Bullets: Looking Back and Looking Ahead.

Been a while for hail of bullets, but we have a few news items as we wrap up the year.

• Looking Back, Part I: Flashmob Fridays Discuss Criminal. The thought-provoking writers at Flashmob Fridays tackled "Last of the Innocent" this past week. Our own Alan David Doane introduced their collection of reviews and essays, and I had the honor of being a guest contributor. The essays are as provocative as the mini-series that inspired them, and I highly recommend them.
  
  
• Looking Ahead, Part I: Brubaker and Phillips Discuss Fatale. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Fatale debuts the first week of the new year -- January 4th, specifically, with two different covers for this first issue -- and last week both creators spoke with Newsarama about the horror noir comic they're publishing through Image Comics.
  
  Brubaker mentions that the book's origins trace back to before Criminal, but even now he's experimenting with the book's structure. As is usually the case with his collaborations with Brubaker, Phillips doesn't know where the story's going. He notes that the genres of horror and noir are right in his wheelhouse, and he discusses the difficulty in drawing a woman who's sexy and charismatic, at least more so than his typically realistic characters.
  
  (I think the women he's drawn are often quite stunning already.)
  
  The interview confirms that Fatale will run at least twelve issues; a couple days later, Brubaker wrote that the series will run "probably 15 or 16 issues."
  
  
• Looking Back, Part II: Phillips and Criterion. It's been a great year for fans of crime fiction. There's Darwyn Cooke's "Martini Edition" of his Parker adaptations, reviewed here. The University of Chicago Press published another five Parker novels and announced the publication of some of Richard Stark's Grofield novels for next year. And after a year hiatus, Hard Case Crime returned with four books in two months, including its first hardcover.
  
  It's also been a pretty good year for Sean Phillips fans, even beyond Criminal. We reported that he had created the cover art for the Criterion Collection's February release of Sweet Smell of Success, and we highlighted the creation of that artwork, but we completely missed his work for the November release of the classic courtroom drama, Twelve Angry Men.
  
  At his blog, Phillips posted the original painting, the subsequent cover, and a detail of the painting.
  
  As Phillips later highlighted, the film made Vanity Fair's Holiday Design and Technology Guide.
  
  If you got a gift card for Christmas, you know what you can do with it.
  
  
• Looking Ahead, Part II: Phillips on Conan. It hasn't been published too frequently, but I get a real kick reading Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword, an anthology series by Dark Horse, featuring all sorts of characters created by the pulp giant. Scheduled for a late March release, the fourth issue has Sean Phillips drawing Howard's most famous creation, Conan. All through October, Phillips posted artwork, including thumbnails, pencils, details, and works-in-progress.

In the coming weeks, we'll link to the end-of-the-year lists that recommend Criminal, and we'll pass on previews, interviews, and reviews to the next big thing from Brubaker and Phillips, Fatale.

New in Stores: a Criminal Trade and a Fatale Preview.

The trade paperback for Criminal: The Last of the Innocent is out today, and that's not the only noteworthy material in stores today. In the back of Chew #22, we find the three-page "trailer" of Fatale along with the "Beauty" cover art to the first issue.

Cross promotion between Layman and Guillory's offbeat crime comedy and Brubaker and Phillips' upcoming horror noir is a good thing: both are being published by Image Comics, and I believe they both appeal to the same sort of twisted but sophisticated reader.

The preview may appear in other comics this month, but fans should check out Chew if they want a print copy of the teaser that's already appeared online, and the book's main event is well worth reading, too.

"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.