Reckless is a 2020 graphic novel published by Image Comics. Written by Ed Brubaker and illustrated by Sean Phillips, it is the first in a series of graphic novels starring Ethan Reckless, a former undercover FBI Agent-turned surfer-turned hardboiled detective/repo man. If you have the money and a good story, Reckless will find whatever or whomever you need found. Your trouble is his business, for a price.
In Los Angeles, 1981, Ethan Reckless is a part-time private eye/repo man working out of a rundown movie theater. His assistant, the purple-haired punk Anna, operates his 1-800 number where people who need him call, but he's picky about the jobs he takes.
And then he gets a message from a former flame, Rainy. The women he was in love with back during his radical underground days. The time when the group he was a part of died due to a bomb going off, causing blank spots in his memory and a distant feeling in his head. The worst part of it, however, is that Ethan was an undercover FBI agent who had infiltrated the group, tasked with bringing down the leader, Rainy's brother.
But that was years ago and now Rainy needs help. Money that she helped steal during a bank robbery years ago has gone missing and she needs Ethan to retrieve it. But things aren't always as they seem and this job will lead Ethan into even more dangerous situations than he knows.
The second graphic novel, Friend of the Devil: A Reckless Book, was published in April 2021.
Tropes in Reckless:
- The '80s: The first book takes place in 1981.
- The Anti-Nihilist: After Ethan returned to the FBI, he was put on a desk job reading through reports written by scientists about global warming and upcoming environmental disasters and he realized that everyone was just waiting for the end of the world. So he decided if the world was going to end, he was going to help people in the meantime.
- Beach Kiss: Ethan keeps flashing back to when he did this with Rainy and he wants to remember how he felt about her back then, but he can't.
- Big Bad: Wilder. But not really — Rainy was just setting up both him and Ethan to die by each other's hands.
- Bittersweet Ending: Wilder is dead and his drug-running operation is done, but the CIA were the ones funding him and they got away with it. And Rainy wasn't killed by him, but rather had her brother make a bomb to kill herself with, because she had terminal cancer and wanted to get revenge on the men in her life who had used her.
- Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: After Ethan joined the FBI, they tasked him with surveying student protestors and such, until he could infiltrate an actual group of radicals. The goal was to connect them to the Black Panthers, but it all ended up going wrong.
- Film Noir: It's neo-noir set in Los Angeles in the early '80s.
- Hardboiled Detective: Even though he's not technically a detective, Ethan Reckless still comes off as this. Even his habits of surfing and getting stoned don't stop him being being hardboiled.
- Noodle Incident: How Anna became Ethan's assistant. Ethan only says that it's a long story.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Ethan gets stabbed in the arm by Wilder, but keeps going, even driving all the way back to L.A. with the wound only wrapped in a bandage. Subverted, however, because he then has to spend several days in the hospital due to this wound.
- Porn Stache: Wilder definitely has one of these.
- Shout-Out: Ethan's movie theater is showing The Night of the Hunter when he gets the message from Rainy.
- Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Ethan has blank spots in his memory due to the bomb going off. He doesn't even remember that he told Rainy he was an FBI agent or that he had tried to arrest her brother before the explosion.
- Undercover Cop Reveal: Ethan was an undercover FBI agent when he met and fell for Rainy. It turns out that he told her this, but the explosion made him forget.
