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?- 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.
- My personal recommendation would be Criminal: The Last of the Innocent, and I'll elaborate on my preferences below.
- 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 BooksThere 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 BatmanBatman: 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
Artist Jacob Phillips, Sean's son and the team's current colorist
