Point Blank [Paperback]

Ed Brubaker (Author), Colin Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 2009

POINT BLANK is the gritty prequel to the critically acclaimed SLEEPER graphic novel series written by Eisner Award-winner Ed Brubaker (Criminal, Captain America) and stylishly rendered by legendary artist Colin Wilson.

Ex-Black Ops soldier Cole Cash is caught in a whirlpool of secrets, lies, manipulation, and murder. But before he goes down for the last time, he's going to get some answers. No matter whom he has to kill along the way.

As Cole investigates a brutal attempt that has left his one-time commander and legendary spy-master, John Lynch, at the brink of death, he maneuvers through the labyrinthian byways of intrigue that are the favored routes of men like Lynch. But to find the answers he seeks, Cash will have to discover the key to one of his old Team 7 comrade's greatest achievements - and his greatest shame. But can he bring this dirty little secret in to the light of day? And what other secrets of his own will he discover along the way?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brubaker has a feel for writing about the urban underworld (documented in his graphic novel A Complete Lowlife), and here he puts a small-time superhero, Cole Cash (aka the Grifter), in the starring role of what's effectively a hardboiled detective story, using some clever narrative tricks. Brubaker notes that Alan Moore's Watchmen and the film The Limey inspired the fragmented chronology and retrospective revelations of his story, but an even better reference point is the movie Memento. The tricks memory plays are central to this work (which has spun off into Brubaker's current series, Sleeper), and flipping back to earlier sequences when they're mentioned again almost always reveals something the reader was led to get wrong. Detective stories dovetail with the seedy underbelly of the capes-and-cowls world, and what looks like a murder can turn into something else altogether. (And if readers have ever wondered what kind of bars supervillains congregate in, this book has the answer.) Cash is an ultraviolent alcoholic loser, and the deeper he gets into the nasty secrets of his own past, the less his habit of shooting his way out does any good. By book's end, he doesn't see how it all fits together, but readers will. Wilson's artwork is unspectacular but serviceable, and suitably ugly-everything seems to be covered with grime.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Dean of comics scripters Alan Moore masterminded the universe of this stylish neonoir exercise. It is essentially that of Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen (1987), which reinvented the costumed crime-fighter genre. In it "masks" (costumed crusaders) are just some of the new breed of posthumans. There are also plenty of posthuman intelligence spooks like Lynch. A no-show for a supposedly important meeting with former lieutenant Cole Cash, Lynch turns up shot in the head but still ticking. Taken to an ER, Lynch is out of it, but his damaged brain starts fixing itself. Meanwhile, Cole undertakes a corpse-strewn odyssey to find out who shot Lynch and why, only to wind up back where he started. Besides Moore, Brubaker acknowledges Lee Marvin in the book's dedication--he'd better, since he owes this book's title and manner of development to one of Marvin's best vehicles, John Boorman's Point Blank (1967). Artist Wilson makes Cole more handsome than Marvin but Cole's milieu as hard-edged and moodily lit as the movie's. Gratifyingly violent and ambiguous. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: WildStorm (May 12, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401201164
• ISBN-13: 978-1401201166
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 0.2 x 10.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #110,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent story that sets up SLEEPER, September 19, 2004

By 

Babytoxie (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Point Blank (Paperback)

For those of you currently enjoying Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' series SLEEPER for Wildstorm Comics, be sure to check out POINT BLANK, as this is where it all begins. The story: Gen13's John Lynch has been shot and is lying in a coma, and his old friend Cole Cash, WildCATs' Grifter, is out to find who's responsible. The trail goes through many different characters in the Wildstorm Universe, finally leading to a name: Holden Carver. Who is this man, what is his connection to Lynch, and how is the WildCATs renegade Tao involved? Brubaker's story is very creative: an intriguing study of how perspectives influence our perception of events. The end of this book was a surprise, but when I went back to the beginning, all the clues were there. I enjoyed Colin Wilson's art - good action sequences, plenty of depth and texture, and just the right amount of grime for this type of story. These characters are not pretty-boy superheroes with square jaws; rather, they are tired, weathered, and worn-out, just the way that someone in this situation should look.

I had intended on giving this book a 4, but in the end, I can't really find any faults with it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even more so than the first volume of SLEEPER. So start here to get into one of the best comics being published today. Also, if you'd like to add another step and get even MORE backstory, check out the Alan-Moore-penned WildCATs trade paperbacks "Homecoming" and "Gang War". These will get you up to speed on Cole Cash, Tao, and many other characters in POINT BLANK. Not that these two WildCATs volumes are essential to the story, just some additional info.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The prequel to "Sleeper" -- one of the best graphic novels out there, October 17, 2005

By 

DJ Joe Sixpack (...in Middle America) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Point Blank (Paperback)

People go on and on about how great this series is, and the good news is, it completely lives up to the hype. I came to "Sleeper" after reading a few other titles Ed Brubaker had written, notably DC's deliciously revamped "Catwoman" (which is also a lot of fun)... I was skeptical, but I'm glad I took the plunge with "Sleeper," as it is one of the best comicbook stories I've read in a long while.

The action takes place in the WildCATS/Authority/Stormwatch universe, once a comicbook backwater that has recently been revitalized into a gritty and witty superhero noir... "Sleeper" tells the story of a superpowered secret agent, Holden Carver, who is placed undercover by a Machiavellian Nick Fury type to infiltrate a sinister spy network populated with superpowered, super-amoral bad guys. Brubaker uses the character's specific superpowers to flesh out their inner lives -- Carver's power is the ability to absorb any amount of bodily damage and transmute it into pure pain, which he can zap other people with. Meanwhile, he feels no pain himself and is practically unkillable, a situation that leaves him feeling dead inside and increasingly alienated from the true-believer idealism that lead him into military service to begin with. Brubaker borrows from the well-trod genre of spy fiction, but adds an extra layer with the whole superpower thing that is well thought-out and rewarding. Without getting into spoilers, etc., I'll just say that this was one of those rare comic series that I regretted getting to the end of... the world it depicted was so absorbing and textured that I was bummed I knew the story would end with Volume 4... (The entire "Sleeper" story is contained in four slim volumes, plus the prequel, "Point Blank," which sets the stage for "Sleeper" and should definitely be read as well...)

It should be mentioned that this is not a book for little kids: there are many of the same sort of "adult" elements as DC's Vertigo imprint -- semi-graphic sexuality and some extreme violence -- although to his credit, Brubaker includes these elements for a reason, and does it with far less of the "gee-whiz" gratuitousness that has made the Vertigo books become so tedious and repetitive. The sex elements cut to the heart of Carver's character, while the violence is used to show the seriousness of his predicament; they actually deepen the story and move it along and are not included merely to titillate readers or gross us out. That being said, I highly recommend this series.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Immediate momentum, April 17, 2010

By 

J. Ellerbach (New Orleans) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Point Blank (Paperback)

This book had momentum from page one. Couldn't put it down and can't wait to follow it with the Sleeper series. Terrific noir mystery with just enough hints of the 'super' to spice it up and separate it from more by-the-numbers who-dun-its.