Ed Brubaker: Conversations

Conversations with Artists

by Terrence R. Wandtke (Editor)

Ed Brubaker (b. 1966) has emerged as one of the most popular, significant figures in art comics since the 1990s. Most famous as the man who killed Captain America in 2007, Brubaker's work on company-owned properties such as Batman and Captain America and creator-owned series like Criminal and Fatale live up to the usual expectations for the superhero and crime genres. And yet, Brubaker layers his stories with a keen self-awareness, applying his expansive knowledge of American comic book history to invigorate his work and challenge the dividing line between popular entertainment and high art. This collection of interviews explores the sophisticated artist's work, drawing upon the entire length of the award-winning Brubaker's career.

With his stints writing Catwoman, Gotham Central, and Daredevil, Brubaker advanced the work of crime comic book writers through superhero stories informed by hard-boiled detective fiction and film noir. During his time on Captain America and his series Sleeper and Incognito, Brubaker revisited the conventions of the espionage thriller. With double agents who lose themselves in their jobs, the stories expose the arbitrary superhero standards of good and evil. In his series Criminal, Brubaker offered complex crime stories and, with a clear sense of the complicated lost world before the Comics Code, rejected crusading critic Fredric Wertham's myth of the innocence of early comics.

Overall, Brubaker demonstrates his self-conscious methodology in these often little-known and hard-to-find interviews, worthwhile conversations in their own right as well as objects of study for both scholars and researchers.

Genres: Nonfiction

168 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 4, 2016

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

The introduction of this nearly put me off reading the rest of the book. It's more of a full essay on Brubakers work then an introduction, and a chore to read, but it's really worth getting through because the interviews are great. It's a collection of interviews spanning Brubakers comics career from when he first started up until his first year on FATALE. He talks about his inspirations, his collaborations and the difference between his creator owned work and work for hire. He's on of my favourite comic book writers, which is why I checked this out, and I would defiantly recommend it to fans of his work.

[David Macpherson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ed Brubaker is a good writer of crime and superhero comics and he is very articulate. The interviews collected were good, but the first ten years of his career was hardly mentioned. The introduction mentioned interviews that covered his early career when he wrote and illustrated his comics, but they were not included. They were all recent conversations. None were bad, some were fascinating, but as a collection of interviews, the absence of the first half of his career was bothersome to me.