Kill or be killed. 1 9782413002369, 2413002367

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Number One IMAGE C OMICS, INC. Robert Kirkman — Chief Operating Officer Erik Larsen — Chief Financial Officer Todd McFarlane — President Marc Silvestri — Chief Executive Officer Jim Valentino — Vice-President Eric Stephenson — Publisher Corey Murphy — Director of Sales Jeff Boison — Director of Publishing Planning & Book Trade Sales Jeremy Sullivan — Director of Digital Sales Kat Salazar — Director of PR & Marketing Branwyn Bigglestone — Senior Accounts Manager Sarah Mello — Accounts Manager Drew Gill — Art Director Jonathan Chan — Production Manager Meredith Wallace — Print Manager Briah Skelly — Publicist Sasha Head — Sales & Marketing Production Designer Randy Okamura — Digital Production Designer David Brothers — Branding Manager Olivia Ngai — Content Manager Addison Duke — Production Artist Vincent Kukua — Production Artist Tricia Ramos — Production Artist Jeff Stang — Direct Market Sales Representative Emilio Bautista — Digital Sales Associate Leanna Caunter — Accounting Assistant Chloe Ramos-Peterson — Library Market Sales Representative

IMAGE C OMI CS.COM KILL OR BE KILLED #1. August 2016. Published by Image Comics, Inc. Office of publication: 2001 Center Street, 6th Floor, Berkeley, CA, 94704. Copyright © 2016 Basement Gang, Inc. All rights reserved. KILL OR BE KILLED™ (including all prominent characters featured herein), their logos and all character likenesses are trademarks of Basement Gang, Inc. unless otherwise noted. Image Comics® is a trademark of Image Comics, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means (except for short excerpts for review purposes) without the express written permission of Basement Gang, Inc., or Image Comics, Inc. All names, characters, events, and locales in this publication are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, or places, without satiric intent, is coincidental. Digital edition.

Welcome to

the first issue of KILL

OR BE KILLED. Most of you are probably

longer term readers of me and Sean and Bettie’s books, but with every new project we seem to be

expanding our readership, so if this is your first time

trying one of our books, please check out the ads for our many previous projects at the back of this issue.

And for those of you who followed us over from THE FADE OUT and CRIMINAL, I hope you dug what we’re doing here. Up until about a week before Sean was finishing up our last book, we were going to do

something else next. But this idea kept bugging me,

and I kept hearing Dylan’s narration when I’d sit down with my notebook, so we switched courses. After a year and a half of intricately plotted historical

noir, I realized I really wanted to write something

Like the previous CRIMINAL one-shot, this one

that was still about crime and that was still very dark,

tremendous response on this one-shot, and it looks

totally different for our next big project. Something

but something that had a slightly different voice, and a bit of humor mixed in with all the murder.

This is our version of the vigilante killer genre, so

was also released in a magazine variant. We got a

like FANG, the Kung Fu Werewolf is the surprise hit character of the year. Look for a Fang action figure soon. (Maybe).

of course it’s as much a character study as it is a

And right around the time that CRIMINAL one-shot

down some very unusual paths with this story.

Eisner Awards – Best Writer, Best Colorist, and Best

thriller, but as you’ll see next month, we’ll be going

And as for the other idea, the one we put on hold for

KILL OR BE KILLED, well, we’ll get to it down the line, hopefully sooner than later. ***

came out, THE FADE OUT got nominated for several Limited Series. By the time this comes out, we’ll have either won or lost, but either way, it’s always

humbling to be nominated, and for our wonderful and amazing color artist, Bettie, it is long overdue. (In my not humble opinion).

Okay, so what else is new? In January we finished

***

our longest one-shot yet, the CRIMINAL 10TH

months back, I started an email newsletter. I send it

THE FADE OUT, and then jumped right into ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL.

Something else you might be interested in — a few out a few times a month, with art previews and behind

the scenes stuff, and sometimes me rambling about

the first CRIMINAL trade to be released first in the

want to sign up for it, go to my twitter page: @brubaker

releases.

something that’s on my mind at the moment. If you and you’ll find a link to the sign-up page there.

new design that Sean came up with for the Image

***

So, in the months since the last letters page, a lot

of great stuff I would have recommended came out. Here’s a few highlights:

THE NICE GUYS – Shane Black’s new crime movie, which is probably already on video by the time you’re

reading this. It’s funnier and more explosive than Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and one of the best times

I’ve had in a theater this year. In a perfect world there’d be a sequel to this already in production, because Gosling and Crowe are a perfect team.

THE NEON DEMON – My friend Nicolas Winding Refn’s new movie is one of the most amazing

cinematic experiences of the year. A slow moody

horror story about youth and beauty that almost defies description. One of those movies you want

to watch a few times and argue about with your

friends. Also includes one of Keanu Reeves’ best performances ever.

GREEN ROOM – Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to

This book collects the CRIMINAL one-shots from

not been able to look away from. Gets the punk and

in the ’70s.

Blue Ruin is probably the scariest movie I’ve ever

skinhead subculture stuff right, while being a riveting

the last few years, two stories of the Lawless family

crime/horror film at the same time.

***

THE AMERICANS – The recent season of The

first in a series about the vengeance/vigilante killer

Americans was the best one so far. A deep dive into the relationships undercover operatives maintain,

and how real or false they really are. This is a case of a show being amazing and somehow getting even

better. I know no one is watching this show, but at this point it’s really their loss.

There’s lots more, to be sure, but I have to save

For our back pages article this month, we’ve got the genre by Devin Faraci, who you may remember

from his articles about old Hollywood in THE FADE OUT. Devin also runs Birth.Movies.Death. and

has recently become a comic writer, adapting Jim

Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, for IDW. This month, Devin explores one of the classics of the genre, DEATH WISH.

some stuff to recommend next issue.

***

***

[email protected]

For those of you who keep up with our series in trade

form, CRIMINAL, VOL. 7: WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE will be coming out in September. This is

All right, that’s it for this issue. Write to us at: and

tell

us

what

you thought or think or whatever. We’ll be back in September, looking like this:

Hollywood - 1948. A noir film stuck in endless reshoots. A writer plagued by nightmares from the war. An up-and-coming starlet's suspicious death. And a mogul and his security chief who will do anything to keep the cameras rolling before the studio system come crashing down. THE FADE OUT is the most ambitious series yet from the award-winning team of Brubaker and Phillips, with acclaimed color artist, Elizabeth Breitweiser. "Brubaker piles on the intrigue, adding even more secrets and layers to the book’s already sprawling narrative." IGN "The superior art by Phillips combines effortlessly clear narrative with hazy, half-remembered dreams." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY "Elizabeth Breitweiser has quickly become an essential part of the team with her textured rendering style and evocative palettes." AV CLUB

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