Ed Brubaker, putting the mystery back into comics.

Ed Brubaker has been involved in comics for a long time but it is only now that he is getting the attention he deserves. With the four issue SCENE OF THE CRIME mini-series from VERTIGO and the upcoming DEADENDERS also for VERTIGO Ed has stepped into the spotlight and from the look of things that is where he will stay

SCENE OF THE CRIME was what brought you into the spotlight, what made you want to write a crime story in this age of mutants and superheroes?

I guess I just didn't really have any ideas for mutants or superheroes. My view of mainstream comics, with whatever broad definition you want to place on that term, is that they are mainly entertainment. Sure, they may also be great sometimes, but then so are a lot of books, movies, and TV shows that are ostensibly entertainment. So, when the opportunity arose to work in the mainstream, I immediately thought about doing a mystery, because that was the kind of thing I was currently consuming like crazy. I had been pretty disappointed with most of the so-called "mystery" comics that I had seen, not because they weren't any good (some of them were) but because they weren't really mysteries. In a good mystery, you don't usually see the crime being committed, you see the aftermath, and the solving of the crime. Most of the mysteries in comics had actually been crime stories. I wanted to see if it was possible to actually do a mystery that would read like a good mystery book, like Ross MacDonald or Raymond Chandler.
Also, I knew that mystery as a genre was huge, and thought it seemed natural that it could become a big genre in comics as well. It is a huge genre in European comics.

From where did the inspiration come, as this is not your everyday crime story?

There are two inspirations for SCENE. The first is in the structure of the story, and the style in which the story unfolds. I was working very much from a Ross MacDonald-style template on that. He's my favorite mystery writer, and the structure and thought that goes into his work has consistently blown me away, as it has a whole generation of novelists and readers before me. His influence in the field can be seen in many popular writers such as Sue Grafton and Bill Pronzini, among others. I was very drawn into his classic school of story-telling, I guess, and the whole idea of our pasts influencing our whole lives, inescapably.
The second influence, or perhaps inspiration, for the story came from the true story of a couple of girls I knew, who had grown up in a cult and been sexually abused as children. I had always seen a lot of pain and tragedy there, and that had stayed with me for years. So that's where the inspiration for my plot came from.
The characters, Jack and his uncle Knut, were created to give the book the feel of those series detective novels, and I hope to use them again soon.

What work have you done before SCENE OF THE CRIME?

Prior to that, I worked on a series called LOWLIFE, which I wrote and drew, then I did a few other comics, AT THE SEAMS and DETOUR. On the writing-only side, my first work was a crime story called AN ACCIDENTAL DEATH, that was drawn by Eric Shanower (AGE OF BRONZE), then I did a number of things for DARK HORSE PRESENTS, most notably THE FALL with Jason Lutes (BERLIN, JAR OF FOOLS). Eric and I did a oneshot for Vertigo called PREZ in 1995, with the late Lou Stathis. I basically just rode on Eric's coattails as far as I could.

DEADENDERS has been described as BLADE RUNNER meets QUADROPHENIA, how would you describe it?

As REPO MAN meets A SCANNER DARKLY. No, seriously... It's all that stuff, I guess. You can never really get a good grasp of a book by all those "bastard child of" things, but those are appropriate because they did serve as at least a minor inspiration. The book is basically a science fiction version of my own youth, with a lot more plot and Joseph Campbell thrown in so people will read it. I will say that it is not cyber-punk, or steam punk, and maybe not even punk at all. As with my take on the mystery genre, I prefer to look at the classic molds. My science fiction is bound to be more influenced by Philip K. Dick and Alfred Bester than anyone else. But this is not hard science fiction either. Like most of my work, it centers more on the characters and not the gimmicky aspects of the genres. I hope to create characters that the readers will both love and hate, and that will draw them into the stories that (series artist) Warren Pleece and I are crafting for them.

What do you think the new millenium will bring to the comics industry?

I think the future of comics is really more along the line of trade books

I would hope a better distribution system. My one hope for comics and the internet is that the "connect-sales" market will get more comics and graphic albums into the hands of kids and teenagers. I think the comics industry needs to grow backwards a little, gain more young readers again, so that we can survive. There are more good comics being created now than there ever have been, but they're not being seen by that many people. I certainly hope the new millenium doesn't bring anything like electronic publishing. I think most of the people who buy books and magazines actually like the objects themselves, as well as the material they contain, and getting rid of books just for the sake of progress seems ludicrous.

I have given comics libraries a lot of thought and am wondering what you think of the idea?

Anything to get more people to see them. I think the future of comics is really more along the line of trade books, things that look good on shelves and in stores. Like they do in Europe. I would love to see DC publishing 20 or so books a month that were 80 pages long instead of periodicals. That way the material inside would be given more time and weight. If there were things like that, a library for comics would be a good idea, but a library of periodicals might be a bad idea.

What did you do before entering the comics industry and what prompted you to enter it?

I have been working in comics my whole adult life, all my other jobs were part time jobs that left me enough time to work on comics. It's been my goal since I was seven years old to work in comics.

What was the reason for following up on a successfull crime story with a sci-fi tale?

I really wanted to create a bigger world and a larger cast of characters than a crime comic and all its constraints would have allowed. I love crime and hope to do more mysteries soon, but I wanted to play with other genres and give myself more room to tell different kinds of stories, some character pieces, some sci-fi action stories, some romances, some humor, etc. With DEADENDERS, I have created a little universe I can take people on a short tour of every month, and that's what the monthly comics that I grew up with were like, from ARCHIE to SWAMP THING to LOVE AND ROCKETS.
As far as genre or even non-genre stuff goes, I'm omnivorous, not a snob about one genre or another, and I want to experiment with just about all of them.