillips Art for the Criterion Collection. As he did for Blast of Silence, Sean Phillips has created the cover art for another release from the Criterion Collection: Sweet Smell of Success, a 1957 film starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. The Blu-Ray and the two-disc DVD will be released, separately, on February 22nd.
  
  
• A Criminal Comeback, Part 2. Finally, Hard Case Crime is back on track, with new material on the way. Its original publishers ceased production of mass-market paperbacks this year, but the imprint will be published through Titan Books, beginning in the fall of 2011.
  
  As before, The Violent World of Parker has the details, first with the breaking news, then with the full text of the newsletter email. Reading further down the latter, it seems that new material will be released as trade paperbacks, possibly with a MMPB reprint to follow.

More Criminal and more Hard Case Crime? It looks like 2011 is shaping up to be a great year for crime fiction.


Buy Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips comics from Amazon.com

"Blast of Silence."

It took a little longer than I expected, but I'm finally posting a bit about the Criterion Collection release of Blast of Silence. It's an interesting film, one that I enjoyed a lot more the second time and one that I suspect will continue to grow on me with repeated viewings. Made in the early 1960s for next to nothing, it's definitely a film of its era and its budget, but I can see why it's considered a lost masterpiece. There are moments where the cinematography is really striking; other than perhaps some source music in a bar, the jazz score is evocative of the loneliness in a big city; and Allen Baron's performance sometimes eerily foreshadows De Niro or even offers a glimpse of what a New Yorker like Scorsese would have looked like in front of the camera. I would probably recommend it more for a noir aficionado than a novice like myself, but I find that, as it touches on many of the same themes with the same focus on visuals and music, Blast of Silence is a very enjoyable precursor to my favorite noir film, Michael Mann's Heat.

Probably more germane to this blog, the DVD features a lot of artwork from Criminal's own Sean Phillips. He not only drew the cover, above, but he also drew and colored a short comic adaptation of the film's opening scenes, in a manner very familiar to Criminal fans. His artwork graces the liner notes, the DVD menu, and the artwork on the disc itself. Newsarama interviewed Sean about his work on the release, here, and the article highlights an online copy of Patton Oswalt's essay that was published in Criminal, here.

Bullets: The Most Wonderful Thing About Teeger...

...is he's the only one.

My apologies to A.A. Milne, The Walt Disney Company, and everyone who visits A Criminal Blog. I haven't seen that particular bad pun being used about Teegar Lawless, so I figured someone had to use it.

Some news and notes about the world of Criminal.

• 2008 Eisner Nominations. Newsarama published a press release announcing the nominees for the 2008 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. Criminal won Best New Series last year, and Ed Brubaker won an Eisner for Best Writer, in part because of his work in Criminal. Brubaker is nominated again this year for Best Writer, for his work Criminal, Captain America, Daredevil, and Immortal Iron Fist. Winners will be announced July 25th at San Diego's Comic-Con International.
  
  
• Sean @ NYCC. On the subject of comic book conventions, Sean Phillips is coming to the New York Comic Con, at the Splash Page Comic Art Booth (#1966). Splash Page Comic Art is the art dealer that sells many original pieces of Sean's work, from Sleeper to the cover art for Vinyl Underground and, of course, Criminal. The NYCC is being held this weekend, from April 18-20.
  
  
• Blow Up. Over at his blog, Sean also announced -- and has been showing a little preview art from -- Blow Up, a 400-page hardcover book of his art, including comic art. The cover is an extreme close-up of the cover to the upcoming Issue #3 of Criminal, and the book is available here.
  
  
• July Solicitations. Speaking of upcoming issues of Criminal, Newsarama has a sneak peek of Marvel's July solicitations, here. I believe the page will be updated with the full details, possibly as soon as tomorrow, but the preview already reveals that July will likely see Criminal #5 and The Dying and the Dead. The former is the second part of the four-part story "Bad Night", and the latter is the trade collection of the three interconnecting one-shot stories set in 1972. The trade collection will have a slightly lower price than previous collections, and the solicitation confirms that John Singleton is penning the introduction.
  
  UPDATE: And, I just noticed, the full July solicitations for DC Comics, here, list the first hardcover collection of one of my other favorite titles, Gotham Central. This collection will feature the first ten issues, with writing by Ed Brubaker alongside Greg Rucka. With any luck, all forty issues will eventually be reprinted, including the seven or so issues that weren't collected in the trade paperback editions. If the later collections include cover art, we might also see some of Sean Phillips' work for this critically acclaimed series.
  
  
• Blast of Silence. Finally, as we announced here a couple months ago, the Criterion Collection release of Blast of Silence will be in stores tomorrow. The film was featured in one of Criminal's earliest essays, and Sean has provided the cover art and a brief comic book for the package.

I'm planning on picking up Blast of Silence tomorrow, and so I hope to have more to say about the film later this week.

Bullets: Myspace, Wizard, Newsarama, "Blast of Silence"

The promotional campaign for the return of Criminal is picking up, so I figure I'd cover the highlights of the last couple weeks as a quick list of -- appropriately enough -- bullets.

• Myspace. It's the middle of "Criminal Week" at myspace.com/comicbooks, and while I'll probably have more to say about their features after it wraps up, I'd like to go ahead and highlight the fact that they're featuring substantial previews of the first two story-arcs. If you or a friend still haven't given Criminal a try, you can check out two full-length issues for free:
  
  Criminal Volume 1, Issue 1: Part One of "Coward"
  http://tinyurl.com/2a9jle
  
  Criminal Volume 1, Issue 6: Part One of "Lawless"
  http://tinyurl.com/2cctg4
  
  I'm presenting the links via TinyURL so they're easier to pass along.


• Wizard. For the first time in a very long while, I bought an issue of Wizard this week, Issue 197 for March 2008, and its "Book of the Month" is Criminal. The feature notes that Volume 2 will be getting better paper stock, which I hadn't heard before, and it includes a sidebar list of Ed Brubaker's top five criminals in noir fiction. It's now clear that any list that includes characters portrayed by both Steve McQueen and Lee Marvin is a good one.


• Newsarama. Between the reveal this week of a new Captain America and his publicizing Criminal before the order cut-off that's apparently next week, Ed Brubaker's been a busy man. Before he talked again with Newsarama in the wake of Captain America #34, he conducted a lengthy interview that was published earlier this week. In Part 2 of that interview, here, he talks about Criminal.
  
  On the business side, he reiterates that the monthly issues include the substantive bonus features to make the format more attractive, because the monthly sales are so important to the series' success. And, he reveals that he hasn't paid himself for the work on the series, holding what money he can as a sort of "rainy-day fund."
  
  On the creative side, he answers that it is possible that, like Greg Rucka's work with Queen and Country, the fictional universe he's created with Criminal could spill over into novels. It has a bit of a precedent in the fact that Issue #1 includes "Caught in the Undertow," a short story written from Gnarly's point of view, about the night of Ricky Lawless' wake. Frankly, I'd love to see a Criminal novel, written by Brubaker and with a cover illustration by Sean Phillips, and I think I know the perfect publisher.


• "Blast of Silence." Finally, Sean Phillips announced that Criterion is releasing a DVD of Blast of Silence, the obscure noir film from 1961 that Patton Oswalt discussed in Criminal #4. Phillips did the artwork for the cover and a four-page comic book that covers the film's opening scenes and will be included in the release. There's a preview of the comic at his blog, and the art style is not a million miles from Criminal.

The Criterion Collection release of Blast of Silence will be out this April, and I'll try to cover its release here. In the meantime, I'll keep updating this blog with the latest news and reviews of Criminal; if anyone sees anything interesting, do feel free to let us know in the comments section.