I must confess I never think Brubaker and the Phillips boys will manage to keep their output quite as breathtakingly good as this. Pulp is a demonstration of why graphic novels are needed, how comics storytelling is every bit as vital as ‘just’ the written word, television or film, and how mining the past, even sticking with their preferred crime noir genre, can deliver a very contemporary truth and beautiful art at the same time. Blurring the lines between idealised past, fictionalised past and the dark sides of hero and villain alike, Brubaker has a lot to say about the power of stories and the blurriness of morality around them. I wasn’t surprised by the ending but the way in which we’re taken there is devastating.

And let’s talk about that remarkable art – without question Sean Phillips’ career best line work and Jacob Phillips’ quite remarkable colour palette. The tone of their work together switches on a dime and carries you on an unforgettable journey through Max’s life, from the Wild West in 1892 to a thirties’ New York City full of hate, with antisemitism and other hatreds at boiling point. We get to see a changing face of America on one hand, but an increasing awareness that even stories which the hero of the piece tells him about his past are delusions. Hero and villain never were easy to distinguish from one another, and polarising can only end up with one outcome. The richness of each individual panel and clarity of emotion to match Brubaker’s words drew me in far deeper than I’d anticipated – it’s rare that sequential art leaves me feeling quite so rewarded and hurt at the same time.

As my love of monthly superhero comics wanes, I’m ever more driven to read work like this, and I’m glad that Brubaker and the Phillips’ are moving mostly into graphic novel work. Pulp is the sort of work you’d immediately point to to anyone who either sneered at comics or who needed a starting point, and I’ve no doubt this would convert any sceptic that this is as important a medium as every other visual means of storytelling. There may not be any superheroes here but the message is no less clear for having ordinary people telling it – do the right thing regardless of the cost.