Pulp by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
Max Winters is a down-on-his-luck author in 1930s New York who specializes in writing pulp stories about cowboys and outlaws in the Wild West. Unbeknownst to anyone else, though, his fanciful adventures aren’t fiction, but rather, draw from his own sordid history. Max’s downtrodden life soon takes an interesting turn, however, when an unexpected figure from his past comes asking for a favor. Despite its short length, Pulp’s storyline caught me by surprise on at least three occasions — a very good thing. I really couldn’t predict how things would turn out for Max and I stayed hooked until the final — and in hindsight, inevitable — panel. I became a fan of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips thanks to their work on Reckless, and Pulp is more of the same: storytelling that’s hard-boiled, nostalgic, and sympathetic all at once.