Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips make history with original graphic novel series Reckless this December from Image Comics
By Staff Reports
Hot off their instant, bestselling megahit Pulp, crime noir masters Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips announce a new original graphic novel series—starting with Reckless—from Image Comics this December in hardcover.
Brubaker and Phillips ignited the industry recently with the triumphant Pulp release and fans are primed for the upcoming Cruel Summer graphic novel hitting shelves this week, but nobody expected the surprise announcement of a graphic novel series to kickoff before the year’s end—with the first three books in the series releasing over the next year. This first volume will clock in at 144 pages.
Meet Ethan Reckless: Your trouble is his business, for the right price. But when a fugitive from his student radical days reaches out for help, Ethan must face the only thing he fears… his own past.
“Reckless comes from my love of pulp heroes and private eyes,” said Brubaker. “When I’m craving escapism, I pick up a Jack Reacher book… or a Lew Archer, or a Claire DeWitt, or a Travis McGee, or an Easy Rawlings, or a Parker… and I get taken away by these characters and their worlds.
“I wanted to bring that feeling over to comics, with a series of graphic novels that each tell a complete story, a thriller or mystery… and also, for as long as Sean and I have been working together, we’ve almost never focused on a hero. So Reckless is a big left turn for us, but it’s still our version of a ‘hero’—so sometimes more of an anti-hero, probably.”
Brubaker was inspired by his long-time collaboration with Phillips to try something he’d never seen done before in US comics. “Sean and I have been putting out our comics for decades now, and we don’t miss deadlines. So I realized we could actually do something unheard of in comics—put out three full-length graphic novels in under a year. I hope that’ll help put this series on the map and keep readers coming back for more.”
Sex, drugs, and murder in 1980s Los Angeles… Reckless is the best new twist on paperback heroes since Jack Reacher or The Punisher. The second book in the series will hit stores in April 2021.
Reckless (ISBN: 978-1-5343-1851-9) will be available on Wednesday, December 16 and in bookstores on Tuesday, December 22. It can be pre-ordered at your local comic book shop or independent bookstore (and via Bookshop), or it can be pre-ordered on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, and Indigo.
Reckless will also be available for purchase across many digital platforms, including Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, comiXology, and Google Play.
Pulp (ISBN: 978-1-5343-1644-7) is available now.
Cruel Summer (ISBN: 978-1-5343-1643-0, Diamond Code: JUN200096) will be available on Wednesday, August 12 at your local comic shop. On Tuesday, August 18 it will be available at independent bookstores (and via Bookshop) and on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, and Indigo.
“Oh man this book pushed EVERY crime fiction button for me. Working class setting covering up for a deeper societal rot, a battered, damaged (literally) protagonist against the beast, and all of it squirming and lunging through an over-lit early 80s L.A. Noir bleached to bleakness. Bliss.” —Patton Oswalt
“Imagine Redford at his peak, ambling through sun-drenched, eighties L.A. in a serpentine plot that is equal parts Long Goodbye and Point Break. No one does crime fic like Brubaker and Phillips and their collaboration has never felt more new. Explosive. Vital. And yes… reckless. I love this book.” —Damon Lindelof (HBO’s Watchmen)
“Reckless is an absolute rush: on the same level as golden age Travis McGee novels and the hardest-hitting Richard Stark stories. This one comes at you as fast as Steve McQueen in a souped-up Mustang and as hard as Charles Bronson with a baseball bat. You gotta have it.” —Joe Hill (Locke & Key, N0S4A2)