Continuing to write about the small slivers I don’t hate of mediums that I DO hate, I give you Ed Brubaker, ladies and gentlemen! This man understands what Jimmy and Tom do not!
Ed Brubaker recently gave an interview to CBR and he totally lines up with my tastes! From that interview, Brubaker leads with his reason for moving on for mainstream superheroes:
“I wrote about 500 superhero comics, and I think I hit my limit around 400.”
Excellent assessment, Ed. While Brubaker has excelled with his non-superhero genre (Deadenders, Criminal, Scene of the Crime), those five hundred superhero comics he wrote were not phoned in! He did some great work on Batman, a legendary run on Captain America, Daredevil, and his unique take on the genre in Sleeper!) But he is, at heart, a crime comic writer. Why? This revelation came at an early age and followed it to its logical conclusion:
When I go to the comic book store now, I pretty much only buy creator-owned books, and the odd Marvel or DC thing that a friend of mine’s doing that I really like. But I never buy anything that’s tied into a crossover. When I was a kid, even — I stopped reading Marvel Comics as a kid after “Secret Wars,” because I was like, “I hate that crossover.” I was its target audience, but I was like, “No, don’t like this, it’s just bullshit to trick everybody into buying every book.” And those are always the worst stories. Even the best crossover’s still not as good as anything else that the people who did it did. As big as “Civil War” was, it’s still not as good as “Starlight.” It’s not as good as “Wanted,” where [Mark] Millar could just do his own thing. Even the best crossovers are still not as good as what their creators do on their own stuff. Like [Brian Michael] Bendis has done a ton of crossovers, and none of them are as good as “Ultimate Spider-Man.” Even though they sell way better. It’s just an odd thing. And I’m not saying they’re bad! I’m not saying Bendis and Mark did a bad job. I’m just saying, even the best crossover is still a crossover. There are too many moving parts. There are too many other people’s voices. It’s not a singular vision, and I love a singular vision.
Preach it, Brother! No Convergence or Secret Infinity for Ed Brubaker!
Check out the full interview over at CBR!
Gabbing Geek 
Brubaker is the Anti-Jimmy. Huh. Who knew?
I still love his Captain America/Winter Soldier run…
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He understands what I do not? What is there to understand? To each their own. I leave Convergence to Jimmy, and really only will read Secret Wars because I started with Hickman’s great Avengers run and that’s where he’s wrapping the whole thing up. Beyond that, I don’t really read much on a monthly basis anymore.
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I might retire, or greatly trim my monthly readings once Convergence and Secret Wars are done. Especially DC. Because, seriously, this:
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