Bullets: Incognito Reviews and More.

Lots of links from the past few weeks.

• A Criminal Comeback, Part 1. From my point of view, the best thing about the Newsarama interview that ADD highlighted earlier is the eminent return of Criminal.
  
  Ed Brubaker relayed that we will soon see the story that might still be titled "Coward's Way Out" -- and even that story might not the last we'll see of Leo.

  "Depending on how I feel by the time I finish Issue #5 of Bad Influences, we may do an Incognito Annual first, before we go back to Criminal, but we'll be going back to Criminal as the next thing. Right now, it's looking like it's going to be the sequel to Coward, which is Leo in prison. But until I actually sit down to write it, it could change. I've had that mapped out since before I wrote Coward. I've had the idea for three stories with that character."

  Brubaker reiterates this plan on his Twitter page, telling Brad Meltzer that Criminal will return "As soon as Incognito is done."
  
  I really like Incognito, and along with titles like Chew and Scott Morse's Strange Science Fantasy, it's a book I look forward to reading every month, but it's no Criminal, and I wish Brubaker and Phillips didn't have to choose between the two titles. Their straight-up crime comic is like a pure, uncut narcotic, and I've been having withdrawal symptoms for far too long.
  
  
• Bad Influences, Mostly Good Reviews. Quite a few reviews have been posted for the debut of Incognito: Bad Influences, and the ones I've seen have been mostly positive, but not without reservations.
  
  The most enthusiastic review I've seen is at A Comic Book Blog, where John Barringer admits that he would pay double for the issue.
  
  Comics Alliance lauds the issue as "a great read that's a welcome return to a well written, beautifully drawn and colored series." The critic notes the emerging similarities with Sleeper but trusts that the story will stand on its own.
  
  At IGN, the issue is given an "impressive" 8.0 review: compared to previous collaborations, the story "doesn't quite sing as loudly or as beautifully," but the issue "succeeds largely because Brubaker and Phillips again compliment each other so wonderfully."
  
  The Comics Panel at The A.V. Club gives the issue a solid B: "In spite of the rehashed plot elements, Incognito: Bad Influences has enough of its own identity to set itself apart from its predecessors, and looks to be the start of another memorable Brubaker-Phillips partnership."
  
  In their "Best Shots" reviews, Newsarama praises the artwork of Sean Phillips and the "seedy, subversive" colors of Val Staples while noting the issue's relative inaccessibility to new readers.
  
  And, Comic Book Resources gives the issue only two-and-a-half stars, praising it as "skillfully constructed" but describing its plot as mostly set-up and exposition.
  
  Even at our sister blog, Trouble With Comics, Christopher Allen praised the book as "better than a lot of what’s out there," but he still couldn't shake the similarities to earlier work.
  
  
• An Award Nod, a Feature Article, and Preview Art. A few more miscellaneous links regarding Incognito, things I noticed from following Brubaker's Twitter posts and Sean Phillips' blog.
  
  First, the original mini-series has been included in the Official Selection for Angoulême 2011, a French award from the world's largest comic-book convention. Other noteworthy nominees are Asterios Polyp, The Walking Dead, and Darwyn Cooke's The Hunter. Awards will be presented at the end of January.
  
  Prompted by the sequel "Bad Influences," Comics Alliance posted an article listing some of the more notable instances of comic-book villains becoming heroes.
  
  And, while Incognito: Bad Influences was absent from Marvel's February solicitations, Sean Phillips has already posted the striking cover art to the fifth and presumably final issue.
  
  
  
  
• Phillips Art for the Criterion Collection. As he did for Blast of Silence, Sean Phillips has created the cover art for another release from the Criterion Collection: Sweet Smell of Success, a 1957 film starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. The Blu-Ray and the two-disc DVD will be released, separately, on February 22nd.
  
  
• A Criminal Comeback, Part 2. Finally, Hard Case Crime is back on track, with new material on the way. Its original publishers ceased production of mass-market paperbacks this year, but the imprint will be published through Titan Books, beginning in the fall of 2011.
  
  As before, The Violent World of Parker has the details, first with the breaking news, then with the full text of the newsletter email. Reading further down the latter, it seems that new material will be released as trade paperbacks, possibly with a MMPB reprint to follow.

More Criminal and more Hard Case Crime? It looks like 2011 is shaping up to be a great year for crime fiction.


Buy Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips comics from Amazon.com

INCOGNITO: BAD INFLUENCES #1 in Stores Today.

The first issue of the Incognito sequel reaches stores today, and MTV.com has an exclusive interview with writer Ed Brubaker, along with an eight-page preview of the issue.

In the interview, Brubaker had no further details regarding a change in writers for the Sleeper adaptation, but he did relay that the film adaptation for Incognito is "full steam ahead so far." He also explains that the comic-book sequel features the collision of the central themes of the two stories -- a good guy corrupted by working undercover with the bad guys, and a bad guy growing a conscience working with the good guys.

Conclusion to Word Balloon Interview, Cooke's Parker, and Liberty Comics.

Very quickly, Ed Brubaker's Word Balloon interview concludes -- here, here, and here -- in a 70-minute podcast, out this week.

Also out this week? Darwyn Cooke's second adaptation of Richard Stark's Parker; Comics Alliance has a very lengthy interview with Cooke, about The Outfit.

And, the 2010 edition of Liberty Comics was released yesterday. Liberty Annual 2010 benefits the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and while this issue lacks any contributions from Brubaker and Phillips (unlke the inaugural 2008 release), the book features a Who's Who of writers and artists.

A Preview, An Interview, and More.

Big news yesterday -- a preview for Incognito: Bad Influences. Featuring four final pages of interior art, the preview is available at Newsarama, Comic Book Resources, and Comics Alliance. This first issue is currently scheduled to reach stores on October 20th.

Fans looking for more should bookmark Sean Phillips' blog, where he has recently posted the sketch and final artwork for the latest pulp essay by Jess Nevins, to be included in the back of the first issue.

December solicitations for the major publishers have recently been released, and Marvel's solicitations lack any reference to Incognito; the strong implication is that we'll see at most three issues of the pulp mini-series in 2010. However, at year's end we'll have new issues from Ed Brubaker's Secret Avengers and Captain America.

Meanwhile, DC's solicitations continue to include noteworthy reprints, most notably a collection of another four issues of Brubaker's Batman run from 2000-2002. Beginning in October, DC Comics will publish several extra-sized reprints (96 pages for 8 bucks) that might appeal to fans of Criminal and Incognito:

• OCTOBER TO DECEMBER
  DC Presents: Batman #1-3 - collects Batman #582-585, and 591-598, all written by Ed Brubaker
  
  
• OCTOBER
  DC Presents: Brightest Day #1 - includes a one-shot Hawkman crime story by Brubaker and Phillips
  
  
• NOVEMBER
  WildStorm Presents #1 - features various writers, including Ed Brubaker
  
  
• DECEMBER
  Vertigo Resurrected: Winter's Edge #1 - features various artists, including Sean Phillips

DC's solicitations also feature what we now know to be the final issues published under the WildStorm imprint. CBR posted a summary of the early news surrounding the imprint's end, and Newsarama asked comic creators -- including Ed Brubaker -- for their comments.

On Twitter, Brubaker recommends that interested readers purchase WildStorm's Sleeper (and I would add Point Blank) while the trade paperbacks are still readily available. It's the same warning that Charles Ardai gave when his Hard Case Crime imprint lost its paperback publisher. It's my hope that Sleeper will remain in print for the foreseeable future: set in the WildStorm universe, the story is still remarkably self-contained, it was the work of two creators who are -- individually and collaboratively -- held in high esteem by both fans and critics, and it is still on track to be adapted into a major motion picture. Still, it's better to be safe than sorry, and I would strongly recommend Sleeper in any case.

There's news about a different adaptation -- the Incognito movie, which was first announced in May -- and it can be found in a lengthy audio interview with Ed Brubaker. It is the first installment of a two-part Word Balloon interview, and the two-hour conversation can be found at iFanboy and two sites dedicated to the podcast, the blog and an archive with a direct mp3 download.

I'll post a link to the second part of the interview when it has been made available.

Updates and News: Incognito Variant Cover, Call for Brubaker Interview Questions.

In my last post, I noted an uncertain future for the paperback crime imprint Hard Case Crime. That future is beginning to brighten: along with reprinting the relevant newsletter email from publisher Charles Ardai, The Violent World of Parker highlighted the news that Subterranean Press will be publishing the first HCC hardcover, scheduled to be published in the first half of next year. The book will collect two early Lawrence Block novels, printed back-to-back: this 69th book in the line wasn't announced earlier and is proof that the imprint still has some life in it.

(The site, devoted to the Richard Stark's brutal creation Parker, also reported that the University of Chicago Press has secured the publishing rights for the Parker books up through Firebreak. That's the twentieth book of the series, and the U of C press will publish books 16, 17, and 18 this March. Fans of Criminal and Darwyn Cooke's Parker adaptations should definitely look into these trade paperbacks.)

While Hard Case Crime fans will have to wait a while for the next release, the wait has finally ended for the conclusion to the first arc for Stumptown, a detective comic that deliberately evokes shows like The Rockford Files. The fourth issue was released just last week, just over four months after the publication of issue #3. Over at his blog, writer Greg Rucka -- Brubaker's co-writer on Gotham Central -- announced that this sort of delay won't be repeated. Subsequent story arcs won't be solicited until it's clear that the entire arc can be released on time.



Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Incognito will also see a short delay. On Twitter, Brubaker relayed that the release has been pushed back from the original release date of September 15th. Marvel.com currently lists the release date as October 6th.

The "apocalyptic pulp noir" is definitely on its way. Starting in late August and throughout September, Sean Phillips has been posting plenty of work from Incognito on his blog, including thumbnails, pencils, and completed inks.

Most interesting is the artwork featured here, what has been announced as a variant cover for the first issue of Incognito: Bad Influences. I believe this is the first variant cover for any Brubaker and Phillips collaboration, not counting the second printing for the debut issue of Incognito, and Brubaker explains that it is "a nod" to the title's pulp origins. The cover is featured in a 1:10 variant edition, offered to retailers at the same price as the regular edition.



Finally, Brubaker recently publicized an opportunity to submit questions for an upcoming Word Balloon podcast with John Siuntres. The deadline for questions is this Monday evening.


Buy Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips comics from Amazon.com

Bullets: Awards, Solicitations, and Hard Case Crime.

My life offline has been quite busy, as I'm now the happy and grateful father of a healthy baby girl, but we're less than a month out from Incognito: Bad Influences, and we're long overdue for an update.

• Eisner Awards for Brubaker. The 2010 Eisner Awards were announced just a few days after my last post in late July, and Ed Brubaker won two awards, one for the best single issue (Captain America #601) and one for best writer. This is the third time Brubaker has been given the prestigious Best Writer award, and this year's award is for his work on Criminal, Incognito, and his mainstream Marvel titles.
  
  Other noteworthy winners were Darwyn Cooke's Parker for Best Adaptation and Chew for Best New Series.
  
  
• Sean Phillips Spotlight from San Diego. While attending San Diego's Comic-Con International, where the Eisners were announced, Sean Phillips and artist and friend Duncan Fegredo conducted a panel spotlighting Phillips' work. Comic Book Resources has published an article summarizing the panel, and from the article I've learned that Phillips created the cover art for an issue of Star Wars: Chewbacca -- one of the more striking Star Wars covers in the last decade.
  
  
• Brubaker/Phillips Reprint from DC Comics. On the subject of older work that I'm still stumbling across, Ed Brubaker noted on Twitter that DC Presents: Brightest Day #1 features the reprint of a single-issue crime story -- with Hawkman, no less -- by Brubaker and Phillips.
  
  (As I noted last time, DC Presents: Batman #1 features a complete four-issue arc by Brubaker, from 2000.)
  
  The large-scale collaborations -- Sleeper and Criminal and Incognito -- naturally receive the most attention, but I've found that Brubaker and Phillips' older, "minor" works are worth checking out, books such as Scene of the Crime and the prestige-formatted Batman: Gotham Noir.
  
  
• Late Fall Solicitations for Incognito. In the time since my last post, Marvel has released two sets of solicitations, one for October and one for November. Both feature issues for the sequel to Incognito. Issue #2 for "Bad Influences" is due on October 20th, and Issue #3 is due on November 17th.
  
  Sean Phillips has posted the full cover art for the third issue. Most interestingly, I don't believe there has been ANY indication of just how many issues will be released for this presumed mini-series.
  
  
• Uncertain Future for Hard Case Crime. Finally, on the subject of open questions in publishing, on August 6th, Publishers Weekly reported that Dorchester Publishing is immediately halting its publication of mass-market paperbacks in favor of e-books and printing on-demand.
  
  The Wall Street Journal subsequently explained the relevance for readers of A Criminal Blog: Dorchester has been publishing Hard Case Crime, the fantastic mass-market imprint of hard-boiled crime fiction.
  
  Having just published its 66th book in six years, Hard Case Crime has featured both new works and long-forgotten reprints from authors such as Donald E. Westlake, Max Allan Collins, Lawrence Block, and Mickey Spillane. It published The Colorado Kid, the short Stephen King novel on which the new cable series Haven is loosely (very loosely) based, and it has also featured books by "John Lange" (Google the psuedonym) and one A.C. Doyle.
  
  Moreover, HCC owner Charles Ardai and Ed Brubaker did "ad swaps" when Criminal debuted: in the back pages of their respective works, Brubaker ran an advertisement for the crime books, and Ardai ran ads for the crime comic. Since then, Brubaker published an interview with Ardai in the back pages of Criminal.
  
  In the WSJ article, Ardai relays that he may move HCC to another publisher. In an August 8th message to the HCC mailing list, Ardai assures fans that everything will be sorted out, and that they're already working on two books that haven't yet been announced.
  
  "After that? Well, you won't be seeing a new book every month, but I expect you'll continue to see a handful of new Hard Case Crime titles each year, and rest assured they'll be good ones."

I've already devoured about half of HCC's pulp novels, and this hiatus -- and doubtless late nights with my daughter -- might give me a chance to catch up. Regardless, I hope that, as with Criminal, new releases from Hard Case Crime aren't too far away.

A Few Brief Notes.

I was hoping to make note of a few interesting new arrivals last week, but things have been hectic. The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on!

While Ed Brubaker has announced that he's too busy to attend any more conventions this year, Sean Phillips is in San Diego this weekend, on panels Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon.

(Apologies for not pointing to his schedule sooner.)

Also at his blog, Phillips highlighted the cover art for the second issue of Incognito: Bad Influences and announced the sale of personalized copies of the trade paperback for Criminal: The Sinners.

More recently, Brubaker discussed an upcoming story arc for his Captain America title, in both a press release at Marvel.com and an interview on Newsarama. "The Trial of Captain America" begins in October.

October also sees the publication of DC Comics Presents: Batman #1, collecting a four-issue arc from 2000, written by Ed Brubaker with art by Scott McDaniel. That month, Image Comics also publishes the third annual issue of Liberty Comics, to benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Finally, the A.V. Club recently praised Criminal: The Sinners, calling it "one of the best arcs to date in what’s already an outstanding series."

So, what were the comic books I liked from last week? The latest issue of Chew, featuring Poyo, the Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu waza Banga; the evocative if overpriced Strange Science Fantasy #1, a pulp comic that should appeal to fans of Incognito; and The Man with the Getaway Face, the over-sized, budget-priced preview of Darwyn Cooke's next Parker adaptation.