The Aesthetics of Noir: Ed Brubaker on His Latest Crime Graphic Novel, ‘Night Fever’

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A new Brubaker/Phillips original graphic novel is always reason for crime fiction fans to celebrate, but there’s something particularly special about the bestselling, much-lauded team’s latest – Night Fever – a twisty, mind-bending neo-noir that pulls you through a winding, hypnotic tunnel of darkness in a way only Brubaker, Phillips and colorist Jacob Phillips can.

Cinematic and gripping, Night Fever is an outlier in the greater Brubaker/Phillips canon, but in the best way possible – a memorable detour that sticks with you. It’s always a pleasure to chat with Ed, who took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss the book, his other projects, collaborating with Sean and Jacob, and much more.

ALEX SEGURA: Okay, Ed, thanks for taking the time to do this. It’s really a pleasure to chat with you again. I’ll get right to it – there’s something about Night Fever, in the way it seems to embrace or spring from classic noir, but then takes a very weird turn. Can you expand on that? 

ED BRUBAKER: Yes, the initial germ of the idea came to me 10 or 15 years ago. I used to have terrible insomnia, and so I’d be awake half the night while my wife and a lot of the world were asleep, and I started thinking of a story about a guy who can’t sleep, of course, because what else do you do? It felt very noir to me, some guy goes out because he can’t sleep, and encounters a totally different world in the middle of the night, and he lies about himself and he gets in too deep… and you know, there’s just so many ways a story like that can go. But for some reason, I could never totally crack it, so it sat in the back of my mind, brewing away. 

A while back Sean had asked me to write something that was set in Europe or the UK, somewhere he’d spent time, and when I was thinking about that, this idea came back to me, the guy that can’t sleep, and I thought, what if it’s a guy on a business trip to France? And then all the pieces just started falling into place finally. Then the story became like this strange blend that feeling of old Black Lizard noir books, mixed with the weird Euro-comics I read when I was growing up… something that felt both scary and sexy and dark and cold war and maybe sci-fi at the edges even? I think that’s when I understood how to make it all work. 

So it kind of starts out like an almost Hitchcockian kind of set-up, that guy on a business trip who starts flirting with danger… but then as it goes on, the story turns in some really bizarre directions, as you said. Almost surreal at times. 

AS: Right, totally. I got major Lynch and Fellini vibes, which is of course, good. And speaking of vibes – the mood of the book – the intensity of Sean and Jacob’s art…it kind of borders on the unreal. Would you agree? 

EB: That’s really what I was going for, as the story went on. I wanted us to make a noir story that felt sort of existential and insane and scary. To try to reflect how insane it feels to be alive right now a lot of the time. So as Jonathan goes further into the night world with his new friend, Rainer, the images and mood of the story get more out there and feel like – what’s real here and what isn’t? Like as Jonathan starts crossing the line and committing crimes and violence, everything just gets more vibrant and intense and seductive, too. 

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AS: There was recently a piece in The Hollywood Reporter where you said Rainer was somehow inspired by Nicolas Refn, who you worked with for several years on a TV project. For my money, Rainer is the most fun character in the book, very chaotic and violent, and funny. What’s the story behind this Refn connection? 

EB: Rainer isn’t exactly based on Refn but is sort of “inspired by” him in different ways. He’s kind of like a cross between Nic and a character Nic would put in one of his movies. He gives big speeches about life and the world, and human nature, and he does wild stuff you wouldn’t expect. But part of why I said it was inspired by my time working with Refn was about the dynamic between Jonathan and Rainer in the story. Rainer is from this inner circle of life that Jonathan’s always been outside of, and so being with him lets him briefly inside that circle. I wanted to explore how that feels, and the times I’ve most felt that way was those early days with Refn, before it became normal to have him say stuff like “Hey, did I tell you that Jodorowsky did a tarot reading about our show?” So Rainer is sort of a tribute to Refn, but by no means is he Refn. I’d need 1000 more pages to even get close. 

AS: Without spoiling anything for readers, I think I can safely say the book can be read in two ways – it’s got a few major revelations and then it kind of leaves you there wondering, and questioning our narrator a bit. 

EB: God, I hope so. I really was trying for that kind of ending that makes you go back and read it again closer, to try to understand, is that a promise or is he lying? That kind of haunted ending that sticks with you and makes you look at your own life, hopefully differently. The book was written during a time I was dealing with some family stuff and spending a lot of time in hospitals, and I channeled a lot of my fears and frustrations into it as I went, I think. Like if writing is usually therapy, then this one was sort of primal scream therapy, I guess – wrapped up inside a weird crime story. But I’ve found that most people can identify with that these days. 

AS: I love asking this question because, selfishly, I can collect new books or films to absorb. Can you talk a bit about the books or movies that felt more present while working on this – influence or inspirations?

EB: When I started out, I was trying to capture that feeling of a Willeford or Goodis novel a bit, the “normal guy stumbles into something dark” alley of noir, but the further I got into the story, the more it kept shifting into something more akin to David Lynch or even Fellini, mood-wise, I think. It definitely goes from “neo-noir” to “what the fuck noir” at some point in the story.

AS: Night Fever feels very different from your earlier work while still residing in the crime genre – can you talk about your headspace while first coming up with the book and then working on it with Sean and Jacob?

EB: I started writing it just at the beginning of a really dark time in my life, dealing with a family health crisis, and spending a lot of time around waiting rooms and hospitals, so I think that all definitely informs the story. I think a lot of the main characters fears reflect things that were going through my head a lot as I wrote. These things that haunt you as you get older, like “did my life work out how I planned or did I just end up here somehow?” 

As far as the working process, Sean told me he wanted to draw something much larger, on bigger paper, so I thought about that while writing, the expansiveness of the way he’d approach the drawing. And we told Jake to just go nuts on the colors, to make every scene vibrant and alive. I think it’s the best work either have ever done. 

AS: How do you think Night Fever fits into your bigger body of work, particularly with Sean?

EB: It’s different than most of what we do, while still feeling like our work, which is, I think, one of the goals as we continue making books together. But I think as artists and writers we all approach a few themes or obsessions over and over again, from different angles, and Night Fever I feel like is our best attempt so far, at a really vivid noir story, that feels sexy and seductive. We’ve done a few books in this same wheelhouse – Bad Night and Last of the Innocent, in the CRIMINAL series are not too far tonally from Night Fever… but Night Fever feels more evocative to me, in some ways. It’s about a lot of things at the same time.

AS: Zooming out a bit and talking about the business side – you guys have made a big move into original graphic novels, first as a reaction to the pandemic, but now as your new business model – can you talk about that a bit?

EB: Yeah, I think because of me and Sean’s unique career in comics, working together as a team for over 20 years now, we were able to slowly build a loyal readership, and we discovered over time that those readers really wanted us to put out hardback books. A lot of people buy our paperbacks or single issues, but our biggest loudest audience was the hardback buyers, so back in 2018 we finally tried an original graphic novel, My Hereos Have Always Been Junkies, and that was a huge hit. We sold out in like 6 weeks, of a printing I thought would last two years. That changed our lives. 

So we decided to follow that path and see what we could do with focusing on graphic novels instead of serializing stories first, and it’s been the best decision ever, both creatively and on the business side. Our audience seems to just grow with every book, and we are constantly going back to press with one of our previous books now. It’s been a dream for us. 

AS: Before I let you go – what are you reading/watching/enjoying these days? Any crime authors you’d like to shout out?

EB: I’m currently reading I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai and loving it. My stack I’m taking on a reading trip soon is the new Lehane, the new S.A. Cosby, and the new Megan Abbott, all of which I’m sure will be amazing, as always. 

I really enjoyed Beef on that streaming platform that is forcing me to go on strike – but all props to everyone who made that show anyway. I’m pretty hooked on the Graham Yost adaptation of Silo. Star Trek Strange New Worlds is just back, which was great last season. The final season of Barry was amazing, of course. Bill Hader is a genius. 

I’m behind on comics reading the last few years, so I just got to Ducks by Kate Beaton and it’s just as good as everyone in the world says it is. 

I watched The Thin Man again recently and that movie is still a lot of fun. And Sullivan’s Travels, too. Been doing some 30s research for a project. 

AS: You mentioned a lot of my recent reads, too. Great minds, etc. Okay, what else are you working on? What’s next after this?

EB: Our next book is a strange little book that comes out in December, called Where The Body Was. That one is a crime story is about a bunch of characters who live on the same street, told through a bunch of overlapping perspectives and the endpapers are like a tribute to old mapback covers. 

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Night Fever is out now from Image Comics wherever books or comics are sold.

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