HARD BOILED COMICS: THE LATEST SHOTS AMERICAN EYE COLUMN

My latest American Eye column is up at Shots; you can find it here. Ed Brubaker is one of the most interesting people writing comics, and these two collaborations with Sean Phillips, Coward and The Dead And The Dying, are real classic hard-boiled stuff, borrowing and playing with the conventions of the genre, both written and film, which is something you have the freedom to do in graphic novels.

The article is accompanied by the cover of the British edition of The Dead And The Dying, which is definitely toned down from the original US version (which is pictured left). The British cover is more in keeping with the cover of Coward (they are the first and third of a series) while the American one seems designed to emphasize the sex, an appeal more to the anti-Comics Code Authority tastes of the younger audience, maybe?