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Reckless & The Pandemic Pt. 2: Mortal Contemplations

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Previously: Pt. 1 – Pulp-Noir Nostalgia

Discovering Brubaker & Phillips

I’ve been reading comics my entire life, but the early years mostly consisted of me getting an assortment of old, random issues or trades with no sequence to them. I had copies of Batman: Ten Nights of the Beast, Superboy Annuals, Ghost Rider, etc. My first trip to a real comic book store, and my first ongoing series I kept up with was Captain America (2005) by Ed Brubaker, Steve Epting and Mike Perkins. I was around 11 years old, and I followed the monthly adventures of Cap discovering his old sidekick, Bucky Barnes, was being controlled as the assassin, The Winter Soldier. The early parts of the Brubaker run were infused with a cold war spy thriller energy, and the desire to revive Bucky came from Brubaker’s own nostalgia. [Read more…] about Reckless & The Pandemic Pt. 2: Mortal Contemplations

Reckless & The Pandemic Pt. 1: Pulp-Noir Nostalgia

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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

Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Steve Phillips: Deluxe Edition Vol. 2 Review!

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Have you read Part One yet? Like Criminal, you don’t have to read anything earlier to enjoy what’s here. But, also like Criminal, you’ll be missing out if you don’t. All set? Because today we’re going over the second Criminal Deluxe Edition, with the continuing stories of Center City, and the people who live there.

Collected here, we have “Bad Night,” where we get to know Jake, an ex-counterfeiter and current cartoonist. In “The Sinners” we check in on Tracy Lawless who, against his wishes, has stuck around Center City. Finally, in “The Last of the Innocent” we meet Riley Richards, a character who is definitely and absolutely nothing like Archie Andrews, unhappily married to somebody that bears no resemblance whatsoever to Veronica Lodge. This second collection continues the quality that Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips showed in the first. Their first collection was notable for stylistic choices, and playing with the norms of the crime genre. Here they ratchet those choices up to eleven, managing to do so without any loss of story or effect.

[Read more…] about Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Steve Phillips: Deluxe Edition Vol. 2 Review!