Pulp

by Ed Brubaker (Writer), Sean Phillips (Artist), Jacob Phillips (Artist)

NOW AVAILABLE AS A SOFT COVER TRADE PAPERBACK: A gorgeous original graphic novel from the bestselling creators of KILL OR BE KILLED, MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES, and CRIMINAL.

Max Winters, a pulp writer in 1930s New York, finds himself drawn into a story not unlike the tales he churns out at five cents a word--tales of a Wild West outlaw dispensing justice with a six-gun. But will Max be able to do the same when pursued by bank robbers, Nazi spies, and enemies from his past?

One part thriller, one part meditation on a life of violence, PULP is unlike anything award-winning BRUBAKER & PHILLIPS have ever done before. This celebration of pulp fiction set in a world on the brink is another must-have hardcover from one of comics' most acclaimed teams.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Westerns, Crime, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Noir

80 pages, Paperback

First published July 29, 2020

About the author

Ed Brubaker (born November 17, 1966) is an Eisner Award-winning American cartoonist and writer. He was born at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland.

Brubaker is best known for his work as a comic book writer on such titles as Batman, Daredevil, Captain America, Iron Fist, Catwoman, Gotham Central and Uncanny X-Men. In more recent years, he has focused solely on creator-owned titles for Image Comics, such as Fatale, Criminal, Velvet and Kill or Be Killed.

In 2016, Brubaker ventured into television, joining the writing staff of the HBO series Westworld.

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid story about a Wild West outlaw who has, in his old age, become a pulp writer who pens stories about the kind of adventures he used to have. He's just been underpaid for his last gig and he's feeling the weight of the years crashing down on him.



Of course, bad men come to town and it looks like he's the only one who can do anything about it. All the while, he's flashing back to his past as he makes one last stand to save the people he loves.



This is the kind of story that my husband eats up with a spoon. If he read comics, I'd buy this for him. I mean, it ticks off every. single. box.
Old man with a past.
Hopeless situation.
Vulnerable people that need protection.
That last chance to go out in a blaze of glory.
And fucking cowboys.



I am less in love with these stories, which is why we rare to never watch television or movies together. BUT.
I can still recognize good writing.
Although, some people might disagree with that.
Recommended for fans of those depressing Clint Eastwood movies.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We weren’t heroes. We were killers. That’s the reason we survived so long… Because this world belongs to monsters.

It shouldn’t.”

It’s the winter of 1939 in New York City and the aptly-named Max Winter (not just because of the season the story takes place in but because Max is in the “winter” of his life), a struggling Western pulp fiction writer, gets some bad news. But he decides to make sure he goes out well - leaving his wife Rosa with enough to comfortably get by in her retirement and take out some Nazis too. Stick ‘em up!

Unsurprisingly Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have produced another cracking comic with their latest, Pulp. I was effortlessly drawn into Max’s story and I loved the bait’n’switches Brubaker threw in - just when you think, aha, I know where this is going, nope! And then again - and then again! It’s great - I love it when a writer can do that with his audience so well.

The only thing I would say that stops me from giving this book the highest score is that, having read dozens of Brubaker’s comics now, I saw a lot I’d seen before from him. Max is another down-on-his-luck anti-hero with nothing to lose and a gun in his hand, and certain scenes are very reminiscent of titles like Criminal and Kill or Be Killed. Pulp lacks that element of novelty that I crave even though I realise a lot of this book is about genre and novelty is all but absent from those kinds of books.

That and Jacob Phillips’ colours still aren’t doing it for me. Honestly, the flashback scenes to Max’s youth looked like he took a crayon flat on its side and rubbed it against the paper - just awful. If it wasn’t for his dad Sean I wonder if he’d get any high-profile colouring gigs.

Otherwise, I really enjoyed the story. Despite being a dickhead I liked Max’s editor Mort and the dialogue is as wonderfully gritty as you’d expect - the quote at the top of the review is indicative of the kind of bittersweet lines the book is filled with. Nazis as villains is a well-worn cliche at this point but I didn’t mind as the overall message of the book is a fine one to leave readers with, as well as being a stark contrast to the darkness of the story.

Nitpicks aside, Pulp is a great comic by two masters of the medium - fans of Brubaker and Phillips will love it.

[Tawfek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a buddy read with 1K Whitney i am sorry i can't stop coming up with cheesy nicknames for my friends, i love them.

It was weird for me reading this, since i often thought about my near death experiences, for the last 9 months.
The protagonist had 3 near death experiences, i had 7 not really spectacular ones, not all as dangerous as each other, 6 when i was a muslim, 1 while i am an atheist, and i just somehow always survive!

But that's what life is... right?
a bunch of beginnings piled up on top of each other

I honestly didn't expect the story to be this good, i heard about Ed and Philips from my comic reading friends and that everything they come up with is great, but this was really good, you find yourself starting to get into it the more you read, and like it even more.

I don't believe in god but right then i prayed for him anyway...

You will not find me doing that, but the Protagonist's cause is really appealing, he had found solace in life with the woman he is living with, and his last request in his life, is to somehow secure a good future for her, one she dreams of, before he dies, since he started getting heart attacks.
I don't understand why Jews in stories always have to have one of these names that end with man, Goldman Goodman Spiegelman !
I wonder if my favorite sports journalist Ariel Helwani has a similar name somewhere up the family tree.
Jeremiah Goldman came and made the story much better for me, even if he cheated max winter into that robbery, the cause was good, they exposed all the people who were donating money to The Nazi war machine.

Because This world belongs to the monsters.

I believe the world is full of good people, but sometimes it feels that the monsters are the ones who keep on winning.
I don't think this will be the last Ed and Philips graphic novel for me this year, i can't wait for the next

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the very best comics of 2020 for me, maybe in the top three, standing with another volume they also made, Reckless, which I picked as the very best, but that's really just splitting hairs.

Pulp announces itself as a western. A tall handsome white dude with a wide-rimmed--okay, “cowboy” or probably more appropriately, Stetson--hat on the cover. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips do crime, usually set in an urban setting. And the second image and one early section subtitle does identify the setting as a city, on an ocean. It's NYC, 1939. We know this is the time of the rise of Nazi Germany, the advent of WWII, but we leave that fact for a time.

We begin reading a thirties pulp comic, a western, featuring a couple robbers, who are a bit like Robin Hood in that they target the rich, never the needy. One of the two guys looks like the guy on the cover, images that are familiar to lovers of westerns--Shane, Clint Eastwood's Josey Wales, John Wayne, cowboys who kids would historically have seen as heroes. Then we shift to Max, in late thirties Manhattan, who also looks like an older version of the guy on the cover, a comics guy selling his pulp western comics issue by issue to some publisher underpaying him in some comics office in Manhattan.

Brubaker and Phillips, like Matt Kindt and Jeff Lemire and others who are the best in comics writing today, are also comics historians with a fondness for the pulp tradition, which they are endeavoring to advance even as they are paying homage to their predecessors. In some volumes of Criminal, Brubaker features kids reading comics (and in one a kid reads actual westerns) or in Bad Weekend we read the story of an older comics creator, now in some decline, appearing at a comics convention, seen as both deeply flawed and yet still a great storyteller and artist.

In Pulp, Max makes Western (cowboy) comics based on the time at the turn of the century when he was actually himself an outlaw, robbing people. Now, twenty years later, he is with Rosa and her daughter, he's trying to support them, but he also has a heart condition. The comics sales aren't bringing in much cash; he considers going back, even briefly, to the old and more lucrative life, and committing a heist.

While trying to pull this job off in NYC, a former nemesis from Pinkertons (a detective agency) who had tailed him in the west but failed to nab him all these years ago, a Jew, talks him out of the job but invites him instead to get involved in a heist of an American pro-Nazi campaign in NYC. As Brubaker makes clear, there was a lot of support for Nazis and a lot of anti-semitism in this country at that time. "Great" American "heroes" such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg among millions of other Americans were Nazi sympathizers, anti-semites. Groups in this country met to give money to Hitler in his campaign to murder Jews. Do good things happen to aging "bad" guys such as Max? You'll see.

So as with Brubaker and Phillips's Fadeout regarding the "Golden Age" of Hollywood, we get to see the underbelly of American history during this period when history books only list the USA as liberators (we were indeed part of that effort, no question, but that's just not the whole story; as with Lincoln and slavery, there was a process that we went through before we took the lead in ending Hitler's campaign and freeing Jews from those camps during the Holocaust). As Max finally says about his own thievery and the creation of his own (heroic) cowboy westerns, it was complicated, and he admits he romanticized history to sell comics. He (maybe) did some good in taking down some nasty rich guys when he was an outlaw cowboy, but as he admits, he also was a killer. The truth is always more complicated than history or comics history usually tells it.

Masterful, as always.

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are improvisational masters of 'new' noir; their Pirandellian characters are in search of a Godot like 'author' who has abandoned his players. Max Winters is a pulp writer in 1930s New York who writes thinly hidden 'fiction' about his days as a bank robber in the 1890's. After a group of Nazis inspired thugs beat him up and take his last $100.00 something snaps after he suffers a heart attack - a 'butch cassidy/sundance kid' realization that choice of death is the last choice in his life. Max is not going to go gentle into the night - and lots of people are going to watch the light die with him.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

" . . . it's a different world now. Sometimes you gotta break the law to do the right thing." -- Jeremiah Goldman, former security operative for the Pinkerton Agency

"It was always that world, in my experience." -- Max Winter, small-time author

Another winner from author/artist Brubaker, Pulp - set in 1939, when the Great Depression finally was winding down but WWII was fast heating up - centers on the life and problems of Max Winter, a reserved sexagenarian living an uneven existence as a writer in New York City. His claim-to-fame is penning the serial adventures of 'The Red River Kid,' the popular outlaw star of Wild West stories featured in the low-rent pulp magazines that used to routinely pepper the newsstands on street corners. Winter's secret? For a brief time prior to the start of the 20th century he actually galloped across the frontier as a wanted man with the sobriquet 'The Red Rock Kid.' Now in worsening health and also hitting a career downturn, Winter finds himself teaming with an old adversary to "rage against the dying of the light," as poet Dylan Thomas once wrote. Ostensibly planning to execute just a simple robbery, their situation turns into something more complicated, deadly and even heroic. The tough and sparse Pulp is, at just 70 pages, a great example of a excellent short story.

[Kemper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Max Winter was a cowboy outlaw in his younger days. As an old man living in New York during the Great Depression he draws on his experiences as a writer of pulp westerns. With money getting tighter and his mortality looming, Max decides to return to armed robbery in order to try and leave his wife something before he dies. Next thing you know, Max is part of a scheme to steal from the American Nazi movement.

Honestly, you had me at old outlaw turns pulp writer, but you throw in a scheme to rip-off Nazis, now we're talking about a Shut-Up-And-Take-My-Money scenario.

Brubaker and Phillips score yet again with this quick but powerful tale. The run these guys have been on is nothing short of astounding, and this one has some Unforgiven flavor with the old man trying to live with his violent past thing. First rate stuff all around that combines a cool story with an intriguing character done up with artwork that sets the tone of it all perfectly.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

By this point you pretty much know what you are going to get in a Brubaker and Phillips story. Someone at the end of their rope, taking desperate matters to get out of the hole they are in. And that's what we have here. I can't get enough of their books.

Max Winters is a pulp writer penning cowboy novels in 1939 New York. He's being replaced by younger writers, living paycheck to paycheck. He's looking for one last payday to set his lover, Rosa, up. You see, Max, writes those Western novels from experience. He used to be an outlaw and now it's time for one last score...

Received a review copy from Image and Edelweiss. All thoughts are my own and in no way influenced by the aforementioned.

[Rain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulously unique!!

Set in the 1930s, America
An old man with a mysterious past
Bank robbers, spies, Nazis
A second chance

Not a huge fan of the art style, but the underlying message and story is perfection.

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 5 out of 5]

A taut little crime thriller that manages to pack a lot of characterisation and depth into its pages.

Max Winter is a writer, writing pulp cowboy stories for magazines in 1930s New York. Max Winter also used to be an outlaw in the wild west of 1855, robbing exploitative cattle barons, forever pursued by the Pinkerton Detective Agency (but never caught).

Max is old, in poor health, and wants to leave some money, perhaps even a house, to his partner Rosa, but the pulp magazines are edging him out for young, much cheaper writes.

So he decides to pull one last robbery, but is interrupted by a former Pinkerton agent, with a much more interesting offer, focused on the upcoming Nazis in the city.

It's a slim volume, but it's exactly as long as it needs to be. It's always impressive to see how much Brubaker manages to do with relatively little space. Regarding the characters' backgrounds, there is a lot being hinted at, leaving some work for the reader, which makes the characters feel all the richer.

Sean Phillips' art is beautiful, clean and golden in the flashbacks, gritty and lived in the modern metropolis.

Highly recommended.

(Received an ARC from Image through Edelweiss)

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just another notch in Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips's sizable belt of great books! This short graphic novella about an aging former outlaw-turned-pulp writer who decides on one last hoorah is a tale of nostalgia and melancholy and works so well because of Brubaker’s sensitive and efficient writing and Phillips’s deceptively simple, iconic art, both of which are already legendary in the industry.

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ed Brubaker is a master at gritty noir graphic novels.

Pulp tells the story of Max Winters, a former outlaw scraping by publishing western action stories in a local pulp magazine. Suffering from heart problems, struggling through the Great Depression and fearing the rise of facism in his country, Max wants nothing more than to relive the glory of his outlaw days, going out with a bang to secure a meaningful inheritance to leave behind for the love of his life.

A simple yet heartfelt pulp thriller delivered with the western grit of a Tarantino film. Pulp delves into the darker side of the origins of Spaghetti Westerns, looking beyond the romanticized interpretations they're usually depicted as. It also touches on the harsh reality of the corrupt and predatory practices of literary publishing companies back in the day.

My rating: 4/5

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn. This was absolutely gripping. A dark, brutal and endearing masterpiece brimming with violence, feeling and depth. Brubaker and Philips get you deep into the head of the aged former western outlaw turned New York pulp writer, destitute and desperate enough to take up his old ways for his final chapter in life.

[James DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pulp is exactly what I expected from Sean and Ed, and it's great.

A writer who's getting close to the end of his life looks back at what he did. He robbed places, defending his family, lost his family, and now is trying to find peace with himself. When a old face he remembers come to him for help they work together to try and do one last robbery against a bunch of Nazi's. But what happens after?

This was a great graphic novel, a bit short, but worked really well. Enjoyed the character interactions, the art is amazing as always, the ending is REALLY good, and the narration is spot on. It's nothing brand new but this team always knocks it out of the park.

[Rod Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cowboys and Nazis! In 1939 in New York City, an aging writer of pulp fiction Westerns with a shady past gets pulled into a heist against a gang of American Nazi sympathizers by a rogue Pinkerton agent. Nazis get punched, so, y'know, bonus star.

Well written and illustrated, this tale reminded me a bit of The Old Man and the Gun with its melancholy tone and weathered protagonist.

(Trivia note: Hopalong Cassidy completists, be aware that the cover of Six Gun Western displayed in an early scene between the writer and his editor, is actually the cover of Hopalong Cassidy’s Western Magazine Fall, 1950 -- published over a decade after this story takes place.)

[TheBookWarren · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75 Stars — Graphic Novels are not something I naturally gravitate towards, yet I do love the idea of them and the artwork is always alluring. In Pulp, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s fair to say,.. I was bamboozled by its intensity and raw-steel emotive enduring narrative that reads with an elbow-to-the-face type presence!

A sly-nod the the old American Dime Novels & the Era of the Comic-books introduction into Pop Culture, Pulp tells the story of a washed up Cowboy trying to make a living off of selling his stories with modest returns. Pulp drifts into Western-noir with distinction, adding the temptation of Crime and easy-money for a struggling, ex-con who seems to be both hunting a daily jaunted-high, whilst not wanting to stimulate painful, dark & interestingly mailable memories, that drift with perception.

A superb example of the metaphors of ageing with the parallels of experience & the importance of the observer, Brubaker has excelled here in managing to publish work with a deep congruency of prose with the artwork!

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this. Aged cowboy and former outlaw of the 1890s, turns to writing stories for a cowboy themed pulp magazine in old age in the 1930s. Depressed and broke, he attempts one last heist. Good story, very much in line with the pulp title. Good art, reminiscent of comics as they began emerging in the 1930s. Three stars. Solid but no wow factor.

[L. McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

SUPER FAST REVIEW:
Do I even need to tell y’all about this book? Like I wanna talk about it a bit but the fuck am I meant to say? It’s Brubaker and Phillips! You can probably already tell I liked it.
This book is a shorter one. It’s longer than a single issue would be but shorter than most full size graphic novels. It’s a very well written and interesting story that had me hooked right away. Excellent artwork, even mixed styles at times and did a good job at it. The ending is a very epic and slightly emotional one, it wraps up this short one-and-done book very well.
So yeah, another winner from Brubaker and Phillips!

5/5

[Benji's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Western Pulp writer Max Winters is tired of writing the same rehashed stories of his characters day after day and wants to change things up a bit. But his boss won't let him. "It's what the people want," he tells Max.

The term "pulp" comes from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In other words, they printed so many on these things just to sell a buck because yeah. It's what the people wanted. They read these things for the clichés. (This is coming from a pulp fan)

Anyway, back to the story. His boss tells him he's too expensive, so he gets a decrease in pay as well.

He's got about $45 in his name and a woman back home to care for.

And on top of that, he has a really bad heart condition.

So he decides to rob a bank.

But not before an old foe from his train-robbery days named Jeremiah decides to join him in a task that may very well be his last.


This book was a fantastic, quick read! Ed Brubaker always writes a great story. Even a dozen volumes into his Captain America run and they remained consistently good. I loved the contrast between the past and present, with the past in sort of an old, yellowing magazine feel. I'm glad I finally got around to reading this. Recommended.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spending his golden years pumping out serialized comics, former outlaw Max Winter has been struggling to keep his head above water.  When his employer changes the game with its production, the pittance he once received for his work sounds great compared to his new rate.  After a heroic act fending off a gang of thugs leaves him with a bum ticker and empty pockets, Max decides to slip back into a life of crime to secure a future for his family.  Before he can get started, he’s approached by a former Pinkerton officer with a job he can’t refuse.

What can be said about the partnership of Brubaker and Phillips that hasn’t already been said?  These two are the gold standard of crime comics and they have once again hit it out of the park.  Philips artwork is unrivaled in its brutal simplicity and Brubaker’s script radiates noir from start to finish.  Not only is this one a great story, but it takes place during one of my favorite eras for crime fiction – the mid-20th century.  Bonus points!

[Subham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Max Winters is an old guy living in 1930s NY and writes Western comics but he is at the end of his rope not earning enough and he wants to set his lover Rosa up and has to deal with deteriorating heart condition until an old friend/foe named Jeremiah Goldman comes in and he is invited for one last score that may very well be the end of him but for big rewards and we get to learn of his past as an outlaw. This was a great book and had some amazing sequences of the origin of this guy and the way he goes finally is just epic! In just 70 odd pages Brubaker and Philips make one of the best books of 2020! Highly recommend!

[Whitney (The Cover Collector) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buddy read with Tawfek!




‘This is the way the world ends 

Not with a bang but a whimper.’
-‘The Hallow Men’ by T.S. Eliot


In a time where you could kill a man dead and get away with it, Pulp begins with a literal bang with two men facing off in a wild west duel. But it quickly switches POV to our MC, Max, an aging writer who is struggling through each day.

This story starts off pretty depressing. Some say bad news comes in threes and Max definitely finds that out. Like our MC, we all try to avoid the realities of aging, but here there is no option to turn away. We see Max dragging his tired, old body around while feeling like he hasn’t changed inside since his young wild west days. What we get is a story of a desperate man told in two parts - Max’s vibrant past and his bleak, stark present - woven together in a neat package.

The writing is just plain good, and at times - powerful, and the color contrasts between the past and present is well done. It really sets the tone. In Pulp, MC is an underdog. The world wants him to go out with a whimper, but, instead he decides it’s gotta be with a bang. And a bang it is.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

1939. New York. Max Winter is an aging writer, penning pulp stories of the Old West. There's a reason why he pens great stories about cowboys and the Old West....in the 1850's he was an outlaw. Stealing. Rustling. Killing. Always one step ahead of the Pinkertons. But he's getting older...and it's getting harder to make a living. He decides he wants to do one last robbery to leave his widow enough money to live after he's gone.....but he gets a more interesting offer.

This graphic novel is definitely a new twist on the Old West theme. I liked it! The art is great...the story is engaging, creative and interesting. I liked the shifts in time, and the thoughts Max Winter has about how his life has changed, how his past still effects him and the challenges he faces as he ages. He wants to go out on his own terms...to feel like his former self, not like a dying old man. The ending is perfect!

Great story. Great art. This is the first time I've read anything by Ed Brubaker or Sean Phillips. I'm definitely going to read more of their work!

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this graphic novel. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

[Himanshu Karmacharya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pulp is perhaps one of the best things to come out in 2020.

Written by Ed Brubaker and Drawn by Sean Phillips, Pulp is about an aging writer in the '30s, who wants to secure a good wealthy life for his wife before he kicks the bucket. In order to do so, he returns to the ways of old.

Great storytelling and solid characterisation, combined with amazing artwork not only make this one-shot graphic novel intriguing, but also a quality read.

[Licha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this story. Read in under an hour so for it being so short I really liked the main character and his backstory and present story. It wrapped up quite nicely.

[Josh Angel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips continue to turn out some of the best modern comics like it ain’t no big thang. Brubakers writing is always gritty and real, and Phillips art just continues to get better and better. An excellent Western style story but with the hardboiled style they are known for. These two can do no wrong in my book.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. So this is typical Brubaker and Phillips stuff. Great writing that draws you in and can’t stop reading with some great artwork. Max lived as an outlaw and now in his older years he writes about his escapades blended with fiction. Something happens that pushes him towards his old ways. While this was another good story from this team, I had to dock it the half star because I didn’t like how he left Rosa. I mean yeah he left her good financially but bad and every other way. Max could have handled that end a little different.

[Melki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Cowboys AND Nazis?

Great story, great artwork.

2021 is off to a bang-up start!

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Violence can either elevate or denigrate a story. If done well and nuanced, as opposed to gratuitous and base, violence can be a story in and of itself. If done poorly, it’s simply gauche. It’s like the difference between erotic and pornographic: you know it when you see it.

The writer/artist team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips has been doing violence well in graphic novels for years. When readers see their names on the front cover, they know exactly what they are going to get: a phenomenal story with graphic violence. This is why Brubaker/Phillips have such a loyal following. The violence in their books is nuanced and purposeful. It is to the story what the proper seasoning is to a chef’s signature dish.

“Pulp” is the story of Max Winter, an old man living in New York City in 1939. He scrapes by on writing stories for the pulp magazines, mostly westerns. He is paid two cents per word. His last story sold for $120, but he loses it minutes later in the subway when he tries to help a Hasidic Jew being mugged. He has a heart attack, literally, on the subway platform, and his life changes unalterably from there.

Max is a violent man, but he’s not a bad man. He’s got a moral code that makes him detest the Nazis that he sees marching in the news reels across Europe. He sees them marching in the streets of his own town. He hates bullies and people who abuse their power. Even when he was robbing stagecoaches in his youth, he knew he was just stealing from rich assholes who didn’t deserve the money, assholes that were probably screwing over thousands of people beneath them.

Fate brings him in contact with Jeremiah Goldman, a former Pinkerton detective. He’s been looking for Max for years, but not to arrest him. He wants to recruit him. Goldman, a Jew, also hates Nazis. His reasons are more personal than Max’s, but they share the same hatred for them. Goldman has a plan to throw a wrench in the cogs of the New York Nazi Bund and, hopefully, get a lot of money out of it. It’s the kind of heist Max used to pull out west as a kid. He’s in.

They are just two old men, but even two old men can do a lot of damage when they pool their resources.

To say that this book is brilliant is an understatement. It is amazing. It is the kind of book that I can see being made into a big Hollywood film, starring Clint Eastwood in an Oscar-winning twilight role as Max, alongside Harrison Ford or Richard Dreyfuss as Goldman. I foresee the producers wanting to tone down the violence, which is typical of Hollywood. Hollywood loves gratuitous, but they have a problem with nuanced.

[George K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Μέχρι σήμερα, από το υπέροχο αυτό δημιουργικό δίδυμο, είχα διαβάσει μονάχα τους τέσσερις πρώτους τόμους της τρομερής σειράς Criminal (στα αδιάβαστα της συλλογής μου με περιμένουν οι υπόλοιποι τόμοι, καθώς και οι σειρές Fatale, Kill or Be Killed και The Fade Out), έχοντας πραγματικά ενθουσιαστεί με την ποιότητα και το στιλ, τόσο στο σενάριο όσο και στο σχέδιο. Είμαι λάτρης των παλπ ιστοριών και των Αμερικάνικων νουάρ, και αυτοί οι δυο πραγματικά το κατέχουν το άθλημα. Έτσι, ήταν αναμενόμενο να αναζητήσω την καινούργια αυτή ιστορία -που είναι εντελώς αυτοτελής-, και τρία χρόνια μετά την τελευταία φορά που διάβασα τον τέταρτο τόμο της σειράς Criminal, να διαβάσω ξανά κάτι δικό τους. Ε, λοιπόν, ενθουσιάστηκα. Μέσα σε 72 σελίδες έγιναν τόσα πολλά πράγματα, ένιωσα τόσα συναισθήματα, απόλαυσα όλα αυτά τα αγαπημένα σκηνικά, τόσο των νουάρ ιστοριών όσο και των γουέστερν (τα οποία επίσης λατρεύω). Πρόκειται για μια πολύ καλογραμμένη και συναρπαστική ιστορία, πυκνογραμμένη και περιεκτική, χωρίς περιττολογίες και αχρείαστες λεπτομέρειες, έχει το σωστό μέγεθος για να κρατήσει τον αναγνώστη στην τσίτα από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος, διαθέτοντας δράση και δράμα στις σωστές ποσότητες και αναλογίες. Με τέτοιο υλικό η ιστορία σίγουρα θα μπορούσε να είχε και το διπλάσιο μέγεθος ακόμα (που λέει ο λόγος), αλλά έτσι πιστεύω ότι θα έχανε πολλή από τη δύναμή της, και ίσως γινόταν και κουραστική. Όσον αφορά το σχέδιο, είναι πραγματικά εξαιρετικό, ρεαλιστικό και ποικιλόμορφο, μιας και αλλάζει το στιλ και η χρωματική παλέτα στις σκηνές τις Άγριας Δύσης, σε σχέση με την κεντρική ιστορία που διαδραματίζεται στη Νέα Υόρκη του 1939. Το σχέδιο δημιουργεί μια εξαιρετική ατμόσφαιρα και δένει τέλεια με την αφήγηση. Είναι μια ιστορία που θα ικανοποιήσει στον απόλυτο βαθμό τους λάτρεις των νουάρ και των γουέστερν, αλλά και των παλπ ιστοριών γενικότερα.