Q&A: Writer Ed Brubaker on Making Crime Pay and Protecting Your Voice in Comic Books and Hollywood (Part 1 of 2)

When <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Brubaker" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Ed Brubaker</a>’s name showed up in the comments section of my Substack, the art junky in me screamed. The multi-hyphenate storyteller — who has won more Eisners than I feel like counting — has been a part of my creative life since I first discovered his semi-autographical comic book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowlife_(comics)" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">LOWLIFE</a> (1992) in the nineties, one of those independent titles that end up making you feel like you’ve been let into a secret club. I know I read a couple of his stories in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Horse_Presents" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">DARK HORSE PRESENTS</a> back then, too, but it wasn’t until <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scene_of_the_Crime_(comics)" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">SCENE OF THE CRIME</a> (1999) that he became a writer I sought out by name alone. By the aughts, he was the new hot young thing at DC thanks to his exciting work on various Batman titles amongst others. His transition to Marvel led to him famously killing Captain America, resurrecting Bucky Barnes by way of creating the Winter Soldier, and an outstanding run on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daredevil_(Marvel_Comics_series)" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">DAREDEVIL</a>. At the same time, he launched his creator-owned series, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_(comics)" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">CRIMINAL</a> (2006), a gritty, blood-soaked, beautiful contemporary noir that remains one of my favorite twenty-first century crime series in any medium. <a href="https://fanfare.pub/q-a-writer-ed-brubaker-on-making-crime-pay-and-protecting-your-voice-in-comic-books-and-hollywood-8bb50385f591">Website</a>