Friend of the Devil (A Reckless Book)

Ed Brubaker is one of the most acclaimed writers in comics, winning five best writer Eisner and Harvey Awards in the last ten years. His bestselling work with Sean Phillips on Criminal, Incognito, Fatale, and The Fade Out has been translated around the world to great acclaim, and Marvel's movies featuring his co-creation, The Winter Soldier, have all been international blockbusters. Ed lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their crazy dog, where he works in comics, film, and television, most recently on HBO's new hit series Westworld.Drawing comics professionally since the age of fifteen, Eisner Award winning Sean Phillips has worked for all the major publishers. Since drawing Sleeper, Hellblazer, Batman, X-Men, Marvel Zombies, and Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, Sean has concentrated on creator-owned books including Criminal, Kill Or Be Killed, Incognito, Fatale and The Fade Out. He is currently drawing a new volume of the long-running Criminal series written by his long-time collaborator Ed Brubaker and coloured by his son Jacob Phillips. He lives in the Lake District in the UK.Jacob Phillips is a comic artist and colorist residing in Manchester, UK. He has been drawing his whole life, self publishing first comic. ‘Roboy’ at the age of 11 and selling it at Brighton Comic Con. Skip forward 16 years and today he is the artist on That Texas Blood with writer Chris Condon and Newburn with Chip Zdarsky as well as coloring projects such as Reckless, Criminal and Madi.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY --Ghosts of the 1960s and '70s hauntthis bruising second entry in Brubaker and Phillips's bloody-knuckled L.A. noirseries. It's 1985 and ex-FBI agent and current paladin for hire Ethan Recklessis grinding through private-eye cases, mourning his father, and losing himselfby watching old sitcoms at his shuttered movie theater office. Falling hard forLinh Tran, a tough-as-nails library clerk, he agrees to help find her sisterMaggie, who vanished into the Hollywood fleshpots years before. After spottingMaggie in the background of a crummy exploitation flick, Ethan begins pulling atthe tangled threads of a seedy operation and unravels a tale of the city's fallfrom hippie optimism, with movie producers taking advantage of fresh-off-the-busingenues, an Aleister Crowley meets Charles Manson cult, and Nazi skinheads(“for some reason, there always had to be skinheads”). Ethan pursueshis leads doggedly but with a baked-in cynicism, knowing that after solving thecase he and Linh would just “wait for the truth to destroy us.” Theart is varied, richly colored, and grittily textured as old film stock. Despitethe series' dour lead, the sharp cultural references, bone-deep knowledge of theSouthland, and pulsing through line of righteous heroism will make readers eagerfor Ethan's next reluctant adventure. (May)