CRIMINAL One-Shot & UNDERTOW Podcast Out Now: More CRIMINAL in May!

 We're posting to the blog just long enough to relay a few items of note.

• The GIANT-SIZE CRIMINAL #1 one-shot is in stores now. Along with a standard cover by Sean Phillips, the book features three variant covers shown above. The interiors include a story starring Ricky Lawless, an overview of the series in anticipation of the upcoming Amazon TV show, and a poker-based CRIMINAL RPG ready for readers to implement, all on glorious newsprint.
• The latest episode of THE UNDERTOW PODCAST is also out now. Robert and I review THE KNIVES and discuss the latest news.
• And, recent solicitations list Brubaker and Phillips' next OGN, and it's another CRIMINAL story, due May 27. FIVE GEARS IN REVERSE features "the legendary RICKY LAWLESS and the crazy tale of how he and MALLORY fell in love in the midst of a crime spree."

We still haven't heard anything about the premiere of Amazon's CRIMINAL TV series. We're hopeful that it will come out before FIVE GEARS, and regardless we will pass along any information as we find it.

One-Shot Out December 3rd: GIANT-SIZE CRIMINAL #1

In the most two recent newsletters, sent out July 13th and August 27th, Ed Brubaker has announced the next project for the team -- more CRIMINAL, we're quite happy to report, in a "CHRISTMAS SPECIAL magazine," with the (initial) cover shown below.

Our good friend Greg just shared with us screenshots from the digital Image Scene, announcing a slightly different comic book due in December, and they're worth sharing.

  

The news got us scouring the Internet for more info, and AIPT is apparently the first site to have published Image's December solicitations, The solicit is below, duplicating the information shown in the issue of Image Scene, and emphasis is ours.

GIANT-SIZE CRIMINAL #1

WRITER: Ed Brubaker

ARTIST: Sean Phillips

COVER A: Sean Phillips

COVER B: Marcos Martín

COVER C: Duncan Fegredo 1:10

COVER D: J.H. Williams III 1:25

2025-12-03

48

FC (full color)

M-Mature

$5.99

THE FIRST NEW CRIMINAL SINGLE ISSUE IN OVER FIVE YEARS ARRIVES ON THE EVE OF THE STREAMING TV SERIES PREMIERE

This oversized, annual-style issue is packed with everything CRIMINAL fans love from BRUBAKER & PHILLIPS—and much more. Headlining the issue is a novella-length story starring fan-favorite character RICKY LAWLESS (a major player in the upcoming TV adaptation) as he goes solo on his latest heist—what could possibly go wrong?

But that’s just the beginning, you’ll also get:

• A CRIMINAL tabletop RPG module written by KIERON GILLEN and illustrated by SEAN PHILLIPS

• Behind-the-scenes insights into the CRIMINAL TV series from showrunner Brubaker himself

• A fully illustrated guide to the world of CRIMINAL and its key characters

This GIANT SIZE CRIMINAL one-shot is the perfect entry point for new readers—and just in time for X-mas, it’s an even better stocking-stuffer for the diehard Brubaker and Phillips fan in your life.

Exclusively in print and only available at comic shops—our way of saying thanks to retailers!

As we have documented in the team's extensive bibliography, the last single-issue release was Criminal Volume 3 #12, the conclusion to Cruel Summer that was released in January 2020.  Since then, the only "floppy" releases have been in late 2022 -- the $1 Neo-Noir "trailer" collection and the team's contribution to the Image! anthology #9, the cover story featuring Teeg Lawless in a twisted Christmas tale.

(We wonder if that Christmas story and this upcoming novella will end up being collected in the same trade paperback: two holiday stories, one with Teeg Lawless and the other with his ne'er-do-well son Ricky.  We think it's almost certain they'll both appear in the next deluxe hardcover.)

Sean Phillips posted the same new cover on Instagram, and in the comments he fielded some questions, providing some additional info worth repeating here. He confirms that this is the same book as the Xmas Special and this book is in the standard size for a comic book -- not a magazine -- but is extra long at 52 pages.

(Sean also confirms what we've assumed, that they'll release the deluxe edition when they have enough material to justify the collection.)

We would love to know what motivated the change from the Xmas Special to the Giant-Size #1.  Our theory is that the latter may entice new readers to the book -- just in time for the Amazon series! -- and may possibly continue to sell well after December.

This book's title is an apparent reference to Giant-Size X-Men #1, a famous one-shot that heralded the "bronze age" of comics.  We hope that the title doesn't cause too much confusion:  the comic book has been announced to be a one-shot and not the debut issue of a fourth monthly volume.

We note that this is the first time in ages that a Brubaker/Phillips book has had variant covers:  we think this is a first for Criminal (except maybe for second printings and definitely for the magazine-sized variants), and it's definitely the first time that we have variant covers featuring different artists, including Brubaker's Friday collaborator Marcos Martín. We haven't seen the covers yet, but we'll try to post them here when they're released.

Finally, the preview pages from Image Direct haven't been featured anywhere else, so we're happy to publish them here!

We'll post more news as we see it: so far, there has been no official announcement about the premiere of the Amazon TV series.

Follow Me Down, Undertow Podcast & More, Out Now!

We would be remiss if we didn't briefly mention the output of a very busy week and change.

Follow Me Down, the fifth Reckless original graphic novel, reached retailers this past Wednesday, revealing what Ethan was up to during the events of The Ghost In You. In the afterward, Ed Brubaker tells readers that they're taking a break from the series for another project -- as yet unannounced, "a new hardback graphic novel" due in the spring and already in production -- but he promises that Ethan and Anna will return in a story set in the 1990s.

The previous week saw the arrival of a quite unique Image Firsts $1 comic: Neo Noir: The World of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Instead of reprinting a single first issue, the comic reprints the short "trailers" the team has produced to advertise their books, all with essays by David Harper providing an overview of the team's work. The 64-page comic book serves as an excellent introduction to the team, prompting me to give away copies to close friends.

(We note in passing that things have come full circle: the "trailers" were produced to mimic movie trailers and offer an alternative to traditional previews consisting of a comic book's first few pages, but the last preview in Neo Noir, for the first Reckless OGN actually is the book's first four pages. The introductory chapter in each Reckless book is almost like a cold open to a TV series, and this particular chapter serves to introduce the main character, his job and personality, and the overall series. It's kinda like a trailer after all.)

With new books in stores, Brubaker published his first email newsletter in more than two months. In addition to these new releases, the writer mentions Friday and Pulp, addresses the recent news regarding Batman: Caped Crusader, and highlights a new video-podcast interview. He closes with an enigmatic image from the mysterious new project.

That same Tuesday, Robert Watson released the latest episode of the Undertow Podcast. With our current production schedule, we tend to release an episode as Ed sends out his newsletter, both in anticipation of the next book hitting store shelves.

This time, we looked forward to Follow Me Down by taking an extended look back at the previous Reckless book, The Ghost In You.

We also took a time to talk about that other recent release from Brubaker and Phillips -- effectively, the latest "Deluxe Edition" oversized hardcover, Pulp: The Process Edition. I recommend it heartily for completists and especially those who are interested in the team's creative process, and our discussion might complement what Brubaker recommended in his newsletter, an extensive review at AIPT Comics.

Robert gave us a good overview of Richard Stark's Parker: The Martini Edition Last Call, the second and final oversized hardcover collection of Darwyn Cooke's phenomenal adaptations of the classic crime novels. As I said in the podcast, the Parker books comprise -- alongside DC: The New Frontier -- Darwyn's magnum opus.

The much-missed artist is honored in this edition, designed and overseen by Brubaker and Phillips, who contribute a new short story to the collection. As with Pulp, we would direct readers to AIPT for more info, this time a May 10th review of this concluding Martini Edition.

Robert and I concluded the podcast with a rare joint recommendation -- Heat 2, an unexpected sequel to the classic neo-noir epic, a novel co-written by writer and director Michael Mann and award-winning mystery writer Meg Gardiner.

(I thoroughly enjoyed the book despite some nits to pick, and I plan to outline my criticisms in the comments below -- briefly and maybe tomorrow, but with heavy spoilers for the original film and some high-level spoilers for the new novel. Readers have been warned.)

Finally, we simply must mention Image Comics' December solicitations (ignore the erroneous URL). The publisher has been releasing an anthology series in celebration of its 30th anniversary, and Image! #9 features a contribution from Brubaker and Phillips -- more specifically, a Criminal short story, perhaps a Criminal "emission" in the vein of previous short stories listed in our bibliography.

Previous cover art for the anthology has presented homages to other Image books, and issue #9 puts Criminal front and center with our good friend Teeg Lawless, wired and tired and ready for Christmas. The book is expected to be a late Christmas present, due out on December 28th.

We're already looking forward to it!

FRIDAY and the Rest of 2020: New Podcast, Newsletter, Deluxe Editions, AND a Digital Book from Brubaker!

Early April saw the release of the latest Undertow Podcast, featuring our review of Criminal #12, the explosive finale of the sprawling "Cruel Summer" arc.  We hope our listeners enjoy the discussion even half as much as Robert and I did.

During the podcast, we raised some questions we had about Amazon listings for upcoming releases, and we happened to get some answers last week from an email newsletter sent out by Ed Brubaker.

That newsletter opened with bigger, MUCH more immediately pressing news, and we'll follow suit here, with the Criminal news at the end of the post.

Ed Brubaker's Brand New Comic FRIDAY

In the last few years, a handful of high-profile creators have released works suddenly, without any prior press or announcement.  Beyonce famously did this in December, 2013, with her self-titled "visual album," and U2 infamously did something similar the following September, "gifting" their album Songs of Innocence to a half billion iTunes customers.

With hardcopy comic books generally requiring solicitations and retailer pre-orders, such surprise releases are quite rare: the only example that comes to mind is Robert Kirkman's July, 2018, release of Die! Die! Die!

(Kirkman avoided the usual process by giving copies of the debut issue to retailers, matching the number of copies ordered for March's Oblivion Song #1. The writer followed up the surprise debut the very next July with the sudden end of The Walking Dead at issue #193).

Digital comics are an entirely different animal, and on April 15th, Ed Brubaker announced the immediate release of the first "chapter" (or issue) of FRIDAY, a new series with Spanish artist Marcos Martin.

Marcos Martin has spent more than twenty years in the industry, primarily for the Big Two publishers.  Martin and writer Brian K. Vaughan created Panel Syndicate to distribute "digital comics directly from creators to readers."  In 2013, the pair debuted the first title for the site,The Private Eye, with coloring by Muntsa Vicente.  The series won both an Eisner and a Harvey, and the site has since expanded to feature other series, other creators, and a one-shot for The Walking Dead.

Now, Martin and Vincente are joining writer Ed Brubaker to create FRIDAY.

In his newsletter, Brubaker relays that he's been working on this project for nearly a year: "Close readers will have noticed me mentioning a secret project with one of my favorite artists here and there, and this is it."

(We're not sure what's become of the "top secret" project with Steve Epting, post-Velvet, mentioned almost five years ago this month.)

Along with Ed's email newsletter, a few news sites announced the book Wednesday morning. The AV Club includes the same four-page preview found in the newsletter and at Panel Syndicate.  Meanwhile The Hollywood Reporter quotes Brubaker on how the series originated in a request from Martin to work on "his next big thing for Panel Syndicate," followed by Brubaker's immediate and enthusiastic response.

That same Wednesday, CBR published the official press release, the source of those quotes from the creators.  Martin elaborates that the pair previously collaborated for a Captain America annual (evidently the 65th Anniversary Special), a brief but satisfying experience.

The press release also gives us the title of this first chapter: "The Girl in the Trees."

CBR has since posted a few more articles on the new series.

• Thursday, Aaron Fentress provides a spoilery look at the first chapter, suggesting that the series aims to deconstruct YA fiction much the way Watchmen deconstructed costumed superheroes, causing the characters to age and leave their comfort zone in a manner similar to the humorous Adult Swim cartoon The Venture Bros.
• Friday, Sam Stone previewed an "upcoming exclusive interview" with Marcos Martin, explaining that the recent health crisis briefly delayed the series' release and simultaneously motivated its immediate publication: the quarantine "was a determining factor to put it out now instead of waiting around until later because we felt it would be good for the industry and most definitely, our mental health."
• Saturday, Collier Jennings previewed an upcoming interview with Ed Brubaker, discussing the Young Adult genre and its strange but comforting trope of "kids just living this endless youth as the decades around them change."  In what the writer has coined "post-YA," Brubaker is "just taking those same types of teen heroes, and allowing them to grow up and exist in the real world around them, to allow the strange occult mysteries they investigate to become actual horror stories."
• Sunday, Fentress drops even more spoilers to compare the series to True Detective, with both evidently having roots in the same kind of horror stories.

(Also, on Friday, CBR published Ed Brubaker's response to the rumor that Shang-Chi's parentage has been changed for the upcoming MCU release.)

Just today, CBR published the complete interview they previously teased, an exclusive, joint interview with Brubaker and Martin.  Brubaker traces the lineage of horror and occult stories in YA fiction and children's stories, and he elaborates that the pair's earlier collaboration was very brief indeed:  "He and Javier [Pulido? Rodriguez?] jumped in at the last minute when an artist blew a deadline on a Cap annual, and they saved us by alternating chapters."

The process for the new book has been much more deliberately paced, and Martin says that he especially enjoyed "the mixture of the Lovecraftian New Englandish town and the early 70s," the latter caused Muntsa Vicente to change her approach to coloring "with no use of gradients at all and limiting her palette to just 128 colors like the old comics of the late 70s."

The interview closes with Martin's hopes for Panel Syndicate, and we can't help but think Friday will help the site expand its readership.  Yesterday, Brubaker sent out a "quick note of thanks" for the overwhelming response to the book -- and he linked to two additional stories.

• Calling the book a "gripping read" with special praise for the artwork, Volume 1 Brooklyn apparently conducted their own interview with the creators: Brubaker notes the freedom in page length which the digital format affords him, and Martin relayed the positive response to Panel Syndicate, even from retailers and publishers who can "make more sensible and informed decisions in regards to the product they wanted to print and put out physically.
• Giving a rating of 10 out of 10, Comics Bookcase calls Friday "damn good," and "the best debut issue of any comic I’ve read this year."

The Bottom Line on FRIDAY

There's a lot to read about Brubaker's new series, but it may be useful to highlight the main points.

The Panel Syndicate page for the series provides an excellent summary of its premise (emphasis mine).

Friday Fitzhugh spent her childhood solving crimes and digging up occult secrets with her best friend Lancelot Jones, the smartest boy in the world. But that was the past, now she's in college, starting a new life on her own. Except when Friday comes home for the holidays, she's immediately pulled back into Lance's orbit and finds that something very strange and dangerous is happening in their little New England town...

This is literally the Christmas vacation from Hell and neither of them may survive to see the New Year.

What do we know about the comic's format and availability?

• Chapter One, "The Girl in the Trees," is out now, in multiple formats -- "No DRM, no encryption, just plain files optimised for on-screen viewing" -- and is available in English and in Spanish.
• In line with Panel Syndicate's publishing model, you PAY WHAT YOU WANT for the book, including the option of not paying at all: PayPal used for payment, and you do NOT need a PayPal account to complete the purchase.
• This first issue is listed at 30 pages, with 26 pages of story and concluding with a two-page note from the writer.
• Per Ed Brubaker, "The plan is to release the chapters digitally as we finish them, and then put out the whole graphic novel from IMAGE in a beautiful hardback edition (with lots of extras) for comic shops and bookstores."

We suspect that the title alludes to the 1995 comedy starring Ice Cube and Chris Tucker the 1940 screwball comedy His Girl Friday.  Citing a book of essays on the director Howard Hawks, Wikipedia helpfully explains that the title is ironic "because a girl 'Friday' represents a servant of a master, but [ace reporter] Hildy [Johnson] is not a servant in the film, but rather the equal to Walter [Jones, editor and ex-husband]."

And this isn't the first time that Ed Brubaker has riffed on Encyclopedia Brown -- or YA fiction for that matter, if you count Archie Comics.  "The Last of the Innocent" introduced Britt Black, but since Lancelot Jones is different prodigy P.I., all grown up (or growing up), we might not be in the same world as Criminal, and we certainly can't be sure who might or might not make it to the story's conclusion.

CRIMINAL Collections, Coming Soonish

In that newsletter from last week, Ed Brubaker relays that the upcoming hardcopy books are "sitting in limbo" at the printer, both Pulp and the "oversized hardback of CRUEL SUMMER."

While we're waiting for Pulp, Brubaker has treated newsletter readers with a new but brief, three-panel preview of the story, but it's the "Cruel Summer" collection that intrigues us most.

So far as we know, that book has not yet been officially announced.

As we mentioned in the Undertow Podcast, James Joshua Hall reached out to us through Twitter to direct our attention to a few new listings on Amazon.

For posterity's sake, and in case the listings change, here's what we currently have:

Cruel Summer hardcover

expected July 21, 2020
list price $34.99

BRUBAKER and PHILLIPS' CRIMINAL epic, collected in a gorgeous hardback edition.

In the summer of '88, Teeg Lawless comes home to plan the biggest heist of his career. But Teeg's son Ricky and his friends are starting down the same dark path their fathers are on, and this is about to become the worst summer of their lives.

An epic tale of tragedy handed down from generation-to-generation, CRUEL SUMMER is a crime comic masterpiece from the most-celebrated noir masters in the industry, creators of CRIMINAL, FATALE, KILL OR BE KILLED and THE FADE OUT.

Collects CRIMINAL issues 1 and 5 - 12 in a beautiful new hardback edition, with additional behind the scenes material.

Criminal Volume 8: Three Sharp Knocks paperback

expected December 29, 2020
list price $16.99

The debut appearance of one of the most important characters in CRIMINAL history, RICKY LAWLESS, in three heartbreaking tales of crime and family.

Collects CRIMINAL (Image Comics) #1-4.

The June solicitations were (and still are) the most recent solicits for Image Comics, and the list of upcoming books did not include any advance solicitations for Criminal books, for July or later.

We found these two Amazon listings quite odd.

We're not sure why the "Cruel Summer" collection would include the untitled issue #1 but not "Orphans" from issue #4: both served as a kind of prologue to the "Cruel Summer" arc, explicitly looking forward (or backwards) to the violent death of Teeg Lawless.

We also can't quite understand why the next numbered TPB for Criminal would overlap with this "Cruel Summer" collection (with issue #1) and the "Bad Weekend" expanded hardcover (issues #2-3).

While we pondered those questions, JJH reached out again last Monday, pointing us to yet another new listing on Amazon, albeit one with "no image available":

Criminal Deluxe Edition, Volume 3 Hardcover

expected October 27, 2020
list price $49.99

BRUBAKER and PHILLIPS' hard-to-find CRIMINAL hardbacks are finally back in print, and joining them is the long-awaited CRIMINAL: DELUXE EDITION, VOL. 3.

This oversized deluxe hardback collects several short stories and novellas from the most award-winning team in the history of comics in a fantastically-designed book full of extras -- illustrations, selected articles, interviews, behind the scenes looks, painted covers... and much much more! Collects the SAVAGE SWORD OF CRIMINAL and DEADLY HANDS OF CRIMINAL magazines, the novellas MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES and BAD WEEKEND, and issues 1 and 4 of the newest run of the CRIMINAL monthly series, two full length short stories about the LAWLESS family.

A true collector's edition must-have for any fan of the best in crime comics.

Effectively, the book would appear to collect Volume 7 ("Wrong Time, Wrong Place"), Junkies, the forthcoming Volume 8, and presumably the ten new pages in the Bad Weekend hardcover.

(Would the book also include the extra material from the two magazine-sized variants for the "Savage Sword" and "Deadly Hands" one-shots?)

If we were compiling the next deluxe edition, we're not sure we would separate the stories in issues #1 and #4 from the "Cruel Summer" arc since, again, we find that they serve as excellent prologues to the sprawling death-of-Teeg story.

Presumably the "Cruel Summer" arc is too long for inclusion in the third deluxe volume, and since a return to the world of Criminal has already been promised, perhaps the story would kick off an eventual fourth deluxe edition.

In the meantime, Brubaker's newsletter has shed more light on the upcoming releases, even if there's still some uncertainty.

Ed writes about (quote) "our oversized hardback of CRUEL SUMMER" and we wonder if this larger size matches the deluxe editions rather than the slightly smaller hardcovers for Junkies and Bad Weekend.  If so, and if the Amazon listing is right that the book includes "additional behind the scenes material," this hardcover is EFFECTIVELY a thinner Deluxe Edition, Volume 4 -- or perhaps a Volume 3 1/2, a placeholder for the next few years.

(It may be a while. The oldest story expected in Volume 3, the Special Edition "Savage Sword" one-shot, was originally released in early 2015. It's taking more than five years for the story to find its way into a deluxe edition.)

And, Ed treats fans to Sean Phillps' brand-new wraparound cover art for Criminal: The Deluxe Edition Volume 2, shown above.  It's gorgeous, a montage combining elements from the volume's three story arcs.

He confirms that these new editions are scheduled for the fall, and he confirms Volume 3: "We've got new designs [emphasis mine] and covers for the first two books (out of print for nearly a decade now) and a new third volume to join them, finally."

So, two out of the three Amazon listings have been partially confirmed by Ed Brubaker to one degree or another, with the 8th TPB "Three Sharp Knocks" not yet addressed.

We can't wait to open up the new deluxe editions and see what's changed.

In the meantime, we'll keep an eye out for any new information on these collected editions, and we'll pass them along as quickly as our hectic lives allow.

---

UPDATE, 4/23:   On Twitter, Sean Phillips kindly answered the lingering questions we raised here.

First, he tackled the mysterious Amazon listings:

That paperback listing is incorrect, we don’t have another Criminal trade planned. Cruel Summer is out first followed by the three Deluxe Editions, all over-sized hardcovers.

Then, he answered my follow-up question about the relative sizes of the upcoming hardcovers:

Cruel Summer is the same size as the Deluxe Editions

That does make the "Cruel Summer" hardcover a kind of Volume 3 1/2.

So, in summary, Brubaker and Phillips will release four oversized hardcovers in the remainder of 2020.

• Criminal: The Deluxe Edition Volume 1, 2nd edition
• Includes a new design AND a new cover
• Collects Criminal (2006) #1-10 & Criminal (2008) #1-3
• "Coward" 
• "Lawless" 
• "The Dead and the Dying"
• Likely still includes the short story "No One Rides for Free"
• Criminal: The Deluxe Edition Volume 2, 2nd edition
• Includes a new design AND a new cover
• Collects Criminal (2008) #4-7 and two mini-series 
• "Bad Night" 
• "The Sinners" 
• "The Last of the Innocent"
• Likely still includes the short story "21st Century Noir"
• Criminal: The Deluxe Edition Volume 3
• Brand new collection 
• Likely collects two one-shot issues, one OGN, and Criminal (2018) #1-4
• "Wrong Time, Wrong Place" (Special Edition & 10th Anniversary Special)
• "My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies"
• Untitled Teeg & Ricky story, set in 1987
• "Bad Weekend"
• "Orphans"
• Not clear how much will be included from the one-shot magazine variants and the expanded OGN HC edition of "Bad Weekend," which included ten extra pages
• Criminal: Cruel Summer
• Brand new collection
• Collects Criminal (2018) #5-12
• Might also collect at least one of the related prologue issues, #1 & #4

All four hardcovers will be the same size, comprising a complete library of the first 18+ years of the Criminal comic book.  The "Cruel Summer" hardcover will come first (possibly late July), followed by the three deluxe collections perhaps around October.

And all this is in addition to the brand-new collaboration Pulp, a hardcover, original graphic novel originally scheduled for May 20th.

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.

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.

April Solicitations: A Ricky Lawless One-Shot for Criminal #4 and More.

Image Comics released their April solicitations this week, and we find that Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips plan to keep up the monthly pace with Criminal #4.

A couple years back, Phillips discussed the team's work schedule for the official podcast for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival.  The plan entails a five-week schedule to produce about ten issues each year; as a result, quite a few months pass before readers encounter a "skip month."

So far, the solicited release dates fit this five-week schedule, which points to a May 29th release date for issue #5, a skip month for June, and a July 3rd release for issue #6.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Due April 24th, issue #4 is described as the second done-in-one, stand-alone story and a return to the Lawless family.

A breathtaking single-issue story finds Ricky Lawless caught in the grip of violence and double cross after a robbery. As always, CRIMINAL contains back page art and articles only found in the single issues.

We're curious about the time frame of this story -- it presumably occurs after Criminal #1 and obviously occurs before the "Lawless" story arc, but we wonder how this relates to a key event mentioned at the end of issue #1.

(We also wonder how we should refer to these stories going forward.  I wonder how these seemingly unrelated one- and two-issue stories will be grouped and titled for the eventual trade collection, and that question makes me wonder if they're as unrelated as the solicitations suggest.)

---

It was an oversight on our part, but we haven't yet mentioned Ed Brubaker's January 9th email newsletter, released the same day as Criminal #1.  It includes a two-page preview of Criminal #2...

(We get a specific date for what appears to be the main story -- July, 1997 -- and a flashback indicating that he graduated from high school in the mid-Eighties. And, it appears that one of the central characters, the infamously difficult artist and "old mentor," has been renamed from Archie Lewis to Hal Crane.)

...and we see some process work for this first issue, comparing Sean Phillips' digital inks and the final result with Jacob Phillips' colors.  Brubaker also shares some preliminary designs for the first issue's cover art, with his early idea of having two images share the cover, "connecting the various story threads."

The third and final image from the newsletter, shown below, reminds us especially of the cover layout for Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword, a 2010 anthology series which ran for ten issues and -- as we mentioned earlier -- included a story drawn by Sean Phillips in issue #4.  Between two large panels and two small bubbles, four distinct images were featured on every cover, the largest of which was generally reprinted on an interior page, "virgin" and complete.

(In the cover art for REHSS #4 above, you can see Phillips' Conan, in the bubble on the upper right.)

In both cases, the composite cover is striking, but I'm not sure it "pops" off the shelves as much as a single, bold image would.  The best covers draw your attention away from the comic book's numerous competitors.

For Criminal #1, the composite cover would have probably required a longer, more complex solicitation text, which would have made the story inside less disorienting in its first few pages.  Personally, I really enjoyed the story and I think I prefer the final cover, where the single image of Teeg Lawless -- old, bloodied, and manic -- made me wonder how the first few pages fit into the larger story.  The single-image cover also fits with what we've seen for the next few covers.

---

Also in the newsletter, Ed Brubaker recommended a few comic books along with a single prose collection from Black Lizard, The Big Book of the Continental Op.

We checked the April solicits for both books, and we found Die #5, from Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans.  The issue is described as the "conclusion," evidently of the first arc, "Fantasy Heartbreaker," and not the overall series.

We couldn't find Brubaker's other recommendation, Cemetery Beach by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard, and a quick search through Image's website revealed why:  the book is a seven-issue mini-series, scheduled to wrap up on March 6th.

And, looking through the solicits, we found issue #4 for another series that has our attention, debuting on January 9th alongside both Criminal #1 and the latest issues of Brubaker's two recommended reads.  We'll have more to say about Gunning for Hits very soon, in the upcoming episode of The Undertow Podcast.

Criminal #1 Ten-Page Preview, an Undertow Podcast, and More for the New Year!

We anticipate being much more active in the new year -- more blogging, meaning more frequent posts with more prompt news updates -- as Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips return to monthly comics with a new volume of our favorite series, Criminal.  The first issue is less than a week away, and we begin 2019 with a quick look back at the end of 2018.

• October Interviews for Junkies. Three print interviews with writer Ed Brubaker were published in a single month.  Released to coincide with the October 10th release of My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, the online articles also provide a substantial "fix" for those more obsessive fans of the writer and his work.

• Oct 9th, from The Hollywood Reporter, with an exclusive four-page preview of Junkies
• Oct 21st, from Salon 
• Oct 25th, from GQ, published exactly two years after an interview about The Fade Out and subsequently summarized by Tripwire Magazine

There's much more from these interviews than we'll summarize here -- some of which Robert and I discussed in the podcast (see below) -- but we found the biographical insights especially interesting. 

Brubaker's father was a commander in naval intelligence, and his mother and stepfather were therapists.  From age 4 to age 7, Brubaker lived at Guantanamo, where his father got his sons reading with a large box of used comics.  His parents got divorced, and from age 8 to age 12, he accompanied his mother to her Sunday-morning AA meetings.  He subsequently became a trouble-maker -- "scraping by" in his early 20's, socializing with "really bad crowds" and committing "small-time crime" -- until his life got out of hand and the young artist almost ended up in prison.

We can see the effect on Brubaker's writing, not just in the generally sympathetic approach to desperate and reckless criminals, but also in the details of stories -- from the setting for "An Accidental Death," one of his earliest works; through the protagonist of "Lawless;" to the focus of this most recent work, the Criminal novella Junkies.

• Phillips Sketchbook of Movie Stars. On November 8th, Sean Phillips announced a new item exclusive to his Big Cartel store.  My Heroes Have Always Been Movie Stars is a 32-page, US comics-size collection of some of the illustrations he has created to accompany the film essays featured in the back of Brubaker and Phillips' monthly issues. 

The artist explicitly writes that these works originally appeared "in the Criminal comics [made] with Ed Brubaker," but we wonder if some of the art was for Incognito, Fatale, or other titles.  It's a question that might only be answered with a copy of this sketchbook and a complete list of these bonus-feature essays.

The book is priced at £20, in a signed and numbered limited edition of 300 copies.  It appears that copies are still available, but there's no telling how long that will last.

• The Fade Out Single-Volume TPB Released. On November 14th, the anticipated single-volume trade paperback edition of The Fade Out was released.  This will probably serve as the definitive wide release of the 2014-2016 mini-series, as the story is better told as a single work than in three four-issue "acts." 

We examined a copy at a local shop, confirming that the book is a bare-bones release without the bonus content found in the hardcover.  The book includes the "Screen Views and News" clipping which serves as a kind of epilogue to "Maya's story and Valeria's story," but it omits the fictional promotional images featured on the back-cover art of the monthly issues. 

And, we're disappointed to report that the cover lacks an amusing detail found in a print that Phillips has made available at his online store and which is shown above, describing the book as "An Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips production."

• Image Solicitations for the Next Criminal Arc. On November 20th, Image Comics released its February solicitations, including the second issue of the new volume of Criminal -- all just in time for us to discuss as late-breaking news on the podcast.  Issue #1 is evidently a self-contained done-in-one tale, and this new story features an artist named Archie Lewis, and we recall that this fictional character was briefly mentioned in the narration of the 2008 arc "Bad Night."

Archie Lewis was the artist’s artist in his heyday, although that’s not what he’s famous for. He’s famous for being a nightmare to work with—and dangerous. So when an old assistant is forced to chaperone his one-time mentor to receive his lifetime achievement award, well... let’s just say things don’t go well.

We wondered if the story will touch on Jacob Kurtz, the main character and narrator from "Bad Night," as perhaps this "old assistant" to the evidently infamously difficult Lewis is Jacob himself.  That suspicion was confirmed on December 21st, with the release of Image's March solicitations and a very brief description of the next issue.

Jacob’s weekend taking care of his old mentor takes a turn for the worse.

That original narration made it seem that Jacob knew Archie Lewis only from a distance -- it mentioned a productivity trick as "an old Archie Lewis method, according to his biographer" -- but it may just be that he knew that reality didn't live up to the myth.  We're also curious how Jacob's aspiration to be an artist (this assistantship, for instance) collided with his criminal background, hanging out with Leo and Tracy and becoming an expert counterfeiter.

It's not clear when this story takes place chronologically, but it does appear that "The Longest Weekend" is a companion to "Bad Night."  In his recent newsletter (see below), Brubaker even referenced this new story as "Bad Weekend."

• Undertow Podcast on Junkies.  November 26th saw the release of the most recent episode of The Undertow Podcast, Episode 27 reviewing the Criminal novella My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies.  Robert and I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion, and we soon plan to release a new episode taking a broader look at the Criminal chronology.

The novella features a mixtape Ellie's mother made for her then-incarcerated father, and so I ended the episode recommending a kind of mixtape of my own:  The Best of David Gray Disc 2, from the two-disc deluxe edition. 

In the liner notes, the British singer-songwriter tells readers that he selected the tracks for this bonus disc "for no other reason than that they occupy a special place in my heart and have meant a lot to me down the years."  They serve as a kind of mixtape for his fans, I find these songs particularly compelling, and I've just made a five-song playlist from that disc, to share with our readers.

Gray's repertoire spans from traditional love songs to more abstract, ethereal music, and his lyrics capture the tragic beauty of both the mundane and the transcendent: "From Here You Can Almost See the See" contains a great example of both with its prosaic verses and its unexpected coda.  He will soon be touring in support of a new album out on March 8th, Gold in a Brass Age, and he's just followed up "The Sapling" with the release of the second song from the album, "A Tight Ship."

• Exclusive Image Deal Extended for Another Five Years. I believe we've discussed Brubaker and Phillips' five-year deal on the podcast, making the assumption that the agreement would be extended.  On December 6th, Image Comics posted a press release making it official:  the exclusive deal has been renewed for another five years, effective immediately.

Described as "previously unprecedented," the original deal was announced in January, 2014, and it allowed the pair "to do anything they want with total freedom, total control, and total ownership over their projects."  As a result, Brubaker says that the previous five years have been "the most successful time of our long career together," and publisher Eric Stephenson adds that, over that period, "Ed and Sean have done some of the best work of their careers."

This extension coincides with the return of Criminal as a new monthly series, and the article mentions a renewed emphasis on monthly storytelling, with Ed Brubaker saying that he wants the new series to be "a monthly comic that would stand apart by really embracing the format, and trying to be something surprising every issue."  Publisher Eric Stephenson chimes in, saying that the series "serves as a welcome reminder of just how potent monthly comics can be."

The press release mentions some of the praise the team's most recent work has received, from Library Journal and Vulture/NY Magazine.  This is in addition to the accolades Image Comics compiled in a December 18th release, where Junkies made the year-end best-of lists for Newsweek, Thrillist, and Multiversity Comics.

• Ten-page Criminal preview in Brubaker newsletter. Finally, Christmas came early for Criminal fans, when Ed Brubaker sent out an email newsletter on December 24th, featuring a ten-page preview of the first issue -- a substantial excerpt of the double-length issue, a few panels of which we're highlighting below.

 

Brubaker also looked back on the previous project, Junkies, announcing that the hardcover novella has sold better than expected: "as of this writing I think [the book] is almost sold through a printing that was meant to last a few years."

Looking ahead, Brubaker also provided an advance look at the next story, the two-part Criminal tale "The Longest Weekend," aka "Bad Weekend."  From what we gathered in the solicits mentioned above, we take it the panel features a flashback scene of young Jacob Kurtz serving as an assistant artist to a pro named Hal.

And, along with the three October interviews we listed above, Brubaker mentioned a CrimeReads interview published on December 12. 

In this most recent interview, he reveals some details about the story in Junkies (Ellie is 18 years old) and about the book's creation (a tight deadline resulted in Jacob Phillips becoming the colorist after the first few pages).  He discusses his influences and his process, his early work writing Sleeper, and the very recent decision to follow up Junkies with more stories set in the Criminal universe.

Strangely enough, the interview also includes what Brubaker said about monthly comics in the prior press release on the renewed five-year deal, with some additional elaboration

"The single issue itself has started to become an afterthought. At the big two, you have tons of ads in them, and they’re on cheap paper now. It’s like this amazing little package that gave us all decades and decades of joy as comic fans is being neglected by the market that was built on them."

And, Ed Brubaker gives us a quick synopsis of what we can expect with the new monthly Criminal series:

"The first issue is basically the ultimate Criminal story. It kind of shows you everything that the book does, all in one long and winding oversized story."

Criminal #1 is due in stores this Wednesday, January 9th.