So I Read Incognito

A 250 word (or less) review of Incognito and Incognito: Bad Influences 
by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Val Staples; Icon Comics

Comics have a pretty interesting and rich history that predates the dominance of Superhero comics: a pulpy time of detective stories and larger-than-life proto-superheroes. It’s like a kind of primordial soup of early comics organisms filled with adventure and camp and dastardly-do. Much like biological evolution, a lot of this early experimentation failed to thrive as business models and tastes changed, causing a winnowing of what comics are. Now, a lot of what survived the various comics epochs did so out of some form of superior quality and many books and ideas died out or were abandoned for good reason. However, like any evolutionary process, some pretty cool ideas, concepts, and characters were lost along the way. Incognito is Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' mad invention that reanimates some of the best elements of pulp crime and adventure comics and reinvigorates them with modern storytelling sensibilities. Incognito tells the story of Zack Overkill (who my brother maintains has the best name in all of comics) as he languishes, depowered in witness protection, pining for his old life as a heavy hitter for the imprisoned criminal mastermind Black Death and what happens to him when temptation gets the better of him. Incognito: Bad Influences continues the story of Overkill trying to make good in the face of temptation. These are excellent comics that exemplify everything I love about Brubaker/Phillips collaborations and really showcases the underappreciated magic of the pulp era. It's kind of like the comics equivalent of animatronic dinosaurs.

Word count: 249

So I Read Criminal: Bad Night

A 250 word (or less) review of the fourth Criminal collection
By Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, Icon Comics

I remember reading a book introduction written by Ed Brubaker where he discussed the downward spiral of the protagonist as a formative element of good Crime/Noir fiction. You know, that particular way in which the "hero" of Noir stories are often undercut by events and then pummeled and dragged through the mud before being buried in their hubris, poor judgement, or just plain shitty luck? Well, Criminal: Bad Night has always exemplified this genre trope for me. In Bad Night Jacob Kurtz, a former counterfeiter turned legitimate newspaper cartoonist, is accidentally dragged back into his life of crime. While trying to walk off his insomnia at a local diner Kurtz accidentally gets caught in a domestic dispute between a thug and his ravishing lady friend. Kurtz tries to give the drunken damsel in distress a ride home and... events spiral out of control. Criminal bad night is another excellent book from Brubaker and Phillips which drags you into their booze and blood and sex filled world of violent criminals. The art is incredible, the writing superb, and the world created endlessly fascinating. I love these books, and I suspect you will too.

Word count: 192

Previously:
So I Read Criminal: Coward
So I Read Criminal: Lawless
So I Read Criminal: The Dead and The Dying
So I Read Fatale: Death Chases Me