[Yes I know, I'm a day behind. I just spent the weekend at FanExpo with
![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mad so you'll have to forgive me and my tardiness. FUCK YEAH ED BRUBAKER!]
Right now, my favourite comics writer is Ed Brubaker. (This might change tomorrow. I'm indecisive like that).
Brubaker's been tapped to do a surprising amount of reinvention work for the big two. He brought back Bucky Barnes as the Winter Solider, and killed Steve Rogers to explore his absence. He helped give Selina Kyle new direction back at the start of Catwoman volume two. He collaborated with Matt Fraction to revitalize Iron Fist.
These are all great series that play to his strengths as a writer: noir and 'street level' stories. His less successful big two books (*cough* X-Men *cough*) see him trying to write more traditional superhero stories. What Bru excels at: themes of betrayal, rediscovery and redemption; tight plotting, reveals, character work, brutal action sequences.
You can see him at his best in
Criminal,
Incognito, and
Sleeper. (Or so I'm told. Haven't yet read Sleeper myself). Criminal and Incognito pair him with Sean Phillips, and imho these two were made for each other. These books are seamless - Phillps' gorgeously muddy pencils are the perfect compliment to Brubaker's harboiled neo-noir (Criminal), and his noir-pulp identity porn mashups (Incognito). I kind of want them to work together forever and ever, amen.
His work with Steve Epting on Captain America, and Darwyn Cooke and Mike Allerd on Catwoman, is also good, and whoever put together these creative teams deserves a hug. Because shit son, this is comics: just words and pictures, working towards the same storytelling goal.
Four pages from Captain America v5 #1.
( Read more... )Four pages from Catwoman v2 #1.
( Read more... )![[community profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
