By Steve Baxi — Aging is relative. Going from 36 to 37, for example, doesn’t necessarily mean your material circumstances change but rather your ability to maneuver in those circumstances. At the same time, leaving your 20s can be a terrifying proposition for the opposite reason: now is the time for you to solidify who you are. How far along the checklist of life are you by this point? When the music stops, where will you sit? In Destroy All Monsters - the third book of the Reckless series by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips and Jacob Philips - we take a meditative dive into the various growing pains and anxieties of age. Not only has the world changed, not only have we changed, but those that help us through thick and thin have changed as well. Losing your world might not be as scary as losing the people you shared it with.

Destroy All Monsters is a thoughtful tale about how we cope with the inevitability of change. Each installment of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ partnership shows consistent growth, making it hard not to say my favorite book by the pair is whatever their latest release is at the time. And once again that is exactly where I find myself with Destroy All Monsters. When all is said and done, we not only have another touchstone work by the iconic duo but also a timely examination of growing up and growing old.

Reckless is in the well established tradition of pulp adventure and detective novels, with Brubaker citing Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer series and Don Pendelton’s Executioner as inspiration. As such, each book in the series largely functions on its own terms; this isn’t Reckless Vol 3, this is specifically Destroy All Monsters, a book in the Reckless series. Brubaker by this point has perfected the setup for each installment. All exposition, mentions of prior books and continuity are streamlined and make sense within this book’s own context. The advantage here is that there is very little introduction. The book begins exactly where it needs to without wasting a page. Ethan Reckless’s voice has matured into his own distinct flavor and as such, we trust his ability to fill us in rather than feeling dependent on discovering his idiosyncrasies.

However, where this specific entry shines is in Brubaker’s use of Anna, Ethan’s best friend and sidekick. We learn her history, how she came to work for Ethan, the expectations of their relationship and how she wrestles with growing up. The age difference between the pair allows Brubaker to examine the relative anxieties of age. Ethan, at 37, feels his physical ability diminish, he knows what’s needed in a fight but his mind saying it and his body cooperating have become two distinct things. Ethan wants nothing more than to carry on with the life he’s built for himself, but just as his emotions are buried, so too are his physical skills becoming harder to access.

Anna by contrast, nearing 30, wants to know what to do with her adult life. She’s spent 9 years with Ethan, enjoying movie nights at the El Ricardo theater, working on cases and growing up in a place that feels like home. Now she has to decide what she wants her career to be, who she wants to be with and how she can achieve those goals. Working with Ethan has been fun, but as she enters adulthood she needs to find a way to solidify her identity the same way Ethan has. Indeed this is the ultimate point of contention between the pair: Ethan has made a bubble for himself to stay the same, whereas Anna wants to change. Ethan wants to feel like the things he loved have not faded away, but has to face the natural erosion of time, whereas Anna wants to collect experiences for the first time. And yet they both have to learn that just because you love someone, something or some place, does not mean you can hold on to it forever, or that it can’t be loved better by someone else. And that may be the most bitter pill to swallow of the whole series thus far: just because you’ll miss something, doesn’t mean it’s not better off without you.

The contrast in Sean Philips’ art style and Brubaker’s hardboiled writing enhances this nuanced examination of age. Phillps renders the California coast with a soft, almost dreamlike quality. Ethan simply riding waves feels like a picture-esque postcard moment. Meanwhile, every character has age, history and a rough edge. This is a world of people in conflict with not only each other but at times the nature of the world itself. The case Ethan takes on this time is over land development and the ghost towns that formerly glorious neighborhoods become when bought up and used by crooked realtors. At every turn, the idealist landscapes of the city, the geography and the road layouts become challenges that need to be overcome. By this point we have seen Venice Beach many times, but here we see how the beauty of these images are often an escape from and built on top of the ignoble world hiding just on the other side of the California highway.

In equal measure, Jacob Phillps’ coloring has come into its own. In contrast to his brutal work on That Texas Blood or even the dreamlike quality of My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, here we see something both down to earth and warm. The 1980s world of Reckless is not one that exists anymore, even in California. As such, there is painstaking effort to render this idealistic landscape with warm, nostalgic overtones. The world seems to perpetually only exist either in the dead of night, or late sunset. The day is always just about done, the world is always on the cusp of being over. As such, the nostalgia invoked is not one of pure distance from the past, but rather one of longing. We’re always mentally prepared for things to be over, and yet they never quite are, so we simply long for the times of day we may have missed.

The most recent era of Brubaker and Phillips' work, an era marked by Jacob Phillips on colors, carries the overtones of Brubaker’s near-death experience. In Pulp, Junkies, Bad Weekend, Cruel Summer and now Reckless, we see this play out with meditative takes on how being close to death isn’t just about our mortality but about the way the world around us changes, how death comes almost more fully when we have to reject what we thought we understood about our surroundings. Destroy All Monsters in some ways feels most appropriately read not simply in sequence with the other two Reckless books, but as a companion piece to Pulp and Bad Weekend where we see the full scope of how we process our legacy, friendships, career and material objects in the face of death.

For the last few months, I’ve become something of a Brubaker and Phillips obsessive. Every week I’ll go to my local comic book store to buy a volume of Criminal, Kill or Be Killed, or any of their various OGNs. I’ve fallen in love lately with a night to myself, the rain and thunder booming, the lofi jazz music in the background, and the book in my hands by one of comics’ most iconic creative teams. Indeed few things are better to me than cozying up with another noir crime comic by these two. And so it comes as no shock to say I loved everything about Destroy All Monsters. But I think what might need to be said more than anything is that this is a story I feel compelled to sit with and discuss. Like Anna, as I near 30, every mood, every ache, every emotional crisis of this book feels like something close to my heart. This is not only another stellar collaboration, but one that I personally need right now and one that I will hand to everyone in my life in the same age bracket. If my friends are reading this, I hope all of you are ready for me to send you a copy of Destroy All Monsters, a book about time that couldn't have come at a better one.

Graphic Novel Review: Destroy All Monsters: A Reckless Book

Destroy All Monsters: A Reckless Book
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist and Letterer: Sean Phillips
Colorist: Jacob Philips
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $24.99
Bestselling crime noir masters ED BRUBAKER and SEAN PHILLIPS bring us a new original graphic novel starring troublemaker-for-hire Ethan Reckless.
It's 1988, and Ethan has been hired for his strangest case yet: finding the secrets of a Los Angeles real estate mogul. How hard could that be, right? But what starts as a deep dive into the life of a stranger will soon take a deadly turn, and Ethan will risk everything that still matters to him.
Another smash hit from the award-winning creators of RECKLESS, PULP, MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES, CRIMINAL, and KILL OR BE KILLED—and a must-have for all BRUBAKER and PHILLIPS fans!.
Publication Date: October 13, 2021
More Info: Destroy All Monsters - A Reckless Book

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Steve Baxi has a Masters in Ethics and Applied Philosophy, with focuses in 20th Century Aesthetics and Politics. He creates video essays on pop culture through a philosophy lens and frequently tweets through @SteveSBaxi.