Kill Or Be Killed Vol 1 & #5 In Stores Today, Walking Dead Tribute Variant in February -- and More!

After a relatively quiet December, Kill Or Be Killed returns today.  At your local shop, you should find both the first, discounted trade paperback collection and the next issue in Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' ongoing vigilante story.  A four-page preview of KOBK #5 is available at Image's website, linked above, and on its homepage, Image Comics highlights the new issue with a couple extra image details and some cryptic allusions to the new issue.

--

We saw that the year ended with a new email newsletter from Ed Brubaker, and subscribers were treated to an early look at the 4-page preview, at a slightly lower resolution.  We also got a preview of the artwork for the back-matter essay, in which a new contributor -- culture critic Kim Morgan -- takes a close look at the 1971 black comedy Little Murders.  And, we get a bit of behind-the-scenes artwork and some elaboration on the premise of Kill or Be Killed,

Brubaker briefly explained why he abruptly shut down his Twitter feed in late November:  he explains that one reason is that, despite attracting some 90,000 followers, more people receive his newsletter than see an individual tweet.

And, he reminds readers that he's working on other projects...

(The culture site Vulture ended 2016 with a preview of this year's upcoming horror movies, and the list includes the Brubaker-penned remake of Maniac Cop, with a release date still TBD.  We last reported that the movie was scheduled to be filmed this past summer.)

...in his newsletter, Brubaker teases, "I have a few secret TV projects in various stages. One that you could hear about at any moment."  We haven't seen any announcements so far, but we'll be sure to keep our readers posted.

Readers can check out the entire newsletter online, and Ed Brubaker has now provided a simpler web address for new readers to subscribe:

http://tinyurl.com/edbrubaker-list

--

Finally, the big news this month was that, on Friday the 13th, Image Comics announced a set of variant covers to be released this February, on the 25th anniversary of the publishing company's debut.  Current series will honor the past with homages of important covers from other Image titles -- for instance, Sex Criminals and The Wicked + The Divine pay tribute to each other's debut issues -- and the press release includes eleven of the fifteen 25th anniversary variant covers.

At the top of the page is the variant cover for Kill Or Be Killed #6, honoring what may be Image's most widely read single issue, The Walking Dead #1.

It appears that Sean Phillips did this cover -- check out the SP17 on the wall, just underneath Dylan's shotgun-filled hand -- and a close look reveals what has captured Dylan's attention.  In the reflection of the shattered storefront window, we see the cop from the standard cover for issue #6.

The Complete, Collaborative Works of Brubaker and Phillips: A Brief Bibliography.

The following are the collaborative works of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, listed by the original sale date of the single-issue story or the story arc's debut, cross-referenced against Comic Collector Live and the Grand Comics Database. Dates are listed by month, with the day included in parentheses only to resolve any ambiguity in the order of release.

Titles that currently span more than one story arc or comprise at least one original graphic novel (OGN) are color-coded, and the original trade paperback collections are listed if a single listed work spans more than one collection.

Unless otherwise indicated, all works below credit Ed Brubaker as the sole writer and Sean Phillips as the sole artist, possibly excluding lettering and coloring. Relevant works that exclude one or the other creator are included in parenthesis.

Scene of the Crime
Pencils by Michael Lark, Inks by Lark (#1) & Sean Phillips (#2-4)
DC Vertigo, Mar-Jun 1999

Batman: Gotham Noir
DC, Mar 2001

Batman #603 - “The Turning Point”
DC, May 2002

(Point Blank, Sleeper prologue, written by Brubaker and drawn by Colin Wilson, with the protagonist Holden Carver designed by Phillips: WildStorm, Aug-Dec 2002)

Sleeper
Collected in “Out in the Cold” (#1-6) & “All False Moves” (#7-12)
WildStorm, Jan 2003 - Jan 2004

(Coup D’Etat: Sleeper written by Brubaker and drawn by Jim Lee: WildStorm, Feb 2004)

“Sleeper, Season Two: Prelude”
Coup D'Etat: Afterword
Wildstorm, Mar 2004

Hawkman (2002) #27 - “The Black Bird”
DC, Apr 2004

Catwoman (2002) #32 - “Only Takes a Night”
DC, Jun 2004 (June 23)

Sleeper: Season Two
Collected in “A Crooked Line” (#1-6) and “The Long Way Home” (#7-12)
WildStorm, Jun 2004 - May 2005 (June 30)

Gotham Central #33-40
Cover art by Phillips, #33-35, 37-40
Created by Brubaker & Greg Rucka; Brubaker stopped writing for the series after #36
DC, Jul 2005 - Feb 2006 (series debuted in Dec 2002)

Criminal: Coward
Criminal #1-5
Icon, Oct 2006 - Mar 2007

Criminal: Lawless
Criminal #6-10
Icon, May-Nov 2007

Criminal: The Dead and the Dying
Criminal Vol. 2 #1-3
Icon, Feb-Jun 2008

Criminal Emission: “No One Rides for Free”
Liberty Comics
Image, Jul 2008

Criminal: Bad Night
Criminal Vol. 2 #4-7
Icon, Aug-Dec 2008

Incognito
Icon, Jan-Sep 2009

Criminal: The Sinners
Icon, Oct 2009 - Mar 2010 (Oct 7)

Criminal Emission: “21st Century Noir”
Noir: A Collection of Crime Comics
Dark Horse, Oct 2009 (Oct 21)

Incognito: Bad Influences
Icon, Oct 2010 - Mar 2011

Criminal: The Last of the Innocent
Icon, Jun-Sep 2011

Fatale
Collected in five trade paperbacks and two deluxe hardcovers
Book 1: Death Chases Me (#1-5)
Book 2: The Devil's Business (#6-10)
Book 3: West of Hell (#11-14)
Book 4: Pray for Rain (#15-19)
Book 5: Curse the Demon (#20-24)
Image, Jan 2012 - Jul 2014

The Fade Out
Collected in three trade paperbacks, each comprising a 4-issue “act”
Subsequently collected in a single-volume deluxe HC and bare-bones TPB
Image, Aug 2014 - Jan 2016

Criminal: Wrong Time, Wrong Place
Criminal Special Edition & 10th Anniversary Special
Image, Feb 2015 & Apr 2016

Kill or Be Killed
Collected in four trade-paperback volumes and in a single deluxe HC
Vol. 1 (#1-4); Vol. 2 (#5-10); Vol. 3 (#11-14); Vol 4. (#15-20)
Image, Aug 2016 - Jun 2018

"The Spirit" single-page story
The Spirit of Eisner: Celebrating the Centenary of the Birth of Will Eisner
Phillips also coordinated the publication of this newspaper-sized comic
Lakes International Comic Art Festival, Oct 2017

My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies
A Criminal Novella, published as a hardcover OGN
Image, Oct 2018

Criminal: "The Night Callers"
Originally untitled, with the title provided in the deluxe hardcovers
Criminal Vol 3. #1
Image, Jan 2019

Criminal: Bad Weekend
Collected in a hardcover GN & expanded with 10 additional pages, Jul 2019
Criminal Vol 3. #2-3
Image, Feb-Mar 2019

Criminal: “Orphans”
Criminal Vol 3. #4
Image, Apr 2019

Criminal: Cruel Summer
Criminal Vol 3. #5-12
Image, Jul 2019-Jan 2020

Pulp
Hardcover OGN
Image, Jul 2020

Reckless
Hardcover OGN
Image, Dec 2020

Friend of the Devil: A Reckless Book
Hardcover OGN
Image, Apr 2021

Destroy All Monsters: A Reckless Book
Hardcover OGN
Image, Oct 2021

The Ghost in You: A Reckless Book
Hardcover OGN
Image, Apr 2022

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow: A Grofield Story"
17-page story in Richard Stark's Parker: The Martini Edition Last Call
"For Donald Westlake and Darwyn Cooke"
IDW Publishing, May 2022

Neo Noir: The World of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
A 64-page collection of previously released "trailers" (finally!)
Includes essays & interviews written by David Harper
Part of the series of $1 "Image Firsts" comics
Image, Oct 2022 (Oct 5)

Follow Me Down: A Reckless Book
Hardcover OGN
Image, Oct 2022 (Oct 12)

Criminal Story: "Teeg's Christmas Carol"
First short story not subtitled a "Criminal Emission"
Image! anthology #9
Cover art by Sean Phillips
Image, Dec 2022

Night Fever
Hardcover OGN
Image, June 2023

Where The Body Was
Hardcover OGN
Image, December 2023

Houses of the Unholy
Hardcover OGN
Image, August 2024

The Knives: A Criminal Book

Hardcover OGN
Image, August 2025

Giant-Size Criminal #1
One-shot comic book
Image, December 2025

Five Gears In Reverse: A Criminal Book

Includes Giant-Size Criminal #1 as the first chapter, "The High Roller"

Hardcover OGN
Image, May 2026

Unfinished Tales
Hardcover OGN
Image, November 2026

---

Oversized Deluxe Hardcovers

Beginning with their first creator-owned series Criminal, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have released deluxe editions of their major collaborations -- oversized hardcovers with extensive bonus material.

The team subsequently released a similar hardcover for the early work Scene of the Crime, with Michael Lark; while the monthly issues and trade paperback were published by DC's Vertigo imprint, the oversized hardcover of the creator-owned mini-series was published by Image Comics.

DC's Vertigo imprint released an omnibus for the duo's WildStorm title Sleeper, and using their main imprint DC has released an omnibus collecting all 40 issues of Gotham Central, co-created and co-written by Ed Brubaker with cover art for 7 issues by Sean Phillips.

Sean Phillips has also released an art book spanning his entire career, with extensive sections on his work with Ed Brubaker up to their then-recent series Fatale. The noir-horror title was their first work published by Image Comics, and Phillips' art book was published by Dynamite.

Together, these deluxe editions collect all of Brubaker and Phillips' collaborative work, except for the early, short works published by DC's main imprint (Gotham Noir and single issues) and the duo's most recent work, having been published too soon to be repackaged.

We've listed them in roughly chronological order. Books for a single title are grouped together, based on the publication date of the title's very first issue; The Art of Sean Phillips covers the artist's career up to Fatale and is therefore placed immediately after that title.

Scene of the Crime
Image, Nov 2012

Batman: The Man Who Laughs: The Deluxe Edition
oversized, dust-jacketed hardcover featuring three Batman stories written by Brubaker
- The Man Who Laughs with art by Dough Mahnke
- Batman: Gotham Noir with Sean Phillips
- Made of Wood with art by Patch Zircher, Aaron Sowd, & Steve Bird
DC, Oct 2020

The Sleeper Omnibus
collects Point Blank, Sleeper, Coup d'Etat Afterward, and Season Two
Vertigo, Mar 2013

Gotham Central
DC, May 2016

Criminal The Deluxe Edition Vol. 1
collects Coward, Lawless, The Dead & the Dying, "No One Rides for Free"
Icon, Nov 2009
2nd ed. Image, Apr 2021

Criminal The Deluxe Edition Vol. 2
collects Bad Night, The Sinners, Last of the Innocent, "21st Century Noir"
Icon, Oct 2012
2nd ed. Image, Apr 2021

Criminal The Deluxe Edition Vol. 3
collects Wrong Time, Wrong Place; My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies; Criminal (2019) #1-4, including Bad Weekend
Image, Nov 2020

Criminal Cruel Summer
effectively a fourth deluxe HC, collecting Criminal (2019) #1, 5-12
Image, Aug 2020

Incognito The Classified Edition
collects Incognito and Incognito: Bad Influences

Icon, Sep 2012

Fatale The Deluxe Edition Vol. 1
collects issues #1-10
Image, Mar 2014

Fatale The Deluxe Edition Vol. 2
collects issues #11-24
Image, Nov 2015

Also: Fatale Compendium Trade Paperback
collects issues #1-24
Image, Jul 2024

The Art of Sean Phillips
Dynamite, Nov 2013

The Fade Out
Image, Oct 2016

Kill or Be Killed The Deluxe Edition
Image, Nov 2019

Pulp The Process Edition
Hardcover OGN
Image, Aug 2022

---

[Original introduction to the bibliography]

Robert and I are starting off the new year with a long look back to the very beginning of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' amazing work together. Since we've had a month-long break between issues of Kill Or Be Killed, we're taking time this week to devote an Undertow Podcast episode to their very earliest collaboration, Scene of the Crime.

The pair tends to produce ten comic books a year, and we may use these occasional quiet months to slowly work our way through their entire body of work -- or at least their work as a team, a still quite hefty subset of the many books that list Brubaker or Phillips in their credits.

To prep for this literary travelogue, I made some notes on their books' order of publication: we posted a brief list of their major and minor collaborations back in 2011, but it didn't go into details about story arcs. The two keep returning to our favorite series Criminal between their other titles -- and we've had three new titles debut in the last half-decade -- so it was worth putting together these additional notes, and we think our readers might appreciate our posting the list online.

New UNDERTOW PODCAST, March Solicitations, and a Reader Wishlist.

We're happy to announce that the latest episode of the Undertow Podcast was released earlier this week, with a focus on Kill Or Be Killed #4.  The issue, released last month, concludes the first arc, which will be collected on January 18th, on the same day that stores see the publication of issue #5.

As with all previous installments, Episode 7 of the Undertow Podcast is available on iTunes and at Podbean.

While another busy year for Brubaker and Phillips is wrapping up, we continue to find news for the new year.  Image Comics has released its March 2017 solicitations, and  KOBK #7 is included, with a cover that features Kira with a new, blue hairdo.

Kill or Be Killed #7 

Story: Ed BrubakerArt: Elizabeth Breitweiser, Sean PhillipsCover: Sean Phillips 

March 15 / 40 pages / Full Color / M / $3.99 

As Dylan hides from the NYPD, Kira begins to get suspicious of some of his mysterious behavior. BRUBAKER and PHILLIPS’ newest hit book keeps hitting! And remember that every issue has all the extra back page articles and art their fans have come to expect.

Moving from the creator-owned comics at Image to one of the many licensed titles at IDW -- and from the blog's raison d'etre to this blogger's more personal tastes -- we see a March solicitation for that brilliant and bonkers book, Tom Scioli's Transformers vs GI Joe.

Transformers vs G.I. JOE: The Movie Adaptation

Tom Scioli (w & a & c)FC • 40 pages • $4.99

Imagine a world where the greatest comic book crossover of all time inspires a movie adaptation… and that movie adaptation inspires its own comic book! Visionary writer-artist Tom Scioli returns to the weird world of Transformers vs. G.I. Joe and brings an even weirder twist to this new story: what would the comic book adaptation of the movie version of the comic book look like? It’s time to find out in the most epic, scintillating, off-the-wall, exciting comic of 2017!

(A trade-paperback collecting Scioli's earlier work, American Barbarian is also advance solicited for April.)

So readers are clear, we want to explain that this is apparent one-shot is a comic-book adaptation of a movie THAT DOES NOT (YET) EXIST.  This imaginary movie is an adaptation of the original comic book maxi-series, which was an amalgam of the cartoons, movies, comic books, and toys from two different franchises.

I've mentioned the book before, including it as a recommendation in our podcast's first episode and posting a montage of the cover art for the series' 14 issues.  It's not the most obvious book to recommend to readers of the grounded, often realistic noir books of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, but it's become one of my all-time faves in part because it pushes the medium of comics to such an outrageous degree.

I've seen that a deluxe hardcover of the series is on its way, and since Christmas is almost upon us, I'm taking a few moments here to sketch out my "wish list" for this definitive edition.

--


1. EVERY PAGE.

In October, IDW released its January solicitations, which included Transformers vs G.I. Joe: The Quintessential Collection, advance solicited for a March release.

This deluxe edition should include, at a very minimum, every page of the actual story.  It's solicited to include "all 13 issues," but that doesn't quite cover it, and these are the additional parts of the story, in decreasing order of importance:

• Issue #0, which was IDW's release for Free Comic Book Day 2014
• "FBCD Funnies," a two-page story included in the 2015 FCBD release
• "Black Cybertron," a four-page illustrated prose story that replaced the standard commentary notes in the back pages of issue #10
• The sketch of Megatron in the inside-front cover of issue #11; TFwiki.net points out that, more so than any other such sketch, this drawing ties into the story, as Megatron issues a fateful command

A "quintessential" collection of the entire story would ideally include all of this content.


2. THE ENTIRE PAGE.

I think it's important, not only to include every page of story content, but also to ensure that every important element on the page is visible.  This has been less of a problem with Brubaker and Phillips' books, where the artwork has frequently been contained within white-bordered pages, but there are a few pages in TFvsJoe where this will be difficult, at least for the large, hardcover collection.

Most notably, "FBCD Funnies" is essentially a two-page spread that mimics a page of newspaper comic strips, and two of the strips span both pages.  The entire work was easy to read in Free Comic Book Day release, but the center of the story was difficult to make out in the trade paperback collection.  Without careful foresight, these center strips will be even tougher to read in the massive hardcover.

Extra care would need to be taken to account for the "FBCD Funnies" story and other two-page spreads, and if all cover art will be included, I would also pay special attention to the wraparound cover for issue #13, where the middle of the scene has the enigmatic Snake Eyes swinging, Spider-Man-style, between the two armies and toward the reader.


3. THE CORRECT ORDER.

If all the story's content is going to be included in the release, it would be preferable to print it in the order of its publication, helpfully summarized at the top of TFWiki's main page for the series, an excellent resource for catching every reference and allusion.

I would recommend the following order:

• issue #0, ending with the "Battlefield Report" and possibly the wanted poster of Optimus Prime
• issues #1-6
• "FBCD Funnies"
• issues #7-10
• "Black Cybertron"
• inside-cover sketch of Megatron's command, from issue #11
• issues #11-12
• issue #13 wraparound cover (as POSSIBLY part of the actual story)
• issue #13

I think this sequence would provide the best possible reading experience.


4. EXTRA CONTENT.

The deluxe edition should include all the bonus content from the monthly issues and the trade paperback collections, and preferably more behind-the-scenes content, if it's available.  At a minimum, the book should not have LESS than the trade collections.

By my count, there were some 40 different covers for the entire series, and it would be nice for all of them to be included, such as my favorite subscription cover, created by Ulises Farinas for issue #10 and shown below.

(It would also be nice to include the original cover art for issue #11, with Duke smoking a cigar.)

Nearly every issue included a page-by-page commentary by the creators, and that too should be preserved in this collection.  Ideally, all of this bonus content would be included at the end, so that the entire, crazy story can be enjoyed without interruption.

(If I were designing a kind of "Absolute" edition, I would actually print this bonus content in a separate book.  The main story and the bonus features would be in two books held within a single slipcase, and that bonus book's cover would resemble the "Decepticobranomicon" and have the series' more obscure iconography, including a certain legendary tomahawk.  It would make it far easier for the reader to read the commentary and the referenced page simultaneously.)


5. AN ACCOUNTING FOR THE MOVIE ONE-SHOT.

Finally, the deluxe edition should account for this new psuedo-adaptation of the movie that doesn't quite exist.  It has been clear from Tom Scioli's Twitter feed that he has been working on new material, but it has not been clear whether it will be included in the Quintessential Edition.

In finally catching up with Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier earlier this year, I chose the Deluxe Edition released in 2015 over the larger Absolute Edition, in part because the former included all the "Absolute" content plus the Justice League: New Frontier Special that was released alongside the direct-to-DVD animated adaptation.  It still seems odd that the Absolute Edition didn't turn out to be comprehensive.

I have the same head-scratching reaction to this TFvsJoe hardcover, as it seems that it will omit this last entry in Tom Scioli's work on the series.

There is, however, a way to work around this, an idea I'd like to highlight for Scioli and cowriter John Barber:

DON'T MAKE THE MOVIE ADAPTATION THE LAST BIT OF MATERIAL, A CODA TO THE ORIGINAL SERIES:  MAKE IT THE FIRST BIT OF NEW MATERIAL, FOR AN EVENTUAL SECOND VOLUME.

Some of the series' best issues drew their focus onto a single character -- Destro, Scarlett, Falcon -- and maybe Scioli could return to the series each year with an extra-length annual, presenting a self-contained story much like the Spotlight books in the main Transformers comic-book continuity.

There's plenty of fertile ground for new stories:

• The histories of Earth, Cybertron, and their warring factions haven't yet been laid out in their entirety.
• Parts of the main story have yet to be told in any great detail, especially the fate of Koh-Buru-Lah.
• And, the status quo at the story's end provides an obvious starting point for other stories.

I'd actually compare TFvsJoe to New Frontier in this respect, in that -- unlike a remarkable but dour book like Watchmen -- both books make me want to spend more time in the worlds that they build, to see what happens next.

And if TFvsJoe had one drawback, it was that, in focusing on the humans and presenting the Cybertronians as alien invaders, we didn't get enough from the Autobots and Decepticons' pespectives.  That could be addressed in what is essentially an anthology series.

This movie-adaptation one-shot is solicited as 40 pages in length, and the series' concluding issue #13 -- "Armageddon" -- was 64 pages.  If Tom Scioli were to produce an annual one-shot in this sort of page range, there would be enough for a second hardcover collection in no time, in a decade or less.

This hypothetical second volume would be a separate beast from the first volume, and it would begin with a kind of recap of that first story, with "the official comic book adaptation" to the first story's "movie."

--

I had the pleasure of seeing a copy of the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare, on this year's state-by-state tour on this 400th anniversary of his death.  As a result, I've become even more aware of the benefits of a permanent, high-quality hardcopy publication of an otherwise transitory work of art.

Not to make too grand a comparison, but we've had the fortune to see Brubaker and Phillips' collaborations largely preserved in deluxe, hardcover editions -- Sleeper, Criminal, Incognito, Fatale, and most recently The Fade Out --  and I hope to see a similarly high-quality collection for the surprising masterpiece Transformers vs GI Joe.

Brubaker's Birthday and Interview -- and New Books for February.

We noted it elsewhere, retweeting warm birthday wishes from our podcast host Robert along with Sean Phillips' plug for their latest hardcover collection, but we missed noting here that November 17th was Ed Brubaker's fiftieth birthday.

Comics Alliance published a tribute to the writer, with a very good primer on his work.  The piece briefly reviews his career in creator-owned and work-for-hire titles -- with a few omissions, most notably 2000's Deadenders and the more recent Velvet -- and it captures the tone of most of his works, which the writer describes as nihilistic.

"Life truly has no meaning in Ed Brubaker’s greatest stories. It just is, and it is rarely generous. It provides little triumph. Heroes typically have victories; their stories end on high notes. In Brubaker’s best, there are no real victories to be had. Just survival, and sometimes not even that."

(I'm not sure I'd quite agree that the stories are nihilistic and not merely tragic. The Christian worldview makes room for noir, and in the sort of stories Brubaker tells,the weight of the moral law is felt, albeit much more in its violation than its fulfillment.  Even when it's the main characters who do terrible things, as with "The Last of the Innocent," we're invited to see that their actions really are terrible.  Like ours, their world is fallen and without any earthly hope, but that does not mean it's without any transcendent meaning.)

John R. Parker writes, quite correct that, since the debut of Criminal through Marvel's Icon imprint, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips "have released reams of brilliant material that is consistently short-listed for the best of the year, every year."

Brubaker's been busy with other work, too, and yesterday Moviefone published a wide-ranging interview with Brubaker, on Westworld, Marvel movies, and more.  He discusses his longtime goal of working in both comics and film, including the long process to breaking into Hollywood, having worked on screenplays since about 2000.  Now, he's happy to have both the collaborative work in the writers' room and the more independent work on his creator-owned comics.

He mentions the origins of his interest in noir -- his screenwriting uncle, his father letting him see his uncle's movies on late-night TV, and his aunt sending him his uncle's now-leatherbound screenplays with clippings inside.  

And, most intriguing, we have hints of new projects that may be soon to be announced.

"I have two different projects that are based on my books that are in development, at various stages. One is pretty close to being announced. Currently, I'm actually working on a TV show with a director that is a friend of mine, and that we've already sold, but it hasn't been announced yet. It'll probably be announced in the next week or two. And that's a thing that we created together." [emphasis mine]

As always, we'll keep our eyes peeled for the latest news.

In the meantime, Image Comics' February solicitations came out yesterday, with a full list online and available as a free digital comic, and another issue of Kill Or Be Killed is on the schedule, from Brubaker, Phillips, and Breitweiser.

KILL OR BE KILLED #6
STORY: ED BRUBAKER
ART: SEAN PHILLIPS & ELIZABETH BREITWEISER
COVER: SEAN PHILLIPS 

FEBRUARY 15 / 40 PAGES / FC / M / $3.99 

The second arc in BRUBAKER & PHILLIPS' runaway bestseller keeps the hits coming, as Dylan realizes how close he may be to being caught by the NYPD.  

Also, remember that every issue features all the backpage extras that BRUBAKER & PHILLIPS fans have come to expect.

This issue notably features the first cover without the narrator and vigilante, Dylan Cross.

One week after KOBK's Valentine's week publication, an even bigger release is scheduled for Brubaker fans: the deluxe hardcover collection of Velvet, his twisting espionage tale with art from Steve Epting and Bettie Breitweiser.

VELVET DELUXE HARDCOVER EDITION HC
STORY: ED BRUBAKER ART:
STEVE EPTING & ELIZABETH BREITWEISER
COVER: STEVE EPTING   

FEBRUARY 22 / 400 PAGES / FC / M / $49.99   

From the creators of Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes VELVET, a slick and sexy new take on the Cold War spy genre. What if the secretary to the man running the world's most top secret spy agency was actually their most dangerous weapon, once upon a time? VELVET is groundbreaking new work from one of the bestselling teams in comics, and now Velvet Templeton's first major storyline is collected in one oversized deluxe hardback with behind-the-scenes extras and articles. A must-have for any BRUBAKER & EPTING fan.   

Collects VELVET #1-15

We're guessing that the "oversized" hardcover will nicely complement the deluxe volumes from Brubaker/Phillips, and we note that this book only covers the "first major storyline."

Velvet Templeton will return, evidently, and we're still curious about the "huge" news that Brubaker teased in June, along with the "top secret" project with Steve Epting, who has since committed to the new Batwoman book.

---

...and that wasn't the only big news for us, as our favorite sci-fi comic finally returns!  Ken Garing's Planetoid was a sparsely written, gorgeously illustrated mini-series that concluded in 2013, and we're thrilled to see the sequel mini-series -- Planetoid: Praxis -- is scheduled for a February 1st release.

From Newsarama's version of Image's solicitations, it appears that the trade paperback for the original series is being offered again, and we couldn't recommend it more highly.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, and this announcement brings a kind of symmetry to today's big release, Chew #60 and the stunning conclusion to Layman and Guillory's surprisingly epic story.

New UNDERTOW Podcast, New Issue of KILL OR BE KILLED, and a New David Aja Variant Cover! (And More!)

It's a big week for fans of Brubaker and Phillips, and it began with the release of the Episode 6 of the Undertow Podcast, now available on iTunes and at Podbean.  In the episode, Robert and I discuss Kill Or Be Killed #3, we take a brief look at The Fade Out hardcover and HBO's Westworld, and we have a couple recommendations for our listeners.

Our discussion of issue #3 leads naturally enough to issue #4, and just yesterday, Ed Brubaker sent out a brief email newsletter with a five-page preview of the issue.  Kill Or Be Killed #4 is the finale for the ongoing series' first story arc, and Brubaker writes that the issue "answers some questions while asking some other ones," and he's "really pleased with how it's all come out."

In case you missed it, the newsletter can be found online along with a complete archive, and a link to sign up.  We strongly recommend subscribing for official news for the writer -- and his ramblings, and answers to reader questions -- and it looks to become his main outlet online.

The preview is also available at Image Comics' website: on their homepage, the publisher highlights the issue with the ominous tag that "Secrets don't always stay buried."

Kill Or Be Killed #4 is stores today.

Along with the new issue, new printings of the first three issues also arrive today.  Late last month, Image Comics announced that "rapid-fire printings" for the entire series have been rushed to meet "overwhelming customer demand."

The most noteworthy new printing has to be the fourth printing of issue #1, which features a new, wraparound cover by Ed Brubaker's Immortal Iron Fist collaborator, David Aja.  We're including an image of the cover below, and we'd like to bring your attention to an infernal character who appears on a cover for the first time.

And if a new Kill Or Be Killed isn't enough for the week, we have a couple other items worth mentioning, if not quite enough for a "bullets" entry.

GQ posted an interview with Ed Brubaker late in October: posted under "Books," the article focuses on The Fade Out, "his new story about the dark secrets of Old Hollywood," and Joshua Rivera writes that it might be "his most fascinating work."

The interview also touches on HBO's Westworld, for which Brubaker is a writer and supervising producer.  Monday, EW announced that the series has been renewed for a second, 10-episode season, which probably won't air until 2018, and that leads us back to an item we mentioned on the podcast but never got around to including here.

If you don't subscribe to HBO, you can still watch the 80-minute Westworld premiere online -- "The Original" which is available legally and for free, in a video embedded at Collider.  We are loath to admit that the episode still on our to-watch list.