Ed Brubaker’s Friday Is a Delightfully Lovecraftian Twist on Encyclopedia Brown

Earlier this year, I reviewed Ed Brubaker’s Friday — which he made in collaboration with Marcos Martin and Muntsa Vicente — for my Cultural Diet. The series was originally released “name your price” on Panel Syndicate, which allows comic creators to sell their work directly to readers. However, if you want something to set on your bookshelf, Image Comics published Friday’s third and final volume several weeks ago — click here to order a copy.

Friday has been one of my favorite comic discoveries of 2024 (though it actually began in 2020 during COVID). Brubaker is arguably best known for his noir-ish collaborations with Sean Phillips, but Friday finds him putting a Lovecraftian twist on the likes of Encyclopedia Brown and Harriet the Spy. The result is nostalgic and bittersweet, filled with eldritch creatures and arcane mysteries, a fascinating fictional world, and protagonists that are plucky and likable (though not without some coming-of-age melodrama).

Put simply, Friday hit a sweet spot I didn’t even know existed until I checked out the first volume from my local library. (Brubaker’s name on the cover instantly piqued my curiosity.) As I wrote in my review back in May, “Friday is filled with so much heart that it’s a joy to read (and re-read).”