Bullets: Looking Back and Looking Ahead.

Been a while for hail of bullets, but we have a few news items as we wrap up the year.

• Looking Back, Part I: Flashmob Fridays Discuss Criminal. The thought-provoking writers at Flashmob Fridays tackled "Last of the Innocent" this past week. Our own Alan David Doane introduced their collection of reviews and essays, and I had the honor of being a guest contributor. The essays are as provocative as the mini-series that inspired them, and I highly recommend them.
  
  
• Looking Ahead, Part I: Brubaker and Phillips Discuss Fatale. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Fatale debuts the first week of the new year -- January 4th, specifically, with two different covers for this first issue -- and last week both creators spoke with Newsarama about the horror noir comic they're publishing through Image Comics.
  
  Brubaker mentions that the book's origins trace back to before Criminal, but even now he's experimenting with the book's structure. As is usually the case with his collaborations with Brubaker, Phillips doesn't know where the story's going. He notes that the genres of horror and noir are right in his wheelhouse, and he discusses the difficulty in drawing a woman who's sexy and charismatic, at least more so than his typically realistic characters.
  
  (I think the women he's drawn are often quite stunning already.)
  
  The interview confirms that Fatale will run at least twelve issues; a couple days later, Brubaker wrote that the series will run "probably 15 or 16 issues."
  
  
• Looking Back, Part II: Phillips and Criterion. It's been a great year for fans of crime fiction. There's Darwyn Cooke's "Martini Edition" of his Parker adaptations, reviewed here. The University of Chicago Press published another five Parker novels and announced the publication of some of Richard Stark's Grofield novels for next year. And after a year hiatus, Hard Case Crime returned with four books in two months, including its first hardcover.
  
  It's also been a pretty good year for Sean Phillips fans, even beyond Criminal. We reported that he had created the cover art for the Criterion Collection's February release of Sweet Smell of Success, and we highlighted the creation of that artwork, but we completely missed his work for the November release of the classic courtroom drama, Twelve Angry Men.
  
  At his blog, Phillips posted the original painting, the subsequent cover, and a detail of the painting.
  
  As Phillips later highlighted, the film made Vanity Fair's Holiday Design and Technology Guide.
  
  If you got a gift card for Christmas, you know what you can do with it.
  
  
• Looking Ahead, Part II: Phillips on Conan. It hasn't been published too frequently, but I get a real kick reading Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword, an anthology series by Dark Horse, featuring all sorts of characters created by the pulp giant. Scheduled for a late March release, the fourth issue has Sean Phillips drawing Howard's most famous creation, Conan. All through October, Phillips posted artwork, including thumbnails, pencils, details, and works-in-progress.

In the coming weeks, we'll link to the end-of-the-year lists that recommend Criminal, and we'll pass on previews, interviews, and reviews to the next big thing from Brubaker and Phillips, Fatale.

Incognito Out This Week (and More Soon), and Interesting Links.

Both Great Escape Comics in Marietta, Georgia, and San Francisco's Comix Experience confirm that Incognito: Bad Influences #3 is in stores tomorrow, February 9th.

Ed Brubaker has relayed the same news, adding that Issue #4 is already at the printers.

And, along with more sketches for the following issues, Sean Phillips has posted a two-page preview of tomorrow's release. Frankly, it's the best two pages I've seen from this mini-series, and I can't wait for the new issue.

But wait we must, and while we do, Brubaker's Twitter page has highlighted a couple worthwhile destinations on the World Wide Web.

PopMatters features a review of "Bad Influences." I think it stretches credibility to tie the appeal of pulp to a particular decade's political context, but Michael Stewart is right to note that the heroes in the Incognito universe are presented as consistently brutal and cynical, all the way back to the older generation's origins. Unlike the mainstream books, here we have a super-powered universe with depth and history, but we see no softening from being subjected to the now-defunct Comics Code.

Over on Vimeo, we have two trailers for In the Dark, a short film written and directed by Brubaker and starring Wil Wheaton. The film is a production of "Basement Gang, Inc.," Brubaker's company that also owns the rights to Incognito. (Check the copyright.) This is the same short film that premiered at last year's Seattle International Film Festival.

Finally, Eric Skillman, the graphic designer for the Criterion Collection, highlights the process for creating the cover to Sweet Smell of Success. As we reported in November, Sean Phillips created the cover art, and Skillman's blog post features quite a bit of Phillips' work. We find sketches, partial work, the complete and unadorned painting, and one of two bonus paintings to be included in the February 22nd release.

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.


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