Friend of the Devil: A Reckless Book

“Reckless” had the misfortune of being the “least good” book in what was a banner year for Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.  They had already released the excellent graphic novella “Pulp” and followed it up with the even better “Criminal” collection “Cruel Summer,” which made my Top 10 list for 2020.  “Reckless” was by no means bad, it just didn’t have quite the same level of depth as those other two works.  However, it did mark the first entry in a planned series of graphic novels from the creators, so there was always the chance that Brubaker and Phillips could improve on things from there.  Which is exactly what they’ve done with this volume.

“Friend of the Devil” starts off in 1985, four years after the events in “Reckless.”  Ethan is still living out of his movie theater and his friend Annie is still helping manage the calls for help he gets, along with his life in general.  Which isn’t going well right now.  His dad has recently passed away and there was still some bad blood between them going back to when Ethan fell out with the FBI.  This has led him to try and escape back into better times in his life by watching old movies and TV shows in his theater.  Annie sees what’s going on and figures the best way to get Ethan out of his head is to get him on a case.

This is exactly what she does and it leads Ethan to a librarian in Santa Monica named Linh as he tracks down a missing person.  There’s some awkwardness when they first meet, but that doesn’t stop them from getting to know each other.  Before long, they’ve become an actual couple and life looks to be going well for Ethan.  Which is why it all has to start falling apart when Linh sees a familiar face in one of the troubleshooter’s old movies.  That face belongs to her sister, who has been missing for years after she took off for Hollywood.

The previous volume didn’t really poke around in the dark underbelly of 70’s-era Southern California, so much as it used it for a jumping off point.  “Friend of the Devil” dives right into said dark underbelly as Ethan tries to figure out how Linh’s sister wound up in a film called “Sirens of Satan” that only played in a few drive-ins in ‘77.  It’s a setup that starts off like a regular private eye story before morphing into something darker and more tragic as things go along.

Brubaker and Phillips play up this part well as we get to see Ethan interact with some colorful characters over the course of his investigation.  From film buffs, to Hollywood agents, to drug-damaged producers, he meets plenty of immediately interesting people, who might even have more of a role to play in the story after the initial encounter.  It’s also nice to see that there are going to be some recurring characters through the “Reckless” series.  That Annie shows up again probably won’t surprise anyone, but I was surprised to see one person return from the previous volume.  I won’t spoil the surprise, except to say that they’re in a much different place now than they were when we last saw them with Ethan.

It also helps that Linh is pretty cool herself.  We see that she can hold her own in her first encounter with Ethan and isn’t going to put up with his crap.  Then we get to know her backstory  as an immigrant from Vietnam whose mother married a G.I. who brought them back to the States.  It’s here that Brubaker fleshes out Linh’s relationship with her sister and makes it clear to the audience why this character was so important to her.  Which makes it easy for us to understand why Ethan would go through what he does to find out what happened to her.

As for the “finding out” part of that equation, it’s handled pretty well even as the things our protagonist finds out has the situation going from bad to worse.  While the devil sex cult business has its own lurid appeal, the real fun comes from seeing someone like Ethan be equal parts resourceful, clever, and violent enough to get the answers he’s looking for.  These answers are unexpected, which I liked, and ultimately tragic as well.  It’s not an obvious kind of tragedy that you can see coming, and I appreciated its subtlety in that regard.  What happens between Ethan and Linh in the end is as beautiful a piece of character writing as it is ultimately sad.

Also beautiful is the art from Phillips, but you knew I was going to say that.  The artist has been delivering consistently excellent work for years in my opinion and this is no different.  Well, it’s different in that Brubaker isn’t asking him to do some arguably impossible emotional shading for Ethan here.  That helps, as does the generally sunny SoCal vibe that the artist captures for most of the volume.  It contrasts well with the extremely dark opening sequence and the bad stuff Ethan keeps uncovering.

With great art, a story that goes to some unexpected places, and a more interesting cast of characters, “Friend of the Devil” shows that Brubaker and Phillips are onto something with this series.  Ethan’s adventures now look like a way for the creators to tell any kind of story they want in this setting, which makes me eager to see what they have in store for the next volume “Destroy All Monsters.”  No, Mr. Reckless will not be waging a one man war against all kaiju there.  After this volume, however, I’d still be willing to read that story.