Criminal #4 Out Now: A Podcast, A Preview, and A Close Look at Coloring.

The next issue of Brubaker and Phillips' new ongoing Criminal comic is out today, and we have a few interesting links for the occasion.

It feels like we can't truly close the book on the previous issue without The Undertow Podcast, and, over the weekend, Episode 31 was released, featuring a review *Criminal* #3, the conclusion to "Bad Weekend" in its original "theatrical cut."

We also had a few recommendations.  Mine were short stories, starting with Lawrence Block's "One Thousand Dollars a Word," about a crime writer weary of being paid the scant rate of five cents a word, incidentally the same rate that Block was paid when the story first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in 1978.  More substantially, I also recommended Kwik Krimes (note the spelling), a 2013 anthology edited by Otto Penzler, featuring 81 crime stories, each in a bite-size length of no more than 1,000 words.  Both recommendations are currently available in Kindle format; Block's story sells for $2.99, and the Kwik Krimes anthology is on sale for the astounding price of $1.49.

Robert recommended a brand new crime comic from Titan Comics, Tyler Cross Volume 2: Angola, a self-contained sequel to another "Tyler Cross" comic, Black Rock.  Both comics are from Fabien Nury, the French writer of The Death of Stalin, a graphic novel adapted in a 2017.  Titan Comics has published the English-language translations of these comics, and the two Tyler Cross books have been released under the label of Hard Case Crime, the must-read imprint specializing in classic and new hardboiled crime fiction.

(In the podcast, I noted that HCC editor Charles Ardai contributed to Kwik Krimes, along with a couple other familiar names, such as Ken Bruen and Christa Faust -- both published by Hard Case Crime -- but I just noticed that Ardai actually contributed a second story under a familiar *cough* alias.)

Next up is info straight from the source, a new email newsletter from Ed Brubaker, sent out Monday.  It begins with an extended, six-page preview, which we exercpt above.

This preview is longer than what we saw in the newsletter from last month (still worth a look for in-process art from other pages), and we learn that this self-contained story is ominously titled "Orphans."

(EDIT: Also on Monday, Kim Morgan gave Twitter followers a look at Sean Phillips' illustration, below, for the issue's bonus essay, on "William Wellman's depression-era pre-code [film], the tough and sensitive and beautiful, 'Wild Boys of the Road'," from 1933.)

Brubaker also relays that the following story has a new title, just as the previous story's title changed from "The Longest Weekend" to "Bad Weekend."  This upcoming arc was referred to as "The Summer of '88" in the solicitations for issues #5 and #6, but it's now titled "Cruel Summer."

(That's the title of a top-ten pop song by Bananarama, released in 1983 and peaking in the U.S. in 1984, after its inclusion in The Karate Kid.  Ace of Base covered the song in 1998, and the cover also reached the top ten in the UK and the US.  But the closest tie to this long Criminal arc might be a "new jack swing" makeover by Bananarama, which charted throughout Europe.  That song was released in -- you guessed it! -- 1989.)

...now that we think about it, the newsletter didn't begin with "Orphans," it began with the artwork shown above, which we haven't seen before.  It appears to be an upcoming cover, and its monochrome coloring and black background fits with what we've seen for the first two covers to "Cruel Summer," repeated below.

We wonder if the image is of Ricky Lawless from that fateful summer of 1988, and I'm sure we'll find out soon enough; the August solicitations will likely be released in the second half of May.

Brubaker continues his newsletter with some inside info on the Bad Weekend hardcover.  The announcement seemed to come out of nowhere, and that's because the idea wasn't from the team, it was from Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson.  It sounds like the book is already complete -- finished very quickly during the production of issues #4 and #5 -- and Brubaker includes a few panels from the new content, which includes revised dialogue and narration.

Ed Brubaker is practically gushing over the upcoming hardcover, writing, "the book is gorgeous, and we're really proud of it, to the point we nearly killed ourselves getting it done in time."

He also discusses the other big project in the news, Too Old To Die Young, revealing that the Cannes screening will be of episodes 4 and 5 under the single subtitle of "North of Hollywood, West of Hell," and not as separate episode titles.

He also warns fans about the new series and has some recommended viewing in advance of the "hypnotic and surreal" Amazon series:

"Watch VALHALLA RISING, watch DRIVE, watch NEON DEMON, and ONLY GOD FORGIVES. Refn's movies are very divisive, and he's completely fine with that. They're more like insane European midnight movies from the 60s and 70s than anything you'd normally see on TV or a streaming platform, and this show is not in any way like a typical streaming show."

And, in addition to sharing a few random links -- some, very random -- Ed Brubaker strongly recommends that fans not take any chances in hunting down Criminal...

"[Criminal #4 is] out this week, and sadly, I've been getting a lot of emails from readers having trouble finding the issues. Lots of reports of first-day sellouts. So you may want to call your comic shop and make sure they hold one for you or place a standing order.

"I hate to be that 'pre-order your comics' guy, but the market is tightening its belt right now, and many retailers are ordering to sell out immediately. So if you want CRIMINAL every month, make sure your shop knows. Even comics' smartest retailers cannot read your mind."

...and he has a similar request regarding Bad Weekend, asking readers, "Please order it from your local comic shop or bookstore."

Finally, there's a great YouTube video from February that we had overlooked, and we can't recommend it enough:  Strip Panel Naked has a nine-minute video, embedded below, on the history of colorists in the collaborations of Brubaker and Phillips.

It's not comprehensive -- Dave Stewart isn't mentioned, nor is every work analyzed, including Incognito and Fatale -- but the video is surprisingly wide-ranging, from Tony Avina and Sleeper to Val Staples and early Criminal, to Elizabeth Breitweiser with The Fade Out and Kill or Be Killed, and now Jacob Phillips with Junkies and the newest incarnation of Criminal.

Strip Panel Naked takes a very different approach from The Undertow Podcast. While we tend to focus on individual works, Hassan compares and contrasts more than fifteen years of content, and while we're limited to audio discussions, he can show as well as tell, with eight example pages.

In short, the inks and the colors have slowly become less realistic and more impressionistic, but they continue to complement each other. 

(I would add that these different approaches have never been at the expense of clarity in storytelling and characterization, and the work of these talented colorists argues against any future black-and-white reprints.)

It's a helluva video, and we hope that we can get a few more eyes to this channel, which we're just beginning to explore for ourselves.

Criminal #2 Out Today: New Undertow Podcast and Podcaster Interview, Newsletters and Original Art, and a Rare Stateside Appearance!

Just in time for Valentine's Day, the next issue of the new monthly version of Criminal hits stores today, along with the second printing of the first issue, covers of which are shown below. We have a few quite noteworthy items to accompany issue #2.

Just last week, WMQ Comics published a print interview with our good friend Robert Watson, host and creator of the Undertow Podcast.  The interview is part of a running feature called Pod People, "where WMQ’s Matthew Lazorwitz talks to fellow comics podcasters about their shows and the comics they love."

Robert discusses the show's origins, and, perhaps for the first time, he articulates the unique appeal of our show's subject matter -- namely, the high-quality output of a long-term partnership between writer and artist, a real rarity in the comic-book medium. 

That output can hardly be overstated:  in a typical year, readers get some 200 to 300 pages of noir comics from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, ranging from period pieces and borderline romance comics to vigilante stories and even Lovecraftian horror.  We're in the thirteenth year of the team's nearly non-stop work on creator-owned titles, there seems to be no signs of slowing, and -- most incredibly -- each new story still thrills and amazes a readership that continues to grow.

The whole thing is worth a read, as Robert discusses the genre of crime stories, the "ideal Brubaker/Phillips playlist," and other great books he's reading.

Robert is also very kind in putting the best possible spin on my neuroses and idiosyncrasies, saying I'm "just an encyclopedia of knowledge when it comes to this comics team," and I greatly appreciate the kind words!

---

Shortly after WMQ Comics posted their interview, Robert published the latest episode of The Undertow Podcast -- podcast episode #29, discussing the brand-new Criminal #1.  

Robert and I closed the episode with some recommended reading.

• We mention that, in his January newsletter, Ed Brubaker recommended Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans and Cemetery Beach by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard.  Both books are published by Image, and the latest issues came out on the same day as Criminal #1.
• That same day, January 9th, saw the debut of the series I eagerly recommend on the strength of a single issue:  Gunning For Hits, a "music business crime thriller" written by music producer and first-time comics writer Jeff Rougvie and drawn by Moritat. 
• And, Robert recommends the 2011 hardcover Crime, from the "Simon and Kirby Library," collecting "fully restored" crime comics by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.  These stories evidently date from the pre-code, EC era of the 1950's, and the 320-page hardcover includes an introduction by Max Allan Collins.

Another book published by Image, Gunning For Hits appears to be produced by Rougvie's label Supermegabot, and the book is accompanied by a Spotify playlist and a Twitter feed of excerpts from the protagonist Martin Mills' fictional journal (and coordinates to a small island on the Massachusetts coast). 

As with Criminal, the second issue is out today; the cover art for the first two issues are shown above -- the first with a very Bowie-like rocker while the second is an homage to Station to Station, the 1976 Bowie album which the CD(!) enthusiast Rougvie recommended to me, since I only have 2002's Heathen in my collection.

---

As our most recent podcast went online, Ed Brubaker was sending out his February newsletter, which features a five-page preview for issue #2.  He also gives us a preview of a single panel of issue #3, with Ricky Lawless, all grown up.

Brubaker explains:

"Ricky is one of the main recurring characters in this new monthly version of CRIMINAL, and actually stars in issue 4, which is a standalone issue, much like #1 was. Issue 5 begins the first longer arc."

We wonder, then, is Ricky the connective tissue between these first four issues?  And since issue #1 was longer than normal and a longer arc begins after this, will these four issues comprise the next trade paperback collection?

The writer mentioned another big project -- the Amazon series Too Old to Die Young -- with recent news that I had missed, which Robert had caught during the podcast.  While at the Rotterdam Film Festival, composer Cliff Martinez spoke about the series and his work with Nicolas Winding Refn, and Brubaker linked to a few stories on his "Masterclass" conversation -- and video, concluding with a clip from the series "not for the faint of heart."

Robert pointed us to Birth.Movies.Death and a different summary of a Screen Daily interview with Martinez, revealing the series' runtime of about 16 hours.  The composer relays, "It’s ten episodes that are around 90 minutes a piece," and we wonder if this length -- equivalent to a short feature -- suggests that each episode tells a complete story within a larger, serialized framework.

(I would think an extra-long premiere and finale might skew the average, but even with bookends of 2 hours or more, the middle episodes would still be 80 minutes or so, almost twice the length of an episode of Stranger Things and toward the extreme end of True Detective episodes.)

In addition to some other crime-related recommendations, Brubaker also recommends the new hardcover collection, Conan the Barbarian: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus, Volume 1.  The newsletter includes the standard cover art by John Cassaday -- striking, and obviously Cassaday at a single glance, but hardly true to the era -- but there is also evidently a direct-market edition with a cover based on the original cover art for Conan the Barbarian #1, from 1970.

Brubaker says that this collection is particularly worthwhile for the bonus features -- a rarity in omnibus editions from Marvel -- but if the $125 retail price is a bit out of one's budget, Marvel also released ten one-dollar "True Believer" reprints in January, including that first issue to Conan the Barbarian. 

Just as Brubaker recommended the omnibus, I mentioned these inexpensive reprints in the podcast, along with a minor recommendation for Marvel's new ongoing series, Conan the Barbarian.  The colors in these reprints aren't bad at all -- "The Secret of Skull River" is left in black and white, in all its glory -- and most of these issues have dense, self-contained stories.

---

Finally, since Sean Phillips returned to using paper for My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies and has evidently kept up the practice for Criminal -- albeit with apparent digital pencils, in traditional blue -- the resulting artwork is being made available to collectors, through Phillips' longtime associates at Splash Page Comic Art.

On that quite eventful February 7th, Splash Page Art announced new artwork for sale -- artwork from Junkies, Criminal, and Hellblazer, more specifically Phillips' six variant covers from 2018.  On Twitter, owner Mark Hay announced that artwork from issue 2 will be on sale this week, as the issue reaches stores.

Back in the press release, Hay also encourages haste:  while recording the podcast, I noticed that the first issue's striking last page was on sale -- a single splash page, of Teeg Lawless in portraiture, smoking in his car, bloodied and scheming.  The image is somehow beautiful and ugly all at once.  Despite a price of $575, the page's listing is already missing, indicating that the work has already been sold, but not before we (thankfully) saved a local copy of the artwork, shown below.

The press release also notes Phillips' attendance at the inaugural NCSFest, hosted by the National Cartoonists Society in Huntington Beach, California, over the weekend of May 17-19.  Mark Hay will also be there, and we were right to guess that a certain writer in California would be there alongside Phillips.

The event is described as Phillips' first US appearance since 2010, and it's apparently the pair's first North American appearance together since Toronto in 2014.

It bears repeating: Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are scheduled to attend California's NCSFest in May.  This should be just a few weeks after the release of Criminal #4, due on April 24th.

Heroes in Stores Today, More Criminal in January, a Mini Book Tour and More Podcasts!

It's a big day -- big enough to eclipse the very busy schedule that's been keeping me offline recently.  It's been more than three months since the conclusion of Kill Or Be Killed, and the killer team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips is back with their first original graphic novel, the hardcover My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies.

Image Comics is promoting the book on its front page, and while the book's webpage still has the three-page trailer, Ed Brubaker's recent email newsletter includes three new preview pages.

An additional, exclusive four-page preview is available at The Hollywood Reporter, along with a brief interview with Brubaker, touching on how the story connects to his personal life and updating fans on Too Old To Die Young.

(The Amazon-exclusive series is in post-production, probably to be released in the spring: "it's the most Nicolas Winding Refn thing that ever existed, honestly. It's stylish and shocking," and the cinematography is especially good considering its being made for television.)

The book hits stores today.  At certain stores, readers can purchase the book with one of apparently THREE signed bookplates.  The most common one, based on the cover art, is signed by Ed Brubaker.  It's apparently available at stores such as London's Orbital Comics, where we found the photo below; at Pittsburgh's Phantom of the Attic, which I used to frequent in grad-school days, when it was located on Craig Street; and at the stores hosting Brubaker's upcoming book tour.

Two other bookplates are exclusively available at two stores in the British Isles.  They feature the front or back of the book's main character Ellie, and they're signed by all three creators -- writer Ed Brubaker, artist Sean Phillips, and colorist Jacob Phillips.  Sean posted images of the bookplates through Twitter, announcing that the former is available through OK Comics and the latter is at Page 45.  OK Comics evidently also has the original artwork on which these bookplates are based, along with the Brubaker-signed bookplate, signed copies of Jack & Lucy by Rachael Smith and Jacob Phillips, and a giveaway for signed promo posters.

Looking at the copy we just picked up from our local shop, we can confirm that it's the standard comic-book dimensions, and its matte paper is quite nice, making the physical copy really stand out.
We can also confirm that, on the title page, the book is described as "a Criminal novella."

(We think Sean ought to use his Big Cartel store to sell dust jackets for the book, to match the design for Image's new printings of the Criminal trade paperbacks.)

Much to our delight, more Criminal is coming, much sooner than expected.

Rich Johnston broke the news on September 23rd, after talking with Sean Phillips at Thought Bubble in Leeds, and the news was confirmed by Brubaker's October 4th newsletter and Phillips' October 5th tweet, with a look at the cover art for issue #1 in this third ongoing monthly series to bear the name.

As with this new hardcover, the ongoing series will be colored by Jacob Phillips, "our new regular colorist," and it sounds like the series will include long arcs, done-in-one stories, and everything in-between. 

Brubaker shared some interior artwork from this first issue, confirming that the cover above features Teeg Lawless from the 1980's and setting at least part of the story in March of 1988.  With one young, as-yet unidentified character breaking into a house, we wonder if we'll see Leo Patterson, Tracy Lawless, and Jacob Kurtz as teenage friends and lawbreakers.

Brubaker teases that this debut issue is "an extra-length single issue story that is different than anything we've ever done before with CRIMINAL."  Especially considering the turns the series has already taken, we're more than intrigued.

(In the interview given to THR mentioned above, Brubaker adds, "We'll definitely be seeing more of Ellie in the new Criminal monthly series that launches in January.")

And, Brubaker explains that his work on the Junkies may have inspired him to return to the world of Criminal more quickly than he had planned, setting aside (for now) the planned follow-up to The Fade Out.

Fans probably have questions for the writer, and he used his newsletter (with a subsequent addendum) to announce a miniature book tour -- a "signing tour" which Image Comics publicized in its own press release yesterday.

So far only four stops have been announced, three in California and a fourth in the "other" LA -- Louisiana, the first time the writer will be a guest at an event in this area and his first time in the Big Easy.

The tour STARTS TONIGHT, and the event links below should be up-to-date.

• Oct 10, Collectors Paradise, Winnetka, CA
• Oct 11, Skylight Books, Los Feliz, CA
• Oct 13, Isotope, San Francisco, CA
• Oct 25, Crescent City Comics, New Orleans, LA

Finally, if you still can't get enough of Brubaker and Phillips, The Undertow Podcast has released a few new episodes since we last posted here at the blog.

• In Episode 25, Robert and I review the 20th and final issue of Kill Or Be Killed, with some broader thoughts on the overall series.
• In Episode 26, Robert opens our second "cold case" to take a look at some of the earliest collaborations between Brubaker and Phillips, the prestige-format comic Batman: Gotham Noir from DC's Elseworlds line and Batman #603 from the Bruce Wayne: Fugitive crossover event.

We'll be back with another podcast very soon, and it's clear we'll have lots to talk about.

Bullets: a Virgin Variant, an Eisner Nod, and The Next Project Announced!

It's been one very busy week, not even counting a news item that we previously overlooked.

• Virgin Variant for KILLED OR BE KILLED 20.  Looking at ComicList's advance forecast for Image Comics, we saw an intriguing second entry for the upcoming final issue to Kill Or Be Killed, for "Cover B Sean Phillips Virgin Variant", linking to a TFAW product page with the second image shown below.

We reached out to the artist himself, and Sean Phillips confirms the listing:  the final issue of Kill Or Be Killed reaches stores with a second, "virgin variant" cover with all the trade dress removed, allowing readers to enjoy the homage to Romita's Spider-Man in all its undiluted glory.

Phillips has since posted a pic of what appears to be his comp copies of both versions, telling readers that the issue "includes a teaser for our new book," which we'll cover further down.

Both versions of the issue -- standard cover and virgin variant, both shown above -- are due next week, on June 27th.

• Brubaker & Phillips Interview for KOBK Finale.  As we were investigating the variant cover this past week, CBR was doing its own work of journalism, posting an extensive interview with the primary creators of Kill Or Be Killed as the vigilante series wraps up.  We think this is the first interview with Phillips since January, and we can't remember the last time Brubaker talked with the press.

Ed Brubaker doesn't want to spoil the final issue -- or even confirm Dylan's fate and "reveal whether he actually did die" -- but he describes it as "the weirdest comic I’ve ever written, probably."  Still being wary of spoiling the issue, he also says it deals "in some ways" with the question of whether the antagonistic Demon is real.

Sean Phillips, meanwhile, describes his characters' evolution, his use of Fairburn's popular reference book series from the 1970's, and Bettie Breitweiser's contributions in adding color to New York through all four seasons.

As coy as the pair is about how the series wraps, the interview includes pages from the upcoming issue, presumably from the opening act, constituting a three-page preview that we're including below.

Brubaker mentioned that he's learned, "never say never," regarding a return to any fictional world, and he's "keeping his fingers crossed" on the film adaptation involving members of the creative team behind John Wick: "I’m helping to produce the movie, but not on a day-to-day level like I am with my current TV show at Amazon [Too Old to Die Young]."

Sean Phillips, meanwhile, is working on covers for home video, film soundtracks, and a Glasgow band, and his eight-page WWI comic with Ian Rankin is still due in October.

And what about the pair's next collaboration?  It's evidently a pair of projects, first an original, hardcover graphic novel, due in October, and then another serialized book which we believe to be the anticipated return to the world of The Fade Out.

Phillips is returning to drawing on paper for the former -- this graphic novella -- and Brubaker said that this project "will be announced soon."

He wasn't kidding.

• Due In October, MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES. The CBR interview was posted on Monday, June 18th.  The very same day, Image Comics released its September solicitations, which included an advance solicit for the pair's upcoming graphic novella.

MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES OGN HC 

WRITER: ED BRUBAKER 

ARTIST / COVER: SEAN PHILLIPS 

OCTOBER 10 / 72 PAGES / FC / M / $16.99 

The first original graphic novel from the bestselling creators of CRIMINAL, KILL OR BE KILLED, THE FADE OUT and FATALE. Teenage Ellie has always had romantic ideas about drug addicts, those tragic artistic souls drawn to needles and pills have been an obsession since the death of her junkie mother ten years ago. But when Ellie lands in an upscale rehab clinic where nothing is what it appears to be... she’ll find another more dangerous romance, and find out how easily drugs and murder go hand-in-hand. MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES is a seductive coming-of-age story, a pop and drug culture-fueled tale of a young girl seeking darkness... and what she finds there. A gorgeous must-have hardback from the award-winning team of ED BRUBAKER and SEAN PHILLIPS, with acclaimed color artist ELIZABETH BREITWEISER.

The title may be a riff on the melancholic country song popularized by Willie Nelson. I wonder how often I'll conflate the titles here and on the podcast -- or combine them and reference the Cowboy Junkies.

The next day, Image posted a press release for the book, which Sean Phillips reposted at his blog.

In the release, Brubaker describes the book as their version of a romance comic, confirming that it's also a crime story: "But it's one that allows me to mine some of my own pop culture obsessions and delve back into my teen years and the kind of trouble you can only get into when you're young."
This is evidently the "romance comic" that Phillips reference in an earlier interview, and we do wonder if this started out as that Criminal novella.

On Twitter, Phillips adds that, along with returning to paper for this project, he'll be providing the colors along with his son Jacob Phillips.  I believe this will be only the second time Sean Phillips has been a colorist, the first being the pair's contribution to The Spirit Newspaper.

• Eisner Nod for The Spirit Anthology.  On the subject, we had earlier overlooked the late-April announcement -- covered by the LA Times among others -- of the 2018 Eisner Award nominations.

We found the following among the nominees for Best Anthology:

• The Spirit Anthology, edited by Sean Phillips (Lakes International Comic Art Festival)

By our reckoning, this is the first year since 2014 that a Brubaker and Phillips collaboration hasn't been explicitly nominated for any Eisners, but they did have a one-page contribution to The Spirit newspaper-sized comic.

The Eisner Awards will be announced Friday night, July 20th, at Comic-Con International in San Diego. Between the Spirit comic's subject matter and rationale (the centenary of its creator Eisner's birth) and the murderer's row of creators, we're expecting good things.

On Twitter, Sean Phillips has a pinned tweet to remind readers that this anthology he edited is exclusively available through worldwide mail order from Page 45 Comics -- and here is the direct link.

• New Prints for Upcoming Works from Brubaker & Phillips.  Finally, Sean Phillips very recently announced new prints at his Big Cartel store, for artwork from this fall's big releases:  the cover for the single-volume trade collection for The Fade Out and the cover for the new novella, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies.  In the case of the latter, two options are available, with and without the creators listed.

The Fade Out Single-Volume Softcover -- and More Kill Or Be Killed?

With the new issue of Kill Or Be Killed, we got some news on what comes next.  We still have other news we'd like to cover, but they'll have to wait -- hopefully not too long.

The Fade Out returns to stores this fall, perhaps October or November, this time in a single-volume trade paperback.

We guess that, around the same time of this new collection, we'll see the sequel to The Fade Out, as the team's next monthly title.

---

While we were finishing our most recent blog post, Ed Brubaker was sending out his latest email newsletter, the first in just over four months.  There's a ton worth reading there, in addition to an extended, five-page preview of the new issue, KOBK #18.

Revealing nothing else about the upcoming project, Brubaker writes, "today I will finally be reading the script for the KILL OR BE KILLED movie adaptation."

He also briefly mentions Too Old To Die Young -- now at the midpoint of its ten-month shoot, "which is I believe the longest shoot ever for a ten episode show with a single director" -- and he directs readers to the show's Instagram feed, which is now quite active. 

And he addresses a reader's question on the changing (and possibly declining) retail market of local comic stores, in a slightly longer answer than what he gave in the back pages of the new issue.

(In the email and in print, he concludes the mini-essay in almost exactly the same way, assuring readers, "Sean and I will keep doing our books as long as people keep buying them... And I hope that’s at least another decade or two.")

The biggest reveal is about this new single-volume softcover for The Fade Out.

I've been researching and planning for a new book, a follow-up to THE FADE OUT for the past six months or so, and I'm happy to announce that in the fall (in time for Christmas shopping even) we'll be releasing a complete edition of THE FADE OUT in paperback. This will collect all 12 chapters under one cover, and a lot of extra stuff, as well... 

This should be out in October or November this year, and I just love this cover Sean did. So keep your eyes peeled and tell your retailers if you want it.  

We previously reported, from his December newsletter, research into the 1950's and television's early golden age for the unconventional sequel to The Fade Out, and, in a subsequent interview, Sean Phillips revealed that this would be the first of two follow-up stories set in the same fictional universe.

If the team's next monthly title starts no earlier than October, it will presumably carry over into the new year.  We seriously doubt Ed Brubaker would commence lengthy research, at the end of 2017, for a book to be created in 2019 or later, so we think it's very reasonable to conclude that their next monthly title is this first follow-up to The Fade Out.

Since this new single-volume trade paperback would be a great way to promote the new series, we'd further speculate that the new title's first issue will come out no more than a month afterward -- and perhaps as early as the very same day.

But even apart from that, we're thrilled to see the story collected as the single graphic novel which it comprises, in an softcover edition presumably priced for a wider readership.

And while the choice of characters and their position is a bit surprising, Ed Brubaker is quite right that the new cover is gorgeous, as is the new design for the title.

---

In the newsletter, Ed Brubaker also writes about the project preceding this next monthly title.

As I mentioned in the recent issue's text pages, KILL OR BE KILLED is ending with issue 20 and we'll be announcing our next thing very soon (you'll in fact probably hear of it in issue 20 or this newsletter first). I already have said before one of the things Sean and I have started working on is an OGN - which will be an original hardback, novella length. But I don't want to reveal anything more about it yet.

We're looking forward to the announcement.

---

And, in the back pages of KOBK 18, Ed Brubaker drops one more bit of interesting news.

...I think it's been announced already, but some of you may have missed that issue 20 is our final issue (for now, at least).  This arc is actually where a lot of the threads come together, as you'll see the next three [sic] issues.  We may return to KILL OR BE KILLED at some point down the line, but it's time to move on to other stuff.  We have two new things coming out later this year -- first an OGN hardback and then the launch of our next monthly serialized thing.  I'll have more information about this stuff in issue 20.

The planned film adaptation would presumably be limited to this first volume of twenty issues, and we're quite intrigued about the possibility of returning to this world. 

Dylan's story might not end in June -- and even if it does, we may not have seen the last of that demon.

Either way, we do look forward to "another decade or two" from Brubaker and Phillips, reading whatever stories they'd like to tell.

Bullets: New Kill Or Be Killed, New Undertow Podcast, New Edition of Sleeper, and News on Maniac Cop!

Regular readers know the drill:  a new podcast, a new issue from Brubaker and Phillips, and an online preview.

Details are below.

• Undertow Podcast 22 on Kill Or Be Killed 17.  A new episode of The Undertow Podcast was recently released, with a focus on the most recent issue of Kill Or Be Killed.  We covered a few recent news items, specifically the June solicitation for the KOBK finale (which we blogged about last month) and confirmation of the Maniac Cop reboot (covered below).

Robert and I also had some very unconventional recommendations.  We'll come back to those at the end of this post.

As always, The Undertow Podcast is available on iTunes and at Podbean.  We GREATLY appreciate our listeners' giving us feedback and letting others know about the show. 

• Kill Or Be Killed 18 In Stores Today.  Just yesterday, Image Comics updated its page for KOBK 18 by adding a three-page preview.  As shown above, the issue's apparent first page provides a more naturalistic reiteration of the striking cover art, which we now know features the slain body of the copycat vigilante.

This new issue is in stores today, and it seems to feature the return of Detective Lily Sharpe.  We wonder if her investigation of the copycat leads her back to Dylan -- that person of interest she saw at Rex's funeral -- and to his current predicament in a mental institution outside of the city.

One thing we do know, from a tweet from Kim Morgan ten days back, is that the bonus essay is on the 1949 film Too Late For Fears, "one of Lizabeth Scott's greatest roles."  The essay includes a moody illustration from Jacob Phillips, shown below.

• Sleeper Book  In Stores Today.  Serendipitously, KOBK isn't the only new book from Brubaker and Phillips.  From DC Comics, there's the softcover Sleeper Book One, which features what I would classify as the team's first major collaboration -- and it's their only series that has been work-for-hire rather than creator-owned.

Advanced solicited back in December, the book now features a "WildStorm Classic" trade dress, and while the book certainly qualifies as a classic for that larger superhero universe, we also found it to be a remarkably self-contained story. 

The series has been reprinted a few times, along with the prelude story Point Blank, with art by Colin Wilson (though using Sean Phillips' design for the protagonist Holden Carver).

• Originally, the 2003-2005 series was collected in four 6-issue trade paperbacks, with the Point Blank TPB being treated as a separate work. 
• In 2009, the series was collected in two 12-issue TPB's -- Season One and Season Two (for volume two, issues 1-12, with a newly collected Coup D'Etat prologue) -- and Point Blank was officially repackaged as a separate prelude story.
• In 2013, everything was collected in a single, 720-page hardcover omnibus.

Book One collects Point Blank and Season One, and we're sure that there will be a Book Two to complete the series.

I would have guessed that this new trade collection was a bare-bones combination of the two 2009 trade paperbacks, but I've confirmed that includes a few additional features, including an old essay by Brubaker and the complete set of issue-one layouts from Phillips.

Though at some point even we are loathe to collect every new printing of a Brubaker/Phillips work, we're happy to see that the series remains popular enough to justify a new printing every half-decade.

Its super-powered trappings perhaps make it the most accessible Brubaker-Phillips story for fans of the "Big Two" publishers, and fans of the pair's more recent, creator-owned crime comics should definitely check out Sleeper.  I think it's still one of their best works, and I know readers won't be disappointed.

• Exclusive Sleeper print -- and Auctioned Original Artwork! -- at OK Comics.  It'w worth a separate bullet to note that Leeds' OK Comics announced an exclusive print by Sean Phillips, to accompany their copies of the Sleeper Book One softcover.  The print is evidently limited to 50 copies and is signed by the artist.

The online pre-order page hasn't yet been updated, so it's possible the book and print can still be ordered online.

Even better, the page mentions that every order comes with an opportunity to place a blind bid for the print's original artwork from Sean Phillips, signed and framed.

• Maniac Cop Reboot Still Underway.  As we mentioned on the podcast, Birth.Movies.Death. published part of a conversation with director John Hyams on the subject of the Maniac Cop remake, in response to last year's comments from Larry Cohen, the writer of the original cult classic.  Along with some _very_ critical comments about the new screenplay by Ed Brubaker, Cohen made clear his belief that the remake was dead, but Hyams flatly contradicted the assertion.

In short, "it is going to happen."

More specifically, the remake is going to happen after Hyams' eight-episode series in development for Netflix and Too Old To Die Young, the Amazon series now in production from the remake's writer Brubaker and its producer Nicolas Winding Refn.

• Online Curiosities.  Podcast listeners will find that Robert and I had a few, somewhat unusual recommendations this month -- online gems that deserve wider recognition -- and I'd like to close this post with the relevant links.

• Cocaine and Rhinestones is what Robert recommended, "the podcast about the History of Country Music."  It's about the truth "that country music is wild and it is amazing because the people who made it were wild and they were amazing."
• The Auralnauts and their heavily remixed Star Wars Saga was my long-form recommendation.  Not officially part of the three-hour playlist is a Youth Biology PSA featuring their alternate-dimension take on the droids as "mentally unstable sociopaths."
• A mash-up music video from the mysterious YouTube user Isosine is my short-form recommendation:  its brilliance can hardly be described.  It's a perfect earworm, and it's almost impossible to shake it off.

We actually have much, much more to cover here on the blog, but perhaps we'll get to the other items later this week.

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: Undertow Podcast Episode 11, Details about Brubaker's TV Show, and Sean Phillips on the Comic Art Podcast!

A very busy work schedule has kept me from blogging sooner, but we have a few noteworthy items before tomorrow's release of Kill Or Be Killed #8.

• Undertow Podcast Episode 11, Now Online!  The latest episode of The Undertow Podcast was released just last week.  Robert and I focus on Kill Or Be Killed #7, and it was quite a good issue to discuss at length:  showing us "What Kira Sees," the issue seemed to come from an indie title about relationships, quite the change of pace from the series' usual vigilante killing.

As with all previous recordings, Episode 11 is available at iTunes and Podbean.

In the episode, we mentioned a couple news items that we hadn't already covered here, and they comprise the rest of this blog post.

• Miles Teller to Star in Brubaker's Too Old To Die Young.  We have news about the Amazon TV show that Ed Brubaker has co-created and is co-writing with Nicolas Winding Refn.  The Hollywood Reporter and Variety reported, nearly simultaneously, that Miles Teller, the star of 2014's award-winning film Whiplash, has been cast for the series.  THR reports that Teller will play "the lead role of Martin, a police officer entangled in the criminal underbelly of Los Angeles."

The article also provides more details about the show's premise.

"Die Young tells of a grieving police officer who, along with the man who shot his partner, finds himself in an underworld filled with working-class hit men, Yakuza soldiers, cartel assassins sent from Mexico, Russian mafia captains and gangs of teen killers. Amazon, which made the casting announcement on Monday [March 27], says the series will follow 'killers' existential journeys in becoming samurai.' "

The more we hear, the more we like.

• Sean Phillips Interviewed in the Comic Art Festival Podcast.  As Robert and I discussed quite a bit, there's an excellent interview with Sean Phillips in the official podcast of the Lakes International Comic Art Festival.

In the 2nd hour of their 2nd episode, Ian and Nikki interview the artist from his home studio, and the wide-ranging discussion serves as a kind of professional autobiography and companion to Dynamite's 2013 hardcover, The Art of Sean Phillips.

We learn that Scene of the Crime -- his first collaboration with Ed Brubaker -- was also Phillips' first project inking another artist's pencils, and Phillips worked on what became the breakout hit Marvel Zombies simply because he was "desperate for work." 

We get some details about how Phillips and Brubaker end up producing about ten issues every year: they work on a 5-week schedule, so releases seem monthly for quite a while before requiring a "skip month."

And, Phillips fields a question that my cohost Robert sent to the podcast, on his favorite musical artists.  As a technical writer in my day job, I can attest to the benefit of listening to music while I'm working, especially a great soundtrack album.

Most importantly, we learned that Brubaker and Phillips are working on a single-page contribution to a self-published, tabloid-sized newspaper comic commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Will Eisner -- an announcement that deserves its own blog entry, which we plan to post later this week.

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