"Coward" Being Adapted for Film, Brubaker to Write.

The big announcement is pretty much everywhere: Ed Brubaker's Twitter feed, Sean Phillips' blog, and the major comics news sites.

This afternoon, Variety announced that the first Criminal arc, "Coward," is being adapted for film.

The film already has a studio and financial backing. The director will be David Slade (30 Days of Night, Twilight: Eclipse), and the writer is Ed Brubaker himself.

Buried in this huge, HUGE news is confirmation that the sequel to "Coward" is in the works -- presumably after Fatale -- and I'm guessing we'll here more about this sooner rather than later, probably the next time Brubaker's interviewed.

Regardless, we will, of course, update the blog as more information becomes available.

Fatale, January 2012.

In the back pages of the conclusion to "The Last of the Innocent," Ed Brubaker announced the next Brubaker-Phillips collaboration, Fatale, to debut in January and run "at least 12 issues."

He introduced the work as "something new" -- "an epic noir/horror story that takes place from the 1930s to the present."

We now have a lot more information -- including artwork for the debut issue's two covers, "Beauty" and the "Beast."



The first formal announcement for Fatale came just two days ago, at the New York Comic Con. The biggest surprise is that the comic book is being released by Image Comics, publisher of Chew and The Walking Dead.

In addition to the cover art above, iFanboy has provided Ed Brubaker's amusing NYCC video announcement...



...and info from the solicitation.

FATALE #1
story ED BRUBAKER
art & cover SEAN PHILLIPS
colors DAVE STEWART
JANUARY 4
32 PAGES / FC / M
$3.50

GUNS! SEX! SECRET CULTS! AND MONSTERS!

Nothing the BEST-SELLING and AWARD-WINNING creators of SLEEPER, CRIMINAL and INCOGNITO have done so far will prepare you for the explosive debut of FATALE!

A reporter in 2012 stumbles on a secret that leads him down the darkest path imaginable… to a seductive woman who’s been on the run since 1935, a mobster who may be an immortal demon monster, and the stories of all the doomed men who’ve been caught in their decades-long struggle.

FATALE blends noir and horror to tell a riveting epic unlike anything you’ve seen before.

Meanwhile, Comic Book Resources has published an interview with Brubaker and a three-page "trailer" that echoes earlier previews of Criminal and Incognito.

All the artwork is also on display at Sean Phillips' blog.

Criminal is straight-up noir, Incognito is "apocalyptic pulp noir," and now Fatale is Lovecraftian horror noir -- or "noirror," as iFanboy put it. In addition to H.P. Lovecraft, Brubaker mentions being inspired by James M. Cain, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Joe Hill. He says that he doesn't watch slasher movies but loves The Omen, Hellboy, and Guillermo del Toro movies.

Other items of note from the news stories:

• Brubaker relays that this horror story was a long time coming, as was a project with Image, but "I love my relationship with Marvel, and I'll do more books at Icon for sure."
  
  
• The Image series will maintain the traditional $3.50 cover price for 32 pages of content.
  
  
• Missing from the solicitation is any hint of the extra essays that have become a staple of the pair's monthly work for Icon.
  
  
• Also missing is long-time colorist Val Staples. Dave Stewart colored the last two issues of Criminal, and Brubaker says that he's "now our colorist," returning to working with Brubaker and Phillips after their first collaboration, Batman: Gotham Noir.
  
  
• At least the first twelve issues will include 50/50 covers: the project is planned for a 12-issue run, but "it might get bigger."
  
  
• In the lull between Criminal and Fatale, Sean Phillips has been working on a "European graphic novel."
  
  
• Longtime readers can guess what would have been -- and may still be -- the next Criminal story arc, as Brubaker alludes to "some prison break story."

The tagline for the teaser is simply this:

EVERY BLESSING IS A CURSE

I wouldn't go so far as to apply that line to Fatale itself, but I gather that there will be at least fifteen months between issues of Criminal (October 2011 to December 2012), and that's going to be a long wait for my all-time favorite comic.

In the meantime, the new year brings a new name in horror: FATALE.

Innocent #3, In Stores Tomorrow.

Online listings line up with the theory we posted a few weeks back, and this afternoon I was able to confirm it personally: Criminal: The Last of the Innocent #3 is in stores tomorrow, a mere fortnight since the second issue.

Don't be the last square on the block to get your copy of the crime comic so good, it oughta be illegal.

The Last of the Innocent #2: The Reviews.

Over at Comics Alliance, a webcomic was recently posted, on how lapsed readers could be brought back to comics. A couple images of sophisticated, modern comics include all three of Brubaker and Phillips' major collaborations.



We have Criminal, Incognito, and even Sleeper alongside some of my other favorite works, all crime comics of one flavor or another: Brubaker and Rucka's Gotham Central, Chew, and Darwyn Cooke's Parker books.

We found this webcomic as reviews have been released for the second issue of Criminal: The Last of the Innocent. In the back pages, Brubaker notes that the first issue received "the best press and reviews of anything we've ever done," and he hopes that the rest of the arc "lives up to the hype."

I haven't found as many reviews as last time -- as before, I'll update this post with more reviews as I find them -- but so far, so good.

--

IGN: "Criminal: The Last of the Innocent is quickly becoming the high point of the franchise. Both Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are firing on all cylinders with this latest story, which manages to be more ambitious and more artistically and tonally diverse than any Criminal tale before it." 9.0 out of ten.

Comic Book Resources: "This arc of 'Criminal' is gearing up to be the best one yet. While this second issue isn’t quite as good as the smashing debut, it is better at the game of comics than nearly every other rag that drops this week." Four-and-a-half stars out of five.

Innocent #2, In Stores Tomorrow.

I'm in the middle of wrapping up a huge grad-school project, but I'm taking the time to post that the second issue of Criminal: The Last of the Innocent is out tomorrow.

Hectic schedule be damned, I'll be sure to grab a copy (or two!) and catch the latest chapter in this dark look at nostalgia before calling it a night. If anything, I'm anticipating this next issue even more than the first.

This Week, Noir Reprints, New and Old.

If one were to attempt collecting all the work created, individually, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, he would have to hunt down over twenty years' worth of work for each. Altogether, the two have produced on the order of a thousand comic books.

Their collaborative work is much more manageable. The two have worked together, off and on, for over a decade, to produce what I would consider to be four (correction: five -- no, six! -- no, SEVEN!) major works:

• Batman: Gotham Noir (DC, 2001) - A single-issue, prestige-format Elseworlds comic.
• "The Turning Point" (DC, 2002) - Batman #603, part 11 of the event "Bruce Wayne: Fugitive," the issue is also a fairly self-contained story where Batman visits a retiring police officer who asks him to solve his one remaining open case.
•  Sleeper (WildStorm, 2003-2005) - Two 12-issue "seasons" of the super-powered espionage thriller.
• "The Black Bird" (DC, 2004) - A single-issue story found in Hawkman Volume 4 #27, dated June 2004, since republished in last year's Brightest Day: 100-Page Spectacular.
• "Only Takes a Night" (DC, 2004) - A single issue story found in Catwoman Volume 3 #32, dated August 2004, republished nowhere, so far as I know.
• Criminal (Icon, 2006-present) - Twenty-three issues thus far, counting last month's debut of "The Last of the Innocent," plus two short-story "emissions" have been published in anthology collections.
• Incognito (Icon, 2009-2011) - Two mini-series for this modern take on pulp, totaling 11 issues, so far.

(Update, August 20th. Originally overlooked the Hawkman issue, the reprint of which we noted only very briefly last year.)

(Update, December 30th. Also originally overlooked the Catwoman issue: I just discovered the story and tracked down the back issue, only over the last couple months.)

(Update, February 11th, 2013.  Also overlooked Batman #603; I re-read the back issue a few months back but failed to update this list.)

There are two works that I would consider "minor" collaborations, NOT because the work isn't great (it is), but because neither are emphatically Brubaker-Phillips creations.

First, way back in 1999, Sean Phillips inked Michael Lark's pencils for the last three chapters of Ed Brubaker's four-issue Vertigo mini-series, Scene of the Crime. The story, "A Little Piece of Goodnight," was then collected in a trade paperback.

Then, in 2005, Sean Phillips began creating cover art for DC's Gotham Central, starting with issue #33 and "Dead Robin." That was the last story arc Ed Brubaker worked on, and Phillips continued creating the covers for stories by Brubaker's co-writer, Greg Rucka, until the series' end in 2006. Gotham Central has been collected a couple times, and the complete 40-issue run has been released in hardcover and is being re-released this year, in trade-paperback format.

Brubaker and Phillips' collaborative work is relatively easy to hunt down, especially in collected editions. I've checked a couple of retailer lists -- through The Savage Critics and the home page for Great Escape Comics -- and they confirm two more arrivals this week.

First, we have the trade paperback for Incognito: Bad Influences, collecting the second story arc, which wrapped up earlier this year.

Second, we have Batman: Gotham Noir, being republished (for the first time!) as DC Comics Presents Batman: Gotham Noir #1. I believe the book will be a one-shot collecting the entire story -- and the official site lists a second story by Brubaker and artist Scott McDaniel, from Batman #604 (2002).

So, we have Gotham Noir, and we have what Brubaker has described as Apocalyptic Pulp Noir. We have a reprint of Brubaker and Phillips' first major collaboration, and we have the collection for their latest work.

This is going to be a good week for those who want to see how the pair's work has developed over the years.

Slight Delay for Innocent #2.

From his Twitter page, Ed Brubaker relays that the second issue of Criminal: Last of the Innocent, has been delayed slightly. The issue was due this week, but a "scheduling mishap" means that it will arrive just two weeks before issue #3.

I contacted the fine folks at Great Escape Comics in Marietta, Georgia, and they relay that the second issue is now scheduled for July 27th, so the third issue should reach stores around August 10th.

I should be done with my massive final project for graduate school by then, and I'll have time to flesh out some recent thoughts on the crime comic. In the meantime, there are plenty of reviews for the excellent first issue of the latest mini-series.