Matt Lowder Looks At RECKLESS, VOLUME ONE

guest review by RUN THE COMICS 5K's Matt Lowder . . . . .

RECKLESS, VOLUME ONE (Image, 2020) Ed Brubaker, writer. Sean Phillips, artist. Matt's Rating: 4.5 Stars out of a possible 5 stars.

Ethan Reckless was a free-spirited student before he joined the FBI. His activist side and his emotional balance, and all that wonderful passion remains mostly enshadowed to the reader as we meet an older Ethan who is now ex-FBI, off-the-grid, and doing seedy beat-em-ups, thefts, and unsavory tasks-for-hire to pay the bills in-between smoking pot and surfing in 1980s California. But his past is about to bite him in the ass, and some people he forgot from in an explosion in his 20's causing partial amnesia are about to re-enter his life.

The twists. Are. fan. TASTIC.

I don't gravitate toward crime. But this was a banger. If you like noir thriller novels, crime dramas like True Detective, exploitation pulp movies like Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, or anything to do with 70s and 80s FBI, CIA, or backdrop of Vietnam type stuff -- get this. And thank the Coronavirus! 

Ed Brubaker mentions in the afterword that this is the first of three books going direct to graphic novel format due to creative inspirations, time, and industry disruption due to lockdowns. Quite literally, RECKLESS would not have existed at all without the virus, and if it had been dreamed up under normal circumstances, may have been published monthly in comic format. Kind of weird to think about.

This is a focused, and brilliantly written story that didn't really need to be a comic. Its a ready-to-go WB movie, or AMAZON PRIME show for fans of Lee Child or Baldacci who write modern pop novels like the Jack Reacher series, with a smaller emphasis on action and more on plot and character.

RECKLESS could be told via any medium: radio play, film, or novel - and would have worked. The writing and plot are so strong that the art and characters become secondary. But that's not meant to disparage them. It's solid all around. 

The use of fat white margins was interesting and stylized: one panel on each page goes to full-bleed off the sides or top or the page. Its really artistic and fun. It's dynamically water colored, though impressionistic and organic and very free-feeling. Great use of full, deep black ink and sharp, coarse shadows.

THIS IS A MUST READ if you like Brubaker, enjoy Robert Redford or Charles Bronson vibes, or just like a bold standalone thriller that reads like a fast screenplay. We'll have three Reckless books in less than a year, and that's rad.

4.5/5