Disclosure: Not that it matters, but Ed Brubaker is a friend of mine. Also, you may want to keep this post handy for reference while you read this post.

Ed Brubaker did something that I didn’t think would ever happen in my lifetime: he made me care about Captain America. He made me want to read Captain America the way I read Batman. Unless you’re inside my head right now (AND GET THE HELL OUT IF YOU ARE I NEED THE SPACE) you don’t really know how massive that is for me, but it’s a pretty big deal. See, other than a brief X-Men obsession around 1990, I’ve never been a Marvel guy. I tried to like Spiderman; couldn’t stand it. I tried to get into Wolverine. Boring. I tried to get into Avengers, but I already was really into Justice League, and . . . ’nuff said.

(See what I did there?)

But Ed made Captain America as haunted and tragic as any comic hero I’ve ever read, and made me forget that I was reading a story about a dude in a spandex suit, and made me feel like I was reading something that had more in common with Watchmen, which was the first time I read a book about dudes in spandex suits that made me forget that I was reading a book about dudes in spandex suits.

I mean, I liked it so much, I’m considering possibly reconsidering the "meh" on Marvel stance that’s served me so well for the last 18 years. I’ve already picked up some of Matt Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man, and . . . well, Ed and Matt do Uncanny X-Men now, and The Avengers looks kind of cool to me too, so . . .

Dear god, I have such a problem. But it’s okay, because I can stop reading comics any time I want to. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP YES I CAN!

Um. Anyway, back to the point of this post:

Ed does this book with Sean Phillips called Criminal , which is absolutely magnificent. It’s these stand-alone crime noir stories that are just . . . well, they’re everything I like about the noir genre and the graphic storytelling genre in one nifty package. It’s like they took the best aspects of 70s noir movies like Mean Streets, The French Connection, and Taxi Driver, put them in a blender with everything Chandler and Elroy ever wrote, grabbed a heavy brush and painted the whole thing on a giant canvas.

In other words, I really, really like Criminal, and Ed has joined the likes of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman on my very short list of writers who I will buy anything from. He’s one of those writers who can do a superhero story in the morning, and turn right around and do something totally unrelated but just as fantastic in the afternoon.

So, yesterday, Warren Ellis posted two teaser commercial pages that Ed gave him from Ed and Sean’s new book, INCOGNITO.

I haven’t put them inline here because they need to be viewed at a larger resolution than WWdN:iX can handle. But please trust me when I say that it’s worth having a look. If you don’t like it, I’ll give you your clicks back, no questions asked. All you have to do is pay for handling.

Now, without further ramblings from me . . . BEHOLD!

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