Criminal #7 Out Today, An Undertow Review of Criminal #1-6, and More!

We've been expecting another email newsletter from Ed Brubaker -- so far, nothing yet -- but we have plenty to cover as the latest issue of Criminal reaches stores today.

Yesterday, Newsarama posted an extensive preview of Criminal #7, a six-page preview supplementing the three pages already seen at Image's website. The preview focuses on four very familiar faces, and we believe this is the first time we've seen the entire group of friends together -- Leo Patterson, Ricky Lawless, Jacob Kurtz, and Jenny (Jen) Waters.

(L-R) Jenny, Leo, Jacob, Ricky

(Tracy continues to be MIA; he's been mentioned in narration, but I don't believe we've seen him at all in this new ongoing series.  I wonder what the surly but capable older brother has been up to.  Since it seems their father's murder led directly to Tracy's less-than-voluntary military enlistment -- and another stay in juvie for Ricky -- we strongly suspect that we see Tracy's return before Teeg's tragic end.)

Much like characters in Stranger Things, also set in the mid-1980's, our quartet has a now-strained Sunday routine playing Dungeons & Dragons; naturally, Jacob is the DM. The title for this chapter of "Cruel Summer" -- "Must Be This Tall to Ride" -- may hint at the transition from childhood to adulthood, from relative innocence to a life of crime.

(It's the same transition Jacob noticed in "Bad Weekend," in a long narration that was entirely reworked for the expanded hardcover release.  In both versions, Jacob took two very different paths to note how Ricky had changed over the years, following in his father's violent footsteps.)

The title also reminds us of the amusement-park sign which was prominently featured in The John Larroquette Show, in the office of the sardonic main character, a recovering alcoholic:

"This is a Dark Ride."

That pretty much sums up Criminal, for that matter, and Robert and I recently reviewed the entire first half of 2019 in an extensive, two-part episode of The Undertow Podcast. 

• Episode 33 came out at the beginning of the month, covering the latest news, looking back at the first four issues -- two of which serve as a kind of prologue to "Cruel Summer"; the other two having been collected and expanded in the "Bad Weekend" -- and looking closely at Criminal #5, "Night of the Hunter."
• Out just last week, Episode 34 provides a similarly in-depth review of Criminal #6, "Song to the Siren," and concludes with recommendations for a couple recent films, both featuring Liam Neeson.

In the news, we covered Deadline's July 17th article announcing Ed Brubaker's deal with Legendary TV Studios adapting his creator-owned comics, and we mentioned the most recent award for those comics, the Best (New) Graphic Album Eisner for My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, announced at the San Diego Comic-Con.

We also took a look ahead, first at Image's October solicitations and then at some very exciting news for 2020.   The former includes a 10/23 release for Criminal #9 as well as advance solicitations for TWO collections, both due on November 13th: the softcover for Junkies, retailing at $13, and the deluxe single-volume hardcover for Kill Or Be Killed, retailing at $50. 

Separately, Bleeding Cool's San Diego Comic-Con coverage made note of a few special projects from IDW, and the most eye-catching announcement was for the four Parker adaptations from the late, great Darwyn Cooke:  the first two books had already been collected in the deluxe Martini Edition, and it's going back to print next year alongside a new "Last Call" Martini Edition for the final two books, with design and additional writing coming from Sean Phillips and Ed Brubaker!

 We couldn't conceive of a better way to conclude the "Martini" editions of these instant-classic comics, brilliantly adapting the best novels from the late Donald Westlake, aka Richard Stark.

Since then, we have seen that Junkies has been nominated for a 2019 Harvey Award, announced just  last week.  Comprising just six categories, the awards will be announced on October 4th during the New York Comic Con, and My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies is one of ten nominees for "Book of the Year."

We also saw the August 7th release of the "Image Firsts" edition of Criminal #1, and we confirmed that the issue -- explicitly designed by Sean Phillips -- is a bare-bones reproduction of the very first issue of the creator owned series, chapter one of "Coward" from late 2006.  The issue omits the bonus essay, a marvelous journal entry written from Gnarly's point of view, and instead the issue includes ad pages for the entire, sprawling Criminal saga.

(We wonder if "Coward" ties into "Cruel Summer" more than we expect:  the current story is leading up quite explicitly to Teeg's murder, and we wonder if we'll see a few more familiar faces on the way.)

Finally, we've also seen a few recent interviews from Ed Brubaker, resulting from his San Diego appearance.  On July 30th, Newsarama posted a text interview, discussing screenwriting and his exclusive deal with Image, how the Lawless family is an effed-up "funhouse mirror reflection" of his own family(!) and how Criminal #8, still due on September 25th, is the approximate midpoint for "Cruel Summer." 

On August 7th, SyFyWire published a three-minute video interview with Brubaker at Comic-Con, about the origins behind "Bad Weekend," namely the great comic-book artists and their tragic histories, including the fatal car accident that is fictionalized in his recent Criminal tale -- a 1956 accident, in which 46-year-old Alex Raymond died while driving Stan Drake's Corvette. 

We see that Cerebus creator Dave Sim began telling the story of "The Strange Death of Alex Raymond" in his self-published book Glamourpuss, from 2008 to 2012.  By 2014, Sim was seeking support through Patreon for the work-in-progress, with plans to publish through IDW, but the latest update I could find is from 2014:  with about 90 pages complete, enough for two volumes, the book may be legally unpublishable because of copyright concerns, but Sim continues working on it, "a strictly creative, non-commercial thing to noodle away at for the rest of my life."

Apparently Sim isn't the only person fascinated by the tragic tale, an extreme example of what Brubaker calls the "tragic limbo" in which great artists have hardly prospered from their much beloved work.

Bad Weekend Exclusives at England's OK Comics and San Diego's Comic Con!

Last week we mentioned how had real trouble tracking down the signed bookplate included with Bad Weekend for retailers ordering a particular number of copies.  There are four stores on our own internal "radar" for the Atlanta metro area, and none had ordered enough.

(I have no doubt that more than enough had been ordered between them, and this would have been a perfect opportunity for the stores to have pooled their resources.)

But we noticed that a few exclusives have been offered through OK Comics out of Leeds, England:  their copies of Bad Weekend have included the bookplate we've already noted, a second bookplate -- a store-exclusive, also signed by the three creators -- and a store-exclusive postcard advertising Jacob Phillips' Past is Prologue, expected from Image Comics next year.

As of last week, they also still had signed copies of Criminal #1.

That second bookplate is apparently limited to 100 prints, and it bears a close resemblance to the candidate cover which Sean Phillips preferred but was rejected for a color scheme too closely matching the previous hardcover novella, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies.

OK Comics has been advertising the book on its A-frame sidewalk sign, shown below.  Apparently they originally ordered sixty(!) copies, and more than three-fourths of the store's initial stock sold that Wednesday. Even with putting a hold on mail orders that Friday, the store quickly sold out of its initial stock by Sunday.

The store now has more copies in stock and they're once again taking new orders by mail. We can confirm that they accept PayPal and they DO ship internationally.

If you're interested in ordering Bad Weekend from Leeds' OK Comics, email Jared at shop@okcomics.co.uk.

On the other side of the pond -- and a couple mountain ranges past that -- there's another Bad Weekend exclusive being offered at San Diego's Comic-Con International, which has a preview tonight prior to its official opening tomorrow.

Image Comics announced their con-exclusive merchandise, panels, and signing schedule just last Friday.  Among the exclusive items available at booth #1915 is a "jacketed hardcover" edition of Bad Weekend, with jacket art by Sean Phillips, for the usual retail price of $16.99.

Shown above, the jacket art simulates a "special collector's edition" collection of Danny Dagger stories from Hal Crane, the subject of Bad Weekend.  The jacket wraps around the covers, with the fake book's description and its author's bio folded inside, and the jacket features the same worn look -- and, we suspect, the exact same digital weathering effect -- found on previous magazine-sized variants for Criminal and The Fade Out.

Ed Brubaker is attending the convention this year, on its 50th anniversary, and he sent out a newsletter late yesterday with the schedule for his appearances at the Image booth.

It's mostly the same schedule as last week's press release -- with one additional 10:00 am signing on Saturday, July 20th -- and the Image story notes that the signings are 45-60 minutes, and are "ticketed" events requiring wristbands given out on a first-come, first-served basis.

Brubaker also notes that the jacketed copies of Bad Weekend will be available to people who buy the book "while they last."

Please note: there are only a few hundred of these printed for the convention, I believe, so they will go fast - I don't even have one yet. I hope to escape with a copy or two when no one at the booth is looking.

By our watch, the first signing is just about to begin.

It's worth mentioning that Friday night, July 19th, is awards night at Comic-Con, with the 31st annual Eisner Awards.  Image Comics made history sweeping the "Best New Series" category, and a couple other nominations caught our particular attention.

• My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies was nominated for Best New Graphic Album.
• Sean Phillips was nominated for Best Penciller/Inker for his work on Kill Or Be Killed as well as Junkies.

We're sure we'll have more later about the Eisners and a few other items from Brubaker's newsletter, which includes a three-page in-progress preview of Criminal #7, details on a couple August appearances, and a link to a his recent commentary-track podcast for Bad Weekend.

Criminal #6 and Expanded Bad Weekend Hardcover, In Stores Now!

Following Criminal's planned skip month in May, we had our own unplanned skip month in June, but we think we're back in the swing of things.

--and just in time, too, because it's an exceptionally noteworthy day, as today sees the release of both Criminal #6 AND the expanded hardcover for Bad Weekend.

Ed Brubaker has just sent out an email newsletter, featuring a preview of the first five pages of issue #6. There are a few panels of appropriately neon coloring, and it perfectly fits the setting of what Jacob Phillips probably considers ancient history, the Eighties.

(Brubaker also announced a few upcoming appearances -- first in the front half of next week's San Diego Comic-Con and then at LA's Skylight Books on the evening of August 1st.)

It sounds like we'll switch perspectives for each chapter of this sprawling arc "Cruel Summer," and the preview reveals that this second chapter is titled "Song to the Siren." That's the name of a 1970 Tim Buckley song that became a UK indie hit in 1983, when it was covered by music collective This Mortal Coil and released through 4AD, the British label that would become the home for The Breeders, the lo-fi rockers hailing from Dayton, Ohio.

Funny enough, our favorite songwriter David Gray opens his live covers album with his own haunting version of the song.

Turning to the other release, we find Brubaker confirming that Bad Weekend -- originally serialized in issues #3 and #4 -- now includes ten pages of new material, essentially "deleted scenes" that wouldn't fit in the monthly issues.

We're finding it a little tough to track down, but some copies of the book include a signed bookplate.  More specifically, the bookplate is found with retailers who had big enough orders for the book, and we believe this is the first bookplate signed by Brubaker, Phillips the Elder, and Phillips the Younger.

---

Looking back over the last few weeks, we see a few other items we don't want to overlook entirely.

First, The Undertow Podcast continues to release new episodes even when I been out of pocket. 

• In May, Robert released a bonus episode with Pete Taylor from the Lakes Comic Art Fest Podcast, discussing his history with Brubaker and Phillips and the real-world allusions in Bad Weekend's original, serialized version. 
• In June, Episode 32 was released, in which Robert reviewed Criminal #4 and highlighted the digital magazine PanelxPanel.

(More episodes are on their way, with our review of Criminal #5 already in pre-production.)

In that magazine's May edition (#23), fully half of the issue -- consisting of more than 100 ad-free pages -- focuses on Criminal, including "a big, in-depth interview."

A few other interesting reads have been released lately, many of which have been highlighted in Brubaker's latest newsletter, but one that already caught our attention is Paste Magazine's June 27th interview with both Ed Brubaker and crime writer Megan Abbott.  The most noteworthy revelation is that Brubaker is "about to start adapting one of [his] books for TV," an adaptation that hasn't yet been officially announced.

For collectors -- and fans looking to buy copies of Criminal for friends -- the last few months have seen a few second printings for the new ongoing series.  We previously noted a second printing for this year's debut issue, and we've seen similar reprints for issues #2 and #3, with a somewhat pink logos for the two parts of the original "Bad Weekend" arc.

Much more interesting is what we've found alongside the new issues which have already been solicited; the "Cruel Summer" arc continues with issue #7 in August, focusing on young Ricky Lawless and Leo Patterson, and then with issue #8 in September.  But over the last few weeks, including today's extended forecast for Image Comics, ComicList notes that a one-dollar "Image Firsts" edition of Criminal #1 is due on August 8th, alongside seven other first-issue reprints due on the same day.

According to the linked product description at Things From Another World, the issue reprints the January debut of Criminal (2019), the third ongoing volume of the creator-owned crime series -- and this is exactly what we would expect among a series of other recent reprints.  But in that same description, we see cover art based on the #1 issue to the original volume, Criminal (2006).

We've already requested ten copies from our local retailer, to hand out to friends and relations, and we're very interested to see what we actually get next month.

[UPDATE, JULY 11:  We reached out to Sean on Twitter, and he quickly provided a somewhat surprising confirmation that the cover is correct while the text description is wrong:   the $1 comic book contains the very first issue of Criminal, from October, 2006.  It's a helluva book, immediately making me a quite devoted fan, and it should serve as a great introduction for new readers -- and I believe this is the first time Criminal Volume 1, Issue 1 has ever been reprinted in single-issue format.]

And we're even more interested to see what arrives next year, since two weeks back Jacob Phillips finally shed a little light on another project which he's been teasing on social media.

Past is Prologue is scheduled to arrive sometime in 2020, published by Image Comics and credited to New Jersey filmmaker Christopher Condon and English artist Jacob Phillips. It appears that the book will adapt Condon's script for "an unproduced short film" by the same name; Condon's site features the first six pages of that script and the concept art Jacob has already created for the project.

I'm sure we'll have more on the project in the coming months.

American Appearances and Bad Weekend Bookplates!

It's been quite an eventful last few weeks, despite the fact that May is a planned "skip month" for Criminal. 

We have more to say on other subjects, hopefully later this week, but the biggest news is that the team -- writer Ed Brubaker, artist Sean Phillips, and colorist Jacob Phillips -- have just spent this past weekend in Huntington Beach, California, at the inaugural NCSFest, promoted as "America's Biggest Comic Arts Festival."

We believe this is Ed and Sean's first joint appearance in North America since Toronto in 2014, and Sean Phillips has announced a few more appearances.  He'll be signing books tonight at 6 pm (presumably local time), at Huntington Beach's Strange Cereal -- both père et fil, Sean and Jacob -- and Brubaker will join the Phillips boys tomorrow night at 5:30 pm, at Burbank's House of Secrets.

We haven't seen any news items on the team's appearance, but we'll be sure to update readers if that changes.

In the meantime, the most interesting item for those of us who couldn't attend is the work which the team did signing "thousands" of bookplates, shown above. 

It's quite a rare bookplate, signed by all three creators, and Sean Phillips relays that the bookplate editions of Bad Weekend will be available to stores that order at least 20 copies.

It should go without saying that fans should reserve a copy with their local retailer...

UPDATE, 5/22: ...and on Twitter, we got confirmation that the Final Cutoff (FOC) date for Bad Weekend is June 3rd.  We greatly appreciate the feedback from Boulder, Colorado's Time Warp Comics & Games, and we'd remind readers that time is running out to have your shop reserve your copy.

Bullets: Catching Up on the Last Two Months

Someday I'll actually have enough of a routine in my life that I'll be able to blog consistently, without these long pauses.

(Someday, yeah, I'll get it right...)

In the meantime, here's a brief look back at the last ten weeks or so, put together while we were prepping for the next episode of The Undertow Podcast and gearing up for the next issue of Criminal.

• February 21st, Image's May solicitations were released, with nothing listed for Brubaker and Phillips.  We were surprised to see a "skip month" this soon, as the team's five-week schedule had us expecting a new issue on May 29th, and we wonder if the timing had anything to do with the  previously announced appearances at NCSFest in California, over the weekend of May 17th.

(The May solicits weren't a complete wash for us.  As big fans of the sci-fi book Planetoid, we're thrilled to see that creator Ken Garing is back with Gogor, described as a high-fantasy series for teens and announced with its own press release and, earlier, an interview with Garing.)

• March 7th, Sean Phillips announced the single-volume deluxe hardcover for Kill Or Be Killed, with a simple tweet pointing to an Amazon listing and posting the cover art, shown below, reusing the artwork from issue #5 and the second trade collection ("Volume 2").

The Amazon listing describes the book as "'Catcher in the Rye' meets 'Death Wish' in a dark take on the vigilante genre that became a cracked reflection of the world around us."

The description confirms that the single-volume hardcover "contains the entire KILL OR BE KILLED story, as well as the behind the scenes extras and artwork."   The page notes a total of 584 pages, a retail price of $59.99, and a scheduled release date of November 19th.

The 24 issues of Fatale were ultimately collected in two deluxe-edition hardcovers, and the 12 issues of The Fade Out are found in a single hardcover, so we were wondering how many deluxe editions would comprise the single story of Kill Or Be Killed, originally told in 20 monthly issues.

• Also on March 7th, the Word Ballon Podcast posted a wide-ranging two-hour conversation with Ed Brubaker. The interview is the writer's first appearance on the podcast in about six years -- the last appearance we noted was in October, 2012, and host John Siuntres mentioned Velvet, which was announced in July, 2013, the same year in which the podcast ceased being published at iFanboy.

Brubaker discusses his work both in comics and in television.  Comic fans will be interested in the history behind My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies; Sean and Jacob Phillips were supposed to be co-colorists, but an unexpected time crunch arose for printing the original graphic novel, so Jacob Phillips became the sole colorist after just a few pages.  And, Brubaker reveals upcoming plans for Criminal, which we've already begun to see in recent announcements.

He also reveals an incredible bit of personal history, which a Bleeding Cool article recounts from the podcast.  DC asked Brubaker to follow-up on Alan Moore's famous comic The Killing Joke, he directly quoted a couple pages in flashback, and he tried to have Moore credited for his writing.  Failing that, he sent Moore a check for his page-rate, Moore then called Wildstorm editor Scott Dunbier and recommended Brubaker for work, and that led quite directly to *Sleeper*.

And the rest is history.

(That follow-up story was part of the mini-series Batman:Turning Points, which I personally remember reading back in 2001. It served as a kind of prologue to Officer Down, which established what would be an interesting status quo for Gotham Central, with Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock both absent from the GCPD's Major Crimes Unit.  Ed Brubaker and Gotham Central co-creator Greg Rucka were writers for the entire span of stories -- including the Turning Points mini-series and the Officer Down crossover, and for the "big two" main titles of Batman and Detective Comics generally  -- and it was Gotham Central that first made me pay serious attention to Brubaker.)

("Turning points," indeed.)

The writer also hints at another upcoming comic-book project, "an R-rated version of a young adult book," a first-time large-scale collaboration with a favorite artist of his.

Brubaker compares writing for comics and for film -- the script for the latter remains a "living, breathing thing" that is always only "good enough" -- and he observes that all writing is calling B.S., where you have to keep moving forward, "sitting down and facing yourself."

In addition to talking about his work on Westworld and Too Old to Die Young, Brubaker mentions progress on the film adaptation for Kill Or Be Killed; he thinks the film might go into production later this year, and it's the first such project that closely hews to the source material.

• March 11th, Sean Phillips and Jacob Phillips both attended an Image Comics panel in London, at a Waterstones bookshop on Tottenham Court Road. The panel also featured Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Jock, Alison Sampson, and Lee Garbett, and a few days afterwards Tripwire Magazine posted 80 minutes of audio and a half dozen photos.

On Twitter, Jacob Phillips shared his own "family photo," shown below.

We plan to listen in to the conversation, so as to report on anything of interest to our readers, but unfortunately that remains on our to-do list.

(Hat tip to Joel Meadows, retweeted by Sean Phillips.)

• March 15th, our good friend Robert posted episode 30 of The Undertow Podcast, focusing on a brief review  of Criminal #2, the start of the two-part story centered on the comics industry, "Bad Weekend."

• March 20th, Criminal #3 was released, completing the two-part story "Bad Weekend" (or so we thought; see below). 

The story had a low-key ending -- but quite tragic despite that -- and the back matter includes letters from readers and Kim Morgan's essay on The Color of Money.  That film is quite unique, a 1986 sequel to The Hustler from 1961, and the essay features two illustrations from Sean Phillips.

• Also on March 20th, Ed Brubaker sent out a pair of email newsletters, the first of which featured process work on a single page of issue #3 -- from script to inks to colors -- and preview pages and unfinished panels for issue #4, a story set in 1993, starring Ricky Lawless, and evidently featuring old friends such as "Genuine Jen" Waters and the "coward" Leo Patterson.

We're particularly intrigued by this upcoming issue, as this would be the first "period piece" set after the consequential death of Teeg Lawless.

(Brubaker also mentioned The Undertow Podcast, and we appreciate the shout-out!)

In the second newsletter, Brubaker elaborated on a comment he had just made that had prompted quite a few questions:  in short, for two of these first four issues of the new ongoing Criminal arc, it may be a while before we see the stories republished in a trade collection.

He also says they have a Criminal book coming out in July, but he didn't reveal the details.  From what we now know, it seems that issues #1 and #4 -- the Teeg and Ricky stories -- might be the ones that won't soon be collected for those who "wait for the trades."

• March 21st, Image released its June solicitations, including the next issue of Criminal.  What Brubaker seemed to describe as a connected series of one-shot stories, the June solicits describe as "the long and winding tale of THE SUMMER OF '88... the story of the last days of Teek Lawless."

The cover to issue #5, shown below, apparently features a new character, Dan Farraday, a PI and bounty hunter on the trail of a "dangerous woman" who is evidently central to issue #6.

The usual five-week schedule was evidently extended by only a single week, as this next issue is scheduled for a June 5th release.

• April 3rd, the trailer for Too Old to Die Young dropped along with a release date, both sent out through social media, including the Twitter accounts for the television series, director Nicolas Winding Refn, and star Miles Teller.  /Film was one of the first sites to report on the trailer, citing an earlier article quoting writer and co-creator Ed Brubaker, as "the most Nicolas Winding Refn thing that ever existed, honestly."

Going by the trailer, it seems the newer /Film article describes the series well -- as "a pulpy, stylish nightmare featuring amoral weirdos inhabiting a dreamy, deadly Los Angeles landscape" -- and the article notes the release date for the Amazon Prime series, to air on June 14th.

• April 15th, Deadline released an exclusive story, announcing that Too Old to Die Young would screen at the Cannes Film Festival in mid-May, ahead of its June 14th premiere on Amazon Prime. 

This is evidently only the third episodic television series to screen at the famous festival, at the time it wasn't clear how many episodes would be featured, and the writer thought that a "special screening slot" was most likely.

In the subsequent lineup, announced on April 18th, two episodes were listed for the series:  "North of Hollywood" and "West of Hell."

• April 16th, The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of an expanded Bad Weekend hardcover, due in July.  The book is described as an "expanded and remastered" version of the "comic convention crime thriller" that appeared in Criminal #2 and #3, evidently in the same format as last year's original graphic novel, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies.

The cover art, shown below alongside the Junkies cover, is certainly in the same vein, with a pastel color scheme and a portrait of the protagonist, complete with a dangling cigarette. 

The font is different, but -- as before -- the book's cover omits the Criminal branding.  That is  perhaps because, despite the criminal element at the center of each story, the premise (romance and addiction, comic conventions and mentors) has a wider appeal beyond the duo's usual readership.

On Twitter, Sean Phillips explains that it "took a while" to decide on the cover's color scheme, and he treated fans to a photo of several candidate covers, very reminiscent of Andy Warhol's pop art.  He relays that he preferred the third cover on the top row, but it too closely resembled the last hardcover.

• On April 18th, Image Comics released its July solicitations, including the expanded hardcover edition of Bad Weekend and the next issue of the monthly series, Criminal #6.

The solicits on the official site list a page count of 72 pages for Bad Weekend, which may imply as many as 18 new pages, enough for a short third issue.  Since the span between issues exceeds the usual five-week gap only once, and for a single week -- six weeks between the scheduled release dates for issue #4 and issue #5 -- that's not a lot of extra time to create this additional content. 

(We've noticed that Jacob Phillips' Twitter feed has included ink work, evidently of his own projects.  Perhaps he could help ink Sean's pencils.)

On the Newsarama page listing Image's July solicitations, the description for the Bad Weekend hardcover mentions a special trim size of 6.625 by 10.1875 inches, but that's practically the size of a standard U.S. comic book.  On Twitter, Sean Phillips relays that the book will be a "standard" size, "same as the Junkies book," and with the same type of paper.

The next issue of Criminal will be continue Teeg Lawless' last story, "The Summer of '88," and the story's description repeats what we learned from issue #1, that Teeg "falls in love for the first time."  That's a very intriguing development for the widower, implying that he didn't really love his wife, Tracy and Ricky's mother.

Both books are scheduled for the same day, July 10th.

• And just today, April 22nd, Image Comics issued a press release for the Bad Weekend hardcover.   The news item quotes Ed Brubaker that the story is both an "exposé of the industry" and a "love letter to the medium," and along with praise for the comic, the press release summarizes the book's contents:

Bad Weekend features an expanded and remastered version of the story recently serialized in issues #2 and 3 of Criminal, with several completely new scenes, and presented in the same gorgeous hardcover format as Brubaker and Phillip's bestselling graphic novel My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies. And like every Criminal graphic novel, Bad Weekend is a stand-alone story that works as a singular reading experience.

As before, the book is being described as released ahead of the San Diego Comic-Con, but Sean Phillips has already confirmed that the hardcover will be "available everywhere" and not exclusive to the SDCC or any other convention.

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.

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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.

CRIMINAL returns this week! Undertow Podcast on the Criminal Chronology, OK Comics Appearance, and More Sean Phillips in The Criterion Collection!

Criminal #1 by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips is in stores THIS WEDNESDAY, with Image Comics using the front page of their website to promote the issue, recommend earlier volumes, and treat comic-book fans to two views of Teeg Lawless, who has seen better days.

We have a few things of our own to cover in the run-up to our favorite series' long-awaited return.

Overnight, our friend Robert Watson released the latest episode of The Undertow Podcast.  Robert and I wanted to get ourselves and our listeners ready for the return of Criminal as a monthly series, so we took a look at all the previous story arcs. 

Titled "A Criminal Family Tree," Episode 28 recounts the multiple generations of the series' flawed but often sympathetic criminals -- four generations by our count -- and we tackled the stories by their rough chronological setting than by their publication date.

Looking at that publication history, we find that we can group the arcs into several distinct eras:

• 2006-2008, ongoing titles at Icon: Criminal Volumes 1 & 2
• 2009-2011, named mini-series at Icon: "The Sinners" & "Last of the Innocent"
• 2015-2018, self-contained books at Image: one-shots & the Junkies novella 

We're now back to an ongoing title, Criminal Volume 3, being published by Image Comics.  Since the emphasis is on the individual, monthly issue, we're curious about how these issues will be subsequently collected.

But looking at the internal chronology, we see that story arcs fall into one of two categories:

• Flashback period pieces, where the year in which the story is set is typically stated explicitly
• Contemporary stories, where the year is, at best, implied

(For the latter, I have always presumed that these stories roughly correspond to the original year of publication.)

Ed Brubaker has always said that each story stands alone and can serve as its own entry point into the Criminal universe.  That's true -- with the possible exception of "The Sinners" -- and yet Robert and I believe that the best "first read" is in publication order.

(The same is true for other works, including the Star Wars movies and the Narnia books, notwithstanding publishers' strained explanations for packaging the works according to their internal chronology and thus placing the iconic first work published -- 1977's Star Wars, now marketed as a "A New Hope;" and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe -- in the middle of a larger box set that might encourage the purchase of the omnibus set.  I carefully chose which Star Wars movie I showed my kids first, and I know how I'm introducing them to The Chronicles of Narnia.)

But if you've already enjoyed all the Criminal books, reading them in the order of their internal chronology may shed some new light on the stories.

In the image above, we place Image's trade paperbacks in the order of that narrative timeline -- period pieces on the first row, contemporary pieces on the second row -- and going by the "March, 1988" date in Brubaker's ten-page preview, the new issue fits right in between the earlier flashback chapters and the contemporary chapters about Tracy, Leo, and the gang.

We CERTAINLY do not recommend this podcast episode as any kind of substitute for reading the actual comics, but we hope current fans find the episode as interesting as we did.

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For this episode, I made a somewhat unusual recommendation of the massive, 1000-page-plus hardcover collection of the minicomics published with the toys for Masters of the Universe.  It's a helluva nostalgia hit for a very particular generation of kids, but it also has a Criminal connection in its contributions from Val Staples, who colored the earliest Icon issues for Brubaker and Phillips.

There's also a more indirect connection.  Thirty-odd issues of this series comprised my first comic-book reading, and it probably influenced my later enjoyment of Robert E. Howard's Conan, both the original pulp stories and the comic books, especially those written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith, published by Marvel in the 1970's.  Those barbarian stories from comics' Bronze Age had an apparent effect on a young Ed Brubaker -- about ten years my senior -- and we see that influence in the "Savage Sword" one-shot from 2015.

We can see the obvious influences below:

On the left is the cover to The Savage Sword of Conan #16, which features part one of a two-part Thomas & Windsor-Smith adaptation of a Bran Mak Morn story from Howard, "Worms of the Earth."  The entire story was reprinted, with new coloring that was quite well done, in issue #1 of the 2010 Dark Horse book called Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword.  Sean Phillips contributed to issue #4 of the same anthology series in 2012, in a monochromatic story "White Death" written by Pete Doree.

In the middle is a page from the very first mini-comic, He-Man and the Power Sword, the same artwork that dominates the collection's front cover.  Just a few years ago, the artist known as SiMo Sol created a gorgeous, detailed homage to the iconic page.

On the right is the cover to the magazine-sized variant to the Criminal Special Edition one-shot, featuring Zangar the Barbarian.  This larger edition was made to look like a replica of the fictional comic book from the 1970's, and the credits page attributes the character of Zangar to the pulp writer in Fatale, Alfred Ravenscroft -- a kind of hybrid between Robert E. Howard and his friend H.P. Lovecraft.

The similarities aren't just what's obvious -- the strong-man hero (or anti-hero), the beautiful woman, the villainous sorcerer and strange beasts.  In making this montage, I noticed that all the pages have essentially the same dimensions:  the original pulp comic from 1976, the shrunk-down and more kid-friendly minicomic from the early 80's, and the homage from the 21st century.

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The new issue of Criminal isn't the only work by Sean Phillips to be released this month.  On Twitter, @gonzomike highlighted an upcoming release from The Criterion Collection, of the 1967 Oscar winner, In The Heat of the Night.  The home release is scheduled for January 9th, and it features a "New Cover by Sean Phillips," shown below.

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Finally, Brits who want to ask Sean Phillips about Criminal or The Criterion Collection will soon have a chance to do so, as Leeds' OK Comics has announced an event for this Saturday, January 12th, celebrating the launch of the new series with signings by artist Sean Phillips and new colorist Jacob Phillips.

I'm sure we'll have more to cover later this month, as the comics world reacts to this high-profile first issue.

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.

Upcoming Work: Second Printings, Solicitations, Variant Covers, and Very Revealing Interviews.

We missed this in our last post, but on January 25th, Image Comics announced a second printing for the most recent issue from Brubaker and Phillips, Kill Or Be Killed #15.  The issue features a new cover, shown below, a black-and-white rendition of the first printing's artwork with the series' familiar blood-red title.

Image frequently produces multiple printings for the first few issues in a new series, as retailers try to gauge what could be growing interest in an unexpected hit.  Far less common is an additional printing more than a year into a series' run:  this second printing indicates a growing readership for KOBK's monthly releases in analog, and we wonder what's driving that growth. 

Perhaps people have been making the leap from digital comics back to hardcopies or from trade-waiting to monthly reading.  The news of a possible film adaptation from the John Wick crew certainly couldn't have hurt, and perhaps it raised the comic's profile.

This second printing of issue #15 is scheduled to reach stores on February 21st, just a week after the first printing of issue #16, for which we expect an online preview very soon.

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Readers looking to catch up with that second printing will need to put issue #16 on hold, but they should also be careful looking at the solicitations for later issues.

I'm a technical writer in real life, and I do not envy the task of writing good comic solicitations, undertaken by marketing staff, editors, and -- as I believe to be the case for most creator-owned comics, including those by Brubaker and Phillips -- the writers themselves.

Each solicitation must briefly describe the book's contents, enticing prospective buyers without spoiling the story.  For a continuing series, the goal is even more daunting due to the delay between a single issue's solicitation and its subsequent arrival:  ideally, no future issue solicitation should spoil the contents of a previous issue, at least not before that early chapter's release.

The debut of Kill Or Be Killed presents us with a striking example:

• May 18, 2016, Image releases its August solicitations, including Kill Or Be Killed #1, with a scheduled release date of Aug 3rd.

"The bestselling team of ED BRUBAKER and SEAN PHILLIPS (THE FADE OUT, CRIMINAL, FATALE) launch their new monthly series: KILL OR BE KILLED, the twisted story of a young man who is forced to kill bad people, and how he struggles to keep his secret as it slowly ruins his life and the lives of his friends and loved ones. Both a thriller and a deconstruction of vigilantism, KILL OR BE KILLED is unlike anything BRUBAKER & PHILLIPS have ever done."

• June 23rd, the September solicitations include issue #2: "Every killer has to have his first kill, and they're never easy."

• July 18th, the October solicitations include issue #3: "As our hero is drawn deeper into the shadows, his secret vigilante life begins to put everything he cares about in danger."

• Aug 3: KOBK #1 is released to local retailers.

Prior to the debut issue's release, every description of upcoming chapters avoided that issue's big reveal, that the protagonist is "forced to kill bad people" by a demon, real or imagined.  In fact, I don't believe that the "curse" is mentioned until February, 2017, with the May solicitation for issue #9, and the demon isn't explicitly named until the June solicitation for issue #10, featuring the antagonist on the cover.

We see a similar dynamic with recent solicitations hiding the big reveal for issue #15.  The new arc found Dylan institutionalized, and the cliffhanger revelation was that (SPOILERS) vigilante killings were still taking place in the outside world.

We believe this reveal was entirely held back from the solicits until after the issue's release on January 17th; the April solicitations came out on January 23rd, and here the surprise makes it to the description for issue #18, due April 18th.

"While Dylan's been locked away inside, the vigilante has been running wild on the streets—but how is this possible? Featuring the return of Detective Lily Sharpe, who is hot on the trail of the masked man!"

It's an intriguing development.  We wonder if this second killer has anything to do with the demon, is merely a deranged copycat, or is something else entirely -- and we wonder how this will affect the NYPD's search for the vigilante, since Dylan now (presumably) has an airtight alibi for at least one killing.

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In the meantime, we have two more issues on their way, and -- alongside the second-printing variant for issue #15 -- we'll see an extra special variant cover for issue #17, with both versions due on March 21st.

Posted just this Thursday in a second round of announcements, Sean Phillips joins four other artists in creating virgin wraparound covers as part of Image's #WeBelieve campaign, bringing the total to 14 such covers on sale in March, "in celebration of artists and the importance and impact they have in defining the comics medium."

(We would express some skepticism about how artists' work is among "the important, lately overlooked contributions to the comics industry," but then again, most of the news coverage about the KOBK film adaptation focused on writer Ed Brubaker and barely mentioned -- or entirely ignored -- co-creator Sean Phillips.)

At his blog, Phillips includes a quote from Image publisher Eric Stephenson, from an apparent press release that -- alongside the Image news release -- details exactly what each cover will include and omit:  "Without titles, endorsement quotes, names, logos, or jacket copy, these wraparound covers feature solely the jaw-dropping artwork that fans won’t want to miss."

Shown below, the virgin cover features entirely new artwork from Sean Phillips, quite different from the standard cover's scene of Dylan unmasking in the padded room:  walking out from the mental hospital, with the straitjacket unbound but still on, our hero looks truly mental.

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These virgin variants will highlight the work of the artist, and in a recent interview Sean Phillips points to a few important books by other, influential artists.

In an interview by The Reading Lists, devoted to "publishing the #readinglists of amazing people," Phillips reveals a few recommended titles and authors in his favorite genre -- crime fiction, no surprise -- and for those interested in working in comics, he recommends Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.  We thoroughly recommend the book as well, a comic book on the principles of comic books, but Sean adds, "there’s no substitute for making your own comics. You learn best by doing!"

Asked what book humanity needs right now, Phillips gives a great answer:  "A new Calvin and Hobbes collection."  Indeed -- and either that or a new daily calendar of The Far Side would make me a very happy man.

Most interestingly, Phillips was asked, "What books or subject matter do you plan on reading in the next year?"  His answer points to the follow-up to The Fade Out, as well as other work:

"For two different work projects, research on World War One and television in the late 1950s. And lots of comics!"

And the question leads naturally enough to another item from January 25th, from the French site Comicsblog.fr.  On Twitter, the great Kevin Sels pointed us to the story and offered a brief summary:  at the Angloueme festival, Phillips announced that he and Brubaker are planning two stories following The Fade Out -- each a six-issue mini-series -- and a "romance" series for sometime in the fall.

(Thanks for the heads-up, Kevin!)

What does this mean for the long-term plans for Kill Or Be Killed and the upcoming Criminal novella?  Is it possible that, between Phillips' answers, the French-language news item, and Kevin's overview, something was lost in translation?

We would almost say that we'll have to wait and see, but just yesterday the same site posted a 21-minute video of the interview, with Phillips' answers in English, with optional French subtitles.

In the wide-ranging interview, the artist discusses whether he misses licensed work for the bigger publishers and why there's a long-term economic appeal in creator-owned work.  Phillips mentions how Ed Brubaker's wife pushed him to do creator-owned work, how the success of Marvel Zombies allowed Phillips to take a chance on such a project, and how the pair communicate while they work.

The artist says he assumes that Image's exclusive five-year deal will be extended, but he also mentioned what would be the team's dream project, where he and Brubaker spend a year on... [EDIT:] well, people should watch the video and find out for themselves.

Phillips discusses the violent but sympathetic protagonists in Kill Or Be Killed and their other titles, and he mentions the beauty of the comic-book medium, where the text and the picture need not always correspond.

He mentions that it might not be important whether the story's demon is real, but he admits not knowing in advance where these stories are going:  Brubaker told him what the ending would be, but he has since changed his mind, and even the script for an individual issue is almost always sent piecemeal.

He has no info on the KOBK adaptation beyond what's already been announced online, and he mentions how other projects have fallen through, including the Criminal adaptation.  Brubaker takes the lead on working with Hollywood, with Phillips always to be listed as an executive producer with no real need for control over this sort of project:  the real aim is -- and has always been -- to make great comic books, and the greater purpose of an adaptation would be in its enabling the team to make new books with an even higher profile.

And Sean Phillips did reveal quite a bit about the team's upcoming schedule, including their current project.

• For KOBK, "the end is in sight," with the book to conclude sometime this year.
• The next project is a "romance comic" out by year's end: October was explicitly mentioned as a release date.  Work on this book will take place between his drawing issues of KOBK, and the result -- title to be announced -- will be a "one-off" 60-page hardcover, to see if the format sells in the U.S.
• After that will come the first of two sequels to The Fade Out, with a few carry-over characters, a setting of television production in the 1950's, and a story that probably involves murder:  two sequels are currently planned, the length of this first sequel might only be six issues, but the team generally doesn't determine a book's length in advance.

Phillips praises the breadth and quality of the French comics scene and its industry's preference for well-made graphic novels, when trade paperbacks in the U.S. are frequently printed as cheaply as possible.  He says that he would prefer producing one or two hardcovers every year -- one with Ed Brubaker and one with Delcourt or another French publisher -- but he doesn't think the American readership is ready to change their buying and reading habits.

And, looking even further ahead, Phillips mentions that there are two sequels planned for The Fade Out and "more ideas" for Criminal, but we note that, in both its production schedule and its format, that "romance comic" sounds exactly like the Criminal novella that was mentioned last summer.

We wonder if the Criminal novella is a "romance" story of sorts, or if that story has supplanted the earlier plans for the next chapter in their longest-running series.

And we suspect that, either way, that novella revolves around World War I.