10 Best Ed Brubaker Comics Fans Must Read
9. Sleeper
Sleeper was the first series that saw Brubaker partner up with his comics soulmate, Sean Phillips. Phillips had previously stepped in to help Michael Lark with inks on Vertigo’s Scene Of The Crime, which was also written by Brubaker.
The pair then joined forced for the Elseworlds one-shot, Gotham Noir, before diving into Sleeper together.
The series is set in the Wildstorm superhero universe but, typically, this is not your standard superhero tale. Brubaker and Phillips created a dark, neo-noir crime thriller that slotted perfectly into the already established world of The Authority and WildC.A.T.s.
This is the pair of them doing exactly the kind of comics they wanted to do, but while still playing in someone else’s sandpit. Sleeper is a clear indication of the work the two would go on to do once they had the freedom to create their own dark worlds from scratch instead of adding their noir sensibilities to an established universe.
Sleeper is not just a must-read comic in its own right (which it is), but it also gave birth to the most consistent pairing currently working in comics. Every Brubaker/Phillips release is an event, and it started here.