Yes, Chapter Seven of Ed Brubaker, Marcos Martín, and Muntsa Vicente‘s post-YA series Friday here at last! This is it, the beginning of the end, the first chapter of the third and final act of our story.
Friday Fitzhugh has traveled back in time to the night where it all went wrong… Can she solve the mystery of Lance’s death before her time there runs out?
This one has it all: trees, racing cars, arcane daggers, trees, blizzards, interdimensional monsters, trees… And it’s all just one click of the mouse away, or finger tap or whatever you youngsters are using today at Panel Syndicate for whatever price you want to pay, including zero!
What if you had it all: wife, kids, stable career that involved international travel, but that wasn’t enough so you stumble into another identity and a wild world of sex, violence, and weirder, let’s say, more hallucinogenic things. This is the premise of Night Fever, a new graphic novel from Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Jacob Phillips that is dropping this summer. Night Fever‘s Jon is a foreign book buyer for a prestigious publisher and is off to a convention in Paris to get sales for his company. However, an advanced reading copy he flips through on the plane features a dream very similar to one that he has been having, and this leads to sleepless nights and the exact opposite of a boring day at the convention as Jon takes the new name Griffin and gets into incidents that are more Grand Theft Auto than the literary fiction that he peddles.
This overall tone of insomnia and losing touch with reality pervades much of Night Fever, especially its visuals with Jacob Phillips picking a big background color for each setting from red for a masquerade party to a cooler blue for Jon’s tossing, turning existential crises and others as the book progresses. The chosen color is a like a guide post through the askew angles and surreal storytelling choices from Sean Phillips and also help you get into Jon’s headspace as he begins to do things he’s only read about in books and sheds his boring, working life for a bit at night. The almost neurotic narration from Brubaker does act as a kind of tether between Griffin and Jon while also adding psychological depth to him. Ed Brubaker’s captions continue to be some of the best and are additive to the visual experience like a director’s commentary to a thrilling film.
And speaking of thrilling, Night Fever has some exciting set pieces that I won’t spoil the context of in this review and are more immersive because Jon/Griffin is definitely someone who most people think that they could take in a fight and probably drives the speed limit on the highway. Seeing him and his new friend Rainer getting in chases, fist fights, and even wilder situations after the staid conversations and plane trips of the book’s early pages reminded me a lot of films, books, and comics where a regular Joe worker becomes a heroic, or in this case, more active figure in the narrative of their life. In fact, the insomnia angle reminded me a lot of Fight Club (Which actually got comic book sequels), but with less satire and more of a focus on Jon’s personal journey and intoxication with this sexy, fisticuff filled alternate world instead of doing his job and going back to wife and kids. Brubaker and Phillips take a seasoned perspective on this escapism while still not undermining the fact that it’s easy to get into ruts in life even when you think gotten everything you ever wanted.
Night Fever is a midlife crisis dressed up in Day-Glo with insightful scripting from Ed Brubaker and dreamy art from Sean Phillips plus some of the best coloring work ever done by Jacob Phillips. It’s best read late at night before getting up for your shitty day job and succeeds both as a character study and a thrilling genre story with a unique visual language that makes it stand out from Brubaker and Phillips’ other collaborations.
Night Fever arrives in shops on June 14.
Story: Ed Brubaker Art: Sean PhillipsColors:Jacob Phillips Story: 8.0 Art: 9.0 Overall: 8.5 Recommendation: Buy
Image Comics Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Previously developed for HBO Max, Batman: Caped Crusader has found a new home at Amazon. The animated series from J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves, and Bruce Timm has been given a two season order.
The show was put on hold by Warner Bros. Discovery in August, about a year after it was ordered straight to series. At that time, they stated it was looking for a new home. After a series of cost cutting, Warner Bros. Discovery has pivoted in recent months selling projects to “rival” streaming services.
Batman: Caped Crusader was said to be a follow up in spirit to the classic 1990s Batman: The Animated Series which Timm worked on. Ed Brubaker was announced Timm’s right hand for the 10-episode first season. It was spotlighted at the 2021 DC Fandome which featured some of the individuals behind it discussing what we can expect.
The series joins other high profile animated series at Amazon including Invincible, The Legend of Vox Machina, and The Boys Presents: Diabolical.
The fact Criminal hasn’t been a television series or film yet is… criminal. The fantastic comic series by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips looks like it’ll finally get its chance through Amazon Studios which is finalizing a dead for a tv adaptation.
Brubaker will be an executive producer for the series which is a set of interlocking crime stories. While each volume has been able to be be read on their own, each ties into the others creating a much larger story with events in volumes mentioned in each other.
Criminal launched in 2006 running for ten issues. It has been published by Marvel Comics’ Icon imprint as well as Image Comics. The five volumes have run for 38 issues and numerous collections and graphic novels. The latest chapter was released in the Image! #9 anthology in December 2022.
The weekend is almost here! What geeky things are you all doing? Sound off in the comments below! While you wait for the weekend to begin, here’s some comic news and a review from around the web!
Image Comics has revealed a stunning new cover by Sean Phillips for the highly anticipated Night Fever by multiple Eisner Award winning duo Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips with colors by Jacob Phillips. This original graphic novel will hit shelves in June.
In Europe on a business trip, Jonathan Webb can’t sleep. Instead, he finds himself wandering the night in a strange foreign city, with his new friend, the mysterious and violent Rainer as his guide. Rainer shows Jonathan the hidden world of the night, a world without rules or limits. But when the fun turns dangerous, Jonathan may find himself trapped in the dark… And the question is, what will he do to get home?
Night Fever is a pulse-pounding noir thriller featuring the Jekyll-and-Hyde story of a man facing the darkness inside himself. This riveting tour-of-the-night is a must-have for all Brubaker and Phillips readers.
Night Fever (ISBN: 978-1-5343-2609-5) will be available on Wednesday, June 14 at local comic book shops and on Tuesday, June 20 it will hit shelves at independent bookstores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, and Indigo.
Ethan Reckless is back in this all-new pulp adventure. What was he up to when he left Anna on her own in the last volume? Find out!
Story: Ed Brubaker Art: Sean Phillips Color: Jacob Phillips
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Time got away from me this week, so we’re rerunning an older column from yesteryear.
This is a column that focuses on something or some things from the comic book sphere of influence that may not get the credit and recognition it deserves. Whether that’s a list of comic book movies, ongoing comics, or a set of stories featuring a certain character. The columns may take the form of a bullet pointed list, or a slightly longer thinkpiece – there’s really no formula for this other than whether the things being covered are Underrated in some way. This week: Incognito
My local comic shop recently got the hardcover edition of Incognito in, and it last all of ten minutes on the table where it was in line for pricing as I picked it up and read what amounted to half the first issue before scooping it up before it ever actually made it to the shelf.
Written by Ed Brubaker, with art by Sean Phillips and colours by Val Staples, the hardcover collects both Incognito and the sequel Incognito: Bad Influences within its 360-odd pages as well an essay, a series cover gallery and some interesting process pieces. If you’ve read any of Brubaker and Phillips other work together, such as Criminal, Fatale or Kill Or Be Killed, then you probably have an idea what you’re in for. If you don’t… well, let’s just say you’re in for a very compelling story that you’ll probably want to read multiple times.
If you want to read the series’ synopsis, it’s below. If you don’t… well, skip the next paragraph, I guess. Either way, you’ll find the core premise of the comic below.
What if you were an ex-super villain hiding out in Witness Protection… but all you could think about were the days when the rules didn’t apply to you? Could you be a humdrum office clerk after being the best at years of leaving destruction in your wake? And what if you couldn’t stand it? What would you do then?
This story is steeped in the pulp fiction of the 30’s and 40’s, stories that undeniably inspired the superhero fiction of today. Brubaker takes those early influences and fills out a world that has descended from them; there’s a very clear path in Incognito back to characters like the Shadow and the Spider (or rather Brubaker’s version thereof), and it gives the reader the sense that we’re barely scratching the surface with the characters and history revealed through the course of the hardcover’s 360-odd pages.
I was immediately taken in by the story as we learned more about Zack Overkill and how he went from a heavy hitting super villain to a lowly file clerk barely noticed by his coworkers. We see flashes of his mandated psychiatric appointments, the oh-so-real struggles he’s facing in a life that he’s not accustomed too. If you remove the super powered aspect from the opening part of the story, you can see a man struggling with his mental health amidst an unfulfilling life of boredom and depression. Is it any wonder that he eventually turns to drugs in order to find an escape?
Zach Overkill is an oddly likable guy despite never hiding (at least from us) what kind of man he used to be; whether this story is about his trying to find redemption, or a larger tale about whether a leopard can truly change its spots is one of the best parts about this book. Brubaker asks you not whether you can change for the better after making a horrible series of life choices, but whether others can accept your change. Whether they truly believe it, or if once they’ve labelled you a villain then that’s how they will always see you.
I should have expected good stuff from this book, but I wasn’t quite prepared with just how good it would be.
In a story that can be so much to so many, we’re left asking ourselves who we really are; are you really the person you think you are, or are you just a product of what this world has made you?
Join us next week where there will doubtless be another movie, series, comic or comic related thing discussed that is, for whatever reason, Underrated.
Multiple Eisner Award winning grand masters Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips—of Reckless, Pulp, Criminal, and Kill or Be Killed fame—with colors by Jacob Phillps, will bring fans another sure-fire hit in the upcoming, Night Fever. This original graphic novel will hit shelves in June 2023 from Image Comics.
Night Fever is a pulse-pounding noir thriller featuring the Jekyll-and-Hyde story of a man facing the darkness inside himself. This riveting tour-of-the-night is a must-have for all Brubaker and Phillips readers.
In Europe on a business trip, Jonathan Webb can’t sleep. Instead, he finds himself wandering the night in a strange foreign city, with his new friend, the mysterious and violent Rainer as his guide. Rainer shows Jonathan the hidden world of the night, a world without rules or limits. But when the fun turns dangerous, Jonathan may find himself trapped in the dark… And the question is, what will he do to get home?
Night Fever (ISBN: 978-1-5343-2609-5) will be available on Wednesday, June 14 at local comic book shops and on Tuesday, June 20 it will hit shelves at independent bookstores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, and Indigo.
Image Comics’ 12-issue, 30th anniversary anthology will drop another highly collectible installment this December in the upcoming Image! #9. Just in time to curl up and read by light of yule log, Image! #9 will feature a brand new Criminalstory from crime noir masterminds Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips titled “Teeg’s Christmas Carol,” the highly anticipated return of Gerry Duggan and John McCrea’s beloved Dead Eyes, as well as many more exciting tales.
Cover art for this issue is by Phillips and will display a cigarette puffing, Santa-hat wearing Teeg.
Image! #9 also includes an all-new short by Bitter Root co-creator Chuck Brown and artist Steven Statz, “Familiar Fears,” as well as the latest chapters of “The Blizzard” by Geoff Johns and Andrea Mutti, “Closer” by Kieron Gillen and Steve Lieber, “Red Stitches” by Brenden Fletcher and Erica Henderson, “Gehenna” by Patrick Kindlon and Maurizio Rosenzweig, “Hack/Slash vs. Image” by Tim Seeley and Stefano Caselli, “Billy Dogma” by Dean Haspiel, and “Stupid Fresh Mess” by Skottie Young.
The Image! anthology is a 12-issue series celebrating the 30th anniversary of Image Comics. It treats readers to all-new stories from some of the biggest and best names in comics and is curated by Image Comics’ Publisher Eric Stephenson. The series features a combination of ongoing serials, standalone short stories, and first looks at exciting upcoming projects at Image.
Image! #9 (Diamond Code OCT220159) will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, December 28.
