Pulp, which is an original graphic novel due out in May, is the newest project from long-time comics collaborators writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips.
Publisher Image Comics announced the OGN Tuesday morning. It features a story set in 1930s New York City, and a protagonist that is a writer for the pulp novels that inspired many comics back in the day and continue to do so. With this in mind, Pulp is perhaps the intersection of a few different topics Brubaker and Phillips have tackled in the past. Like The Fade Out, it’s set in a bygone media era that is oft-romanticized. Like Bad Weekend, it seems likely to give them metafictional material that speaks to those of us who are deeply immersed in the past and culture of comics. And like Criminal, the book is being billed as a meditation on violence and depravity.
This also marks a continued push to making self-contained graphic novels for Brubaker and Phillips, versus the monthly direct market comics medium they have long worked within. This will be their second original graphic novel, with the first being My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, which arrived in October 2018. In addition, the duo spun what is basically a stand-alone OGN out of their monthly Criminal comic, with Bad Weekend.
Personally, I’m game for whatever format this duo wants to keep working in, providing they continue what has been one of the longest and most fruitful collaborations in comics for a while now.
Anyway, full PR about the new book can be found below:
The multiple Eisner Award winning creative powerhouse behind such hits as My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies and Bad Weekend—Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips—spin an original graphic novel tale of ’30s era crime in the forthcoming Pulp. This title will hit stores from Image Comics in May.
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? Find out in this must-have thriller from one of comics’ most acclaimed creative teams, perfect for fans of The Fade Out and Criminal.
“When Sean and I decided to do something completely new for our next original graphic novel, he planted the idea of a Western in my head… And I found myself drawn to the era where that genre first hit big—the pulp magazines and the Great Depression,” said Brubaker. “I thought about all these writers telling fictionalized versions of the vanishing days of the Wild West, as their own world was going through one of its darkest hours… And suddenly I realized I had the makings of a really great pulp story, but one set in the real world. A story that I really wanted to tell.”
A darkly mysterious meditation on a life of violence, Pulp is unlike anything the award-winning team of Brubaker and Phillips have ever done. A celebration of pulp fiction, set in a world on the brink.
Phillips added: “I asked Ed to write me a Western and this is as close as he could get. Hopefully I don’t have to draw too many horses. Or hats. Or six-shooters. What was I thinking?’’
Pulp hardcover edition (ISBN: 978-1-5343-1644-7) will be available on Wednesday, May 20 and in bookstores on Tuesday, May 26. It can be pre-ordered at your local comic book shops on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, IndieBound, and Indigo.
Pulp will also be available for purchase across many digital platforms, including the official Image Comics iOS app, Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, comiXology, and Google Play.
