Criminal: A Wolf Among Wolves

The latest installment of my favorite comic, Ed Brubaker's Criminal, hits shops today. Sitting on the fence about it, for some bizarre reason? Check out the 10-page preview Ed shared over at Warren Ellis's Whitechapel site. (Scroll down a bit for those pages.) Then stick around as Ed does the Q&A thing, and discusses his influences, crime novels, and the horrors of a low-salt diet.

Two Reasons to Hit a Comic Shop Today

1. Chances are, your local comic shop is giving away a sweet little bit of Marvel swag: an April calendar featuring the big "Secret Invasion" event. But on the back (or the front, depending on how it's folded) is a March calendar featuring Cable. I grabbed a bunch yesterday, and forced my kids to hang one in their room. Hey, promotion knows no bounds. And if the big mutant with the glowing eye gives them nightmares... well, that's just part of the joy of childhood. (Remind to tell you sometime about the evil clown my father painted on my bedroom wall... one with real seatbelts for arms, that came out of the freakin' wall...)

2. Ed Brubaker's Criminal Vol. 2 #1 hit the racks yesterday. If you're a fan of Hard Case Crime and Gold Medal paperbacks and Cain and Thompson and Goodis and the gang, you can't afford to miss this hardboiled pulp noir comic. And if you're a newbie, this issue is the perfect place to dive in: "Second Chance in Hell" is a self-contained story, packed with more pages than the usual Criminal installment. I'm also proud to report that my short essay about David Goodis, "Knock Me Over," is included in the back, along with an amazing Sean Phillips illustration. This essay won't appear anywhere else, and the extras aren't reprinted in the trades.

So to recap: walk into a comic shop with $3.50, and walk out with a cool poster, a killer noir story, and a little noir essay by your friendly neighborhood Pole. Tell me a better deal than that and I'll buy you a hot dog.

Superbadassery

Bill Hader, interviewing Ed Brubaker. What could go wrong?

Coolest revelation: Simon Pegg (who we all know is actually Allan Guthrie) turned Hader on to Criminal. Boy, what a small, small world.