Again Ed brubaker and Sean Phillips join with Pulp in a new noir story, this time through a writer with a dark past.
Film noir and noir are in fashion and so is black comics. With Criminal, the comic that tells the stories of low-class people in a harsh and cruel world, Brubaker and Philips were ahead of the fever. The two authors are experts in noir and this time they take it a little further, counting on Pulp the story of the end of a western outlaw, of the legendary West, led to a very different stranger, the days that will precede a world war, the rise of the Nazis and the National Socialist Party in the United States. Put regrets and some politics in the new comic from the couple who have best known how to carry the black genre, and you have a sure winner.
Pulp is above all the story of a man who has gone through many things and who simply wants to be happy, to be able to rest. He has reached an advanced age and is not ready to do many things beyond what he knows. He is a pulp magazine writer creates fantasies for the enjoyment of the public, but the arrival of depression and a possible war in Europe changes everything. Money is scarce, and the offer of extra money is welcome, even if it is a possible robbery. Above all because he appeals to a past that is never far behind, in his case that of an outlaw, the yesterday that he now uses as the basis for his own novels.
The story focuses on a character who is no longer haunted by his past, but is always present, since in order for his today to survive, he writes about that yesterday. Max Winter is both a character for us and for the owner of the name, since he serves to hide penalties, crimes and some pain for a time that can be seen better with other eyes. Finally, it is the past that comes to look for him, but this time not with old debts, but with a possibility of using everything he knows to create a greater good that is related to what was one of the great evils of humanity, the Nazism. This party, which was legal in the USA, acted against the races that they considered inferior, like the so American KKK, and is a target that justifies criminal action. All this robbery helps little to give us the history of the character, where he comes from and why he is capable of doing it, but above all about his present, about how an old man has managed to establish himself, have a normal life after his adventures, those crimes, Those dangers that happened in his youth, all these different visions of what a justified crime can be, delve into the character and delve into this story that seeks more than just talking about assaults.
Pulp is the last meeting between Brubaker and Sean Phillips, and we can see that they are still very, very cool, they both understand each other perfectly, but just as in Bad weekend The colors were more important in this case Phillips has loaded in inks, in shades and dark, the color is important, but especially the blacks. We are in a sad and duller time, so the colors are duller, and the blacks harder, everything is more “screwed up” after the Great Depression. Phillips’s drawing, as always, is dry, fast, and his narration is perfect for what Brubaker tells us, remarkably high again for the artist.
Pulp, Bad Weekend, the end of Kill or be killed have arrived in a very short period of time, which means an increase in the production of Brubaker and Philips in our country, and that must be applauded. Panini has stepped on the accelerator and published all the works that were coming out and were gradually falling off the hook due to Covid and North American distribution. Evolution is becoming a sure thing to find American independent works, and that is always appreciated.