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Today’s the day. You’re done with work. You don’t have any appointments or plans. The evening belongs to you. And how do you use this opportunity, this oh-so-rare freedom from responsibility? Cracking open a vintage pulp paperback! Maybe you’re finally reading Richard Stark’s Parker. Or you bought an eBay lot of Travis McGee books and you’re at the good part of Darker than Amber. The new Reacher TV series is good, perhaps you wanna check out Killing Floor and see what all the fuss is about? Or maybe you’re like me, and this uninterrupted evening belongs not to an old favorite, but rather a new comfort. Today’s the day you open Reckless by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips and Jacob Phillips.

One thing is clear as you burn through the adventures of Ethan Reckless, a troublemaker-for-hire: he satisfies a craving for the simple efficiency of the pulp fiction hero. He lives in a world that no longer exists: Everyone smokes, secrets are currency, and his quiet, pointed sentences paint a bleak picture of humanity. Reckless is at once the successor to an entire industry of detective novels of the last century and firmly grounded in where we are today. As we struggle through our third year of COVID-19, and process the same struggles day in and day out, we’re all seeking the escapist moral duplicity of a Parker or a Travis McGee character. Someone that takes all the complexity and distills it down into a soothing, almost Zen acceptance as we solve one problem at a time.

It’s hard to believe it’s been three years of lockdowns, and I don’t entirely remember how I filled most of that time. With the exception of how many hours I devoted to reading and thinking about Reckless. The series would not exist without the pandemic and it’s easily the perfect company through our tumultuous times. [Read more…] about Reckless & The Pandemic Pt. 1: Pulp-Noir Nostalgia