Although Chip Zdarsky has been a busy bee with his extended work at DC and Marvel, he manages to still have time for creator-owned work such as Public Domain. Zdarsky has always had a sense of humor (look no further than his Substack newsletter), but he has shown his grittier side with established characters like Batman and Daredevil, as well as the private detective Easton Newburn that he co-created with Jacob Phillips.
The first volume of Newburn, consisting of the initial eight issues, was released in 2022, and considering that Zdarsky was occupied with other titles, he finally got around to finishing the remaining eight issues to conclude his crime saga. The second volume sees the detective losing several alliances from the few police that he will consult with, or the various crime syndicates that Newburn has tried to maintain peace in New York. As past mistakes are catching up with Newburn, he must take increasingly desperate measures to protect himself, but how much longer can his partner Emily remain by his side?
Image Comics
Whereas each issue from the previous volume has its own murder-of-the-week feel, this volume relies much more of an overarching narrative with multiple characters from both sides of the law who are constantly at odds with each other, such as newcomer Emily, a journalist who is writing a piece on Newburn, which could lead to disastrous results. No doubt Zdarsky is juggling a lot of chess pieces, and if you haven’t kept up with the series which literally took a one-year break in between issues, you might lose track over the mechanics of the plot.
However, whenever we focus on the dynamic between the coldness of Newburn and the warmth of Emily, the story finds its center. While you feel more on board with Emily, as seen in her journal entries from the comic’s text-only pages, you are hoping for the best to come out of her and the shadier Newburn as both are victims of their own past. In the case of the titular character, who blurs the line between protagonist and antagonist as he delivers a great monologue about compromising to keep peace in the city, we get his whole backstory in one issue. #14 is a stunning character study, showing how Newburn was brought up, his flawed ways as a cop and how the crime-ridden city pushed him far enough to change how life should be in New York.
While Sean Phillips continues his slew of great crime comics through his continuing collaboration with Ed Brubaker, his son Jacob – having worked as a colorist on his father’s comics – brings a similar aesthetic of scratchy, noir-inspired art style to Newburn. With a heavy dose of heavy shadows and abstract coloring, Jacob Phillips’s work may not be the most polished, but gets across the gritty surroundings and the variety of diverse characters being chucked in the deep end.
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