fiction, including the work of Ross Macdonald, Robert B. And it gave us a way to escape the pandemic doom at the same time.”Īs he pondered what to do next, Brubaker found himself finding comfort in classic P.I. But at that point it really did seem possible that the comics market would go away, so we decided to start working on a graphic novel, figuring if the worst came, we could sell it on Kickstarter or something. I didn’t want to just sit around and see what the future would bring us. “So I scrambled to think of something Sean and I could work on, anyway. We had been about to launch a new monthly comic, and suddenly those didn’t exist anymore,” Brubaker said. “During those first weeks of lockdown, the entire comics industry shut down. The series follows sort-of private eye Ethan Reckless, a modern synthesis of classic pulp detectives like Philip Marlowe, Easy Rawlins, and Matthew Scudder with a wholly modern and knowing twist. The end result, Reckless, has proven to be a smashing success for the creators and its publisher, indie comics company, Image Comics-in terms of sales, acclaim, and general buzz. It’s a love letter to classic private eye fiction, steeped in Brubaker’s vision of a Los Angeles that no longer exists, with a flawed and complex protagonist, all masterfully illustrated by Phillips, with colors by his son, Jacob Phillips.

Complete, done-in-one stories that present a complete adventure, but also serve as part of a bigger, ongoing series. Instead of releasing their stories via monthly, comic shop-focused “floppy” comic book installments that would later be bound and collected as trade paperbacks for the book trade, the creators have pivoted to doing a series of original graphic novels.

Their latest collaboration, while still firmly entrenched in the dark corners of graphic novel crime, marks a departure of sorts.

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