(W) Ed Brubaker (A) Jacob Phillips (A/CA) Sean Phillips In Shops: Aug 14, 2024 SRP: $24.99
An FBI agent from the cult crime beat and a woman with a past linked to the Satanic Panic are drawn into a terrifying hunt for an insane killer hiding in the shadows of the underworld. Can you ever escape your past, or are all your bad decisions just more ghosts to haunt you, wherever you go? Houses of the Unholy is a riveting horror thrill ride from bestselling creators Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, the award-winning team behind Criminal, Reckless, Night Fever, and Where the Body Was.
DSTLRY has announced the Time Waits, a white-knuckle sci-fi series that spans time and space. Time Waits unites writer Chip Zdarsky and co-writer David Brothers with artist Marcus To, colorist Matt Wilson, and letterer Ariana Maher for the tale of a corporate mercenary from a dystopian future pursued by his former overseers in the past. Time Waits#1 will be on sale later this summer in print and digital.
This project marks the first of four series by Chip Zdarsky for DSTLRY.
Time Waits revolves around Blue, a time-traveling soldier of fortune who abandons his war and finds asylum in a small rural town nestled in his timeline’s distant past—our present. After Blue falls in love with the local sheriff, Grace, the couple builds a life of gardening and domestic tranquility. But just as Blue and Grace debate expanding their family through adoption, Blue’s former corporate lords from the future locate the deserter and send soldiers to ruthlessly reclaim their property and the secret he’s been hiding.
Each issue ofTime Waitsis presented in DSTLRY’s perfect-bound Prestige format, featuring wraparound covers with spot gloss on robust cover stock, complemented by 48 pages of exquisite interior stock.
writer: Andy Diggle artist: Aaron Campbell cover: Sean Phillips FC | 304 pages | Crime/Science Fiction | $34.99 | Mature
Born with the uncanny ability to steal other people’s memories, abilities, and expertise for a limited time, Weaver is a man who could change the world. But as a professional gambler, conman, and thief-for-hire, he prefers to look out for Number One. That is, until he finds himself drawn into a dangerous game of international intrigue where the rules keep changing, the players are hidden, and the stakes are his life! Now Weaver is on the run, and his only hope is to turn tables on his pursuers in a desperate gambit that will bring him face-to-face with the source of his powers — and his own traumatic past.
From acclaimed graphic novelist ANDY DIGGLE (The Losers, Swamp Thing) and artist AARON CAMPBELL (The Green Hornet: Year One), this all-new Omnibus Edition combines Weaver Season One and Weaver Season Two (previously titled Uncanny) into a single exciting volume!
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.
The bestselling, contemporary classic comic book series Fatale—by multiple Eisner Award winning duo Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips with colorists Elizabeth Breitweiser and Eisner Award winning Dave Stewart—will be collected in its entirety in the upcoming Fatale Compendium. This complete collected paperback will include all 24 issues of the Lovecraftian-infused mystery noir story and be available in July from Image Comics.
The Fatale series first launched from Image in 2012 to instant critical acclaim and was rushed back to print several times in order to keep up with demand and was nominated for numerous Eisner Awards that year. It remains one of the most popular, consistently reordered titles in the Brubaker and Phillips oeuvre.
Fatale darkly blends American crime noir with unnamed Lovecraftian horrors. Readers jump from 1950s San Francisco—where crooked cops hide deeper evils—to mid-’70s Los Angeles—where burnt-out actors and ex-cult groupies are caught in a web around a Satanic snuff film—then back through the ages of time. At the center of it all is the mysterious Josephine—a curse woman with a hypnotic, supernatural power to die or kill for.
Fatale Compendium paperback (ISBN: 9781534327658) will be available at local comic book shops on Wednesday, July 17 and independent bookstores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, and Indigo on Tuesday, July 30.
Joanna Tan — the elusive Gun Honey — returns this year in a new, action-packed series. Gun Honey: Collision Course is written by the master of pulp crime comics, Charles Ardai, with art by the talented Ang Hor Kheng. Gun Honey: Collision Course #1 comes hot into stores on May 15, 2024, with covers by Derrick Chew, Adam Hughes, Sean Phillips, Shannon Maer, and more!
After nearly a year in hiding from government agents looking to kill her, Gun Honey–Joanna Tan–launches a plan to turn the tables that will take her from the jungles of Borneo, to the streets of Yokohama, and the sands of the Gobi Desert. But when four armed groups converge on one secret location, will anyone survive the explosive collision?
(W) Rob Williams, Peter Milligan, Al Ewing, John Wagner, Alan Grant, John Smith, Gordon Rennie, Jamie Delano, Alan Davis (A) Chris Weston, Tony Wright, Henry Flint, Cam Kennedy, Sean Phillips, Frank Quitely, Alan Davis, Mark Farmer (CA) Annie Wu In Shops: Feb 14, 2024 SRP: $22.99
Best of 2000 AD is a landmark series from the cult comic, bursting with our greatest stories for a new generation of readers. In this volume: Judge Dredd raises not only the law when Mega City One’s super-rich consider themselves above it all in Elevator Pitch; crash-land on a Death Planet as Al Ewing and Henry Flint introduce the monstrous, weaponized (but dead polite) Zombo; go Swimming in Blood with occult detective Devlin Waugh as he investigates a vampire outbreak in an underwater prison by John Smith and Sean Phillips; ride out into the Godless wasteland of the Cursed Earth and witness Gordon Rennie and Frank Quitely preach faith through firepower in Missionary Man. Boasting brand new covers from an all-star line-up of artists including Annie Wu and with designer Tom Muller, Best of 2000 AD is the essential gateway into the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic.
The multiple Eisner Award winning creative duo of bestselling writer Ed Brubaker and superstar artist Sean Phillips—and team behind such chart-topping titles as Criminal, Pulp, The Fade Out, Reckless, Night Fever, and Where the Body Was—will hit shelves once again with their upcoming original graphic novel, Houses of the Unholy. This highly anticipated, standalone crime thriller is set to release in August from Image Comics.
Houses of the Unholy promises the team’s trademark crime noir storytelling, but with some darker, more sinister thriller twists than their usual fare. In this new tale, an FBI agent from the cult crime beat and a woman with a past linked to the Satanic Panic are drawn into a terrifying hunt for an insane killer hiding in the shadows of the underworld.
This pulse-pounding story asks: can you ever escape your past, or are all your bad decisions just more ghosts to haunt you, wherever you go?
Houses of the Unholy (ISBN: 9781534327429) will be available at local comic book shops on Wednesday, August 14 and independent bookstores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, and Indigo on Tuesday, August 13.
A boarding house full of druggies. A neglected housewife. A young girl who thinks shes a superhero. A cop who wants to be left alone. And a private detective looking for a runaway girl. These stories collide one fateful summer in Where the Body Was, a tale of love and murder in the suburbs, told from a dozen different points of view. All the neighbors on the block have an opinion about the murder and how it happened, but which of them is telling the truth?
Story: Ed Brubaker Art: Sean Phillips Color: Jacob Phillips Letterer: Rus Wooton
Get your copy now! To find a comic shop near you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com or call 1-888-comicbook or digitally and online with the links below.
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Will the beloved comic series Criminal be the next hit? Prime Video has given a series order to Criminal. It’s based on the award winning comic series by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Brubaker penned the pilot script. The series will be showrun by Jordan Harper.
Criminal is being produced by Amazon MGM Studios and has been fast tracked for development which began in 2023. Things were delayed due to the WGA strike.
Criminal is an amazing series of comics which each stand on their own but also connect in some ways too. While you can pick up and enjoy any volume, if you’ve read them all, you appreciate it all more. It’s described by Brubaker as an “interweaving saga of several generations of families tied together by crimes and murders of the past.”
Brubaker and Harper will executive produce along with Phillips, Sarah Carbiener, Phillip Barnett, and Legendary Television.
