Ed Brubaker could write a medical journal on the causes of mumps among chimpanzees and I think I would read it. He is absolutely brilliant.

“Unfinished Tales” writes about the rise and potential fall of a hit fantasy writer. Everyone is clamoring for that final novel of a hit series. But the worst thing has happened to the author…writer’s block.

The journey to find at what links he is willing to go to complete his life’s work is so engaging. I loved every page of this graphic novel.

The problem with writing a review is I don’t want to spoil where it goes. Let’s just say, this is going to be an adventure you don’t want to miss.

I received this ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.

This was an incredible riff on the life of George RR M Martin, while I am sure he never hid the od of his friend who co-wrote the books, but did he?
Great art and colours, and as always a gripping yarn. Must read!

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.
What a crazy and amazing tale. I had a hunch of the possible track in this story, but what an incredible, creative ending! It reads a little bit of what the life of George R Martin with his own G.O.T. fandom and series. This book is a complete page turner. Read it in 2 days. An author is writing a 7-part sci-fi adventure. This story cover a great deal of what a writer has to experience all highs and lows.
Definitely worth the read.

Many thanks to Image Comics and NetGalley for the advanced copy of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ latest collaboration Unfinished Tales. I haven’t read too much by Ed Brubaker and I’m still relatively new to non-horror comics, but I was absolutely blown away by this tale of fame, fortune, and severe writer’s block (or procrastination). Unfinished Tales might be one of the best books I’ve read about the challenges of creativity and creating art in a market that values commercial success. The story focuses on Finnegan Blake, whose Knights of the Sun series is widely considered one of the most popular and best-selling fantasy series of the 21st century. The series, which generated a multi-season television show, has fans that follow Blake to various conventions and talks, despite (or maybe in spite of) the fact that Blake hasn’t completed the final book in the series. The last book was published many years ago, leaving fans eagerly anticipating the final entry. While many fans are hopefully anticipating Blake’s last entry, others are growing restless, with one fan even confronting Blake at a talk, with his public rebuke of Blake’s delay in completing the book going viral.
One of the great aspects of this book is how Brubaker’s writing and Phillips’ excellent artwork allow for a slow reveal where we begin to see how Finnegan Blake’s success and popularity are not exactly what they seem, and have created a kind of prison or weight that he carries around with him, continually reminded about the impending deadline that continuously pushed further and further back. Anyone whose struggled with writer’s block or procrastination should be able to relate to Blake’s struggles of just being unable to produce. Even Blake’s longtime editor, who tries some different approaches to get Blake to finish, never sees the book, as he passes away prior to retirement and years after having a stroke that was probably hastened by Blake’s failure to finish. On the way back from the funeral, Blake encounters a friend (or possibly a writer rival) from college, and they catch up over drinks. Although he experienced some success in college and after, Pierre never had the same kind of success and acclaim that Finn experienced. Nevertheless, Pierre ends up staying with Finn, offering him the possibility of finishing his series, although it comes with a catch. Will Finn agree to Pierre’s plan? Or will his ego get in the way? I won’t ruin the ending, but I really enjoyed this book. It’s a fun and surprising ending, and despite being a book about writer’s block and procrastination, the plot continually moves forward, occasionally revisiting Blake’s past to better understand how he got stuck and was unable to move ahead with his story. Furthermore, Phillips’ classic, realistic artwork provide a sense of gravitas to the story, elevating it to something more literary. I highly recommend this book, and I’ll be looking for more great stories from Brubaker and Phillips.

Like always with this creative team, I could guess at my rating for this graphic novel before I even read the first page and this one was no exception as I loved the hook immediately as we enter the world of long form fantasy fiction and the expectations and consequences of not finishing what you start with its excellent and decidedly Brubaker/Phillips narrative.

Special Thanks to Image Comics and Netgalley for the digital ARC. This was given to me for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley, Image Comics, and Ed Brubaker / Sean Phillips for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Unfinished Tales is a dark, clever, and increasingly twisted graphic novel that takes something as familiar as writer’s block and turns it into a paranoid noir thriller.

I really enjoyed the premise. There’s something especially fun about watching the glamorous image of a famous author unravel into desperation, ego, secrets, and increasingly questionable decisions.

Brubaker and Phillips are such a strong pairing for this kind of story. The noir atmosphere works incredibly well, and the artwork gives the whole thing a gritty, uneasy quality that makes you feel like something is wrong even before you know exactly what it is. There’s tension, dark humour, and enough unpredictability to keep the pages turning.

Dark, strange, and compulsively readable, Unfinished Tales is a great pick for readers who enjoy morally messy characters, crime comics, psychological thrillers, and stories about writers behaving very badly.

I am a big fan of Brubaker so I was excited to read Unfinished Tales and I wasn’t disappointed. I loved the story and the art was fantastic too. I think it’s safe to say Brubaker could write an ingredient list and make it interesting but in all seriousness this is a brilliant graphic novel.

I’ll read pretty much anything Brubaker and Phillips put out at this point. They’re ridiculously prolific, and they keep delivering.

Unfinished Tales is another very good one. It’s an interesting take on writer’s block, fame, ego, and what happens when a hugely successful author can no longer finish the thing that made him famous. The George R. R. Martin parallels are obviously impossible to miss, but this isn’t really a satire of Martin. It uses that very recognizable situation as the starting point for something rather dark.

As always with these two, the writing and art are excellent. Phillips’ art fits the noir atmosphere perfectly, and Brubaker keeps things moving without overcomplicating the story.

Not my favourite Brubaker/Phillips book, but still a very easy recommendation. These two really do make it difficult to have a bad time.

Thanks to the authors Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, Image Comics, and Net Galley for the early look at this graphic novel, to be published 11/11/26.

My favorite comics event of the year thus (2026) year thus far had been Five Gears in Reverse by this same team, so as soon as I saw Unfinished Tales was available to view early, and that Sam Quixote had already five-starred it (as he is stingy with those stars, so I knew he was probably right, but I already guessed it would likely be special, anyway). And it is special, also one of my faves of the year for sure, and though still crime comics, it is different than anything they have yet done. The cover is great, a throw-back to fifties-style covers, that tear in the surface there so we can expect we will eventually see what really is going on underneath the surface. Then we get a surprise, an advert for a book by a guy named Finnegan Blake, entitled Knights of November: Book 6 of the Knight Fires Tapestry series, which immediately makes one think only of George R. Martin’s unfinished tale, The Game of Thrones, which is stuck at, uh, book five. Though Tolkien also has a collection of stories also titled Unfinished Tales set in his Lord of the Rings universe.

“Fucking writers and their fucking egos.”

Finn is stuck and has been for years. He’s been widely successful and then he is almost a pariah as he continues to not write the last book of his series as a successful tv adaptation of the series passes him by. The process of Finn FINishing is one of the most straightforward narratives Brubaker and Phillips have yet produced, until it becomes a little less straightforward, at about the 3/4 mark, but it's worth the wait.

What transpires is in part yet another exploration by Brubaker of writing and fame, as the boys did in The Fadeout (about a writer in Hollywood, where Brubaker is also now working as showrunner of the tv adaptation of his Criminal series) and Bad Weekend, (featuring old comics icon Hal Adams and a recurring comics guy, Jacob Kurtz).

How will Finn finish the series (I liked that one so much I had to use it twice)? Pierre, the aforementioned old pal, once a peer his writing program, comes to rescue him, and I'll say what happens after that entertainingly works, though one might question the credibility for Pierre's motivation and what he does with his writing students. But okay. Much of wha happens before that seems like a kind of romantic writer’s fantasy, maybe as shleppy George R. Martin might have found his own climb to fame: Finn gets mega money, fame, happy marriage, until as often happens in real life, you take a bite of fame and it bites back, hard. So after a pretty straightforward and recognizable and relatively unsurprising rendering of rags to riches to (emotional) rags (he’s still way rich), surprises occur in the story that are entertaining.

PS:
*Entertainingly ironic that the team that apparently seems to never have had anything like writer’s block writes a kind of “solution” to the most famous writer’s block story of our age. That’s a fun thing to do.

*Two problems need to get solved; in the Knight Fires series--how to get the main character out of prison, and then, in the book Brubaker is writing, he needs to figure out how to get Finn out of his writer’s block. Story, and story within a story, both requiring clever narrative interventions, and they work, both solutions coming from sudden, unexpected blasts from the past. Cool!! There’s more of that double intervention stuff going on at the finish, what to do with Finn's Knight Fires series--essentially still unfinished!--and then what actually happens at the end of Brubaker's Unfinished Tales--also unfinished, though we pretty much know what is going to happen.

I really love it, so fun. For Brubaker-Phillips fans AND for George R. Martin fans. And fans of stories about writers who don't write (cf. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon).

In comics, there is occasionally a pairing of writer and artist that seems like a match made in heaven. Although, to be fair, that pairing is actually a trinity when you consider that genre is an important part of the formula.
One such pairing is Brubaker and Phillips, with mystery rounding out the formula. While there have been some great writers and artists working in the mystery comics field over the decades, none have quite managed to capture the gritty realistic feel and level of character development displayed by these two creators.
Their projects have an earthiness reminiscent of the styles of Lawrence Block or Donald Westlake at their best. Their work together has created masterpieces of mystery comic art, with Phillips's rough edged brush inking perfectly complimenting Brubaker's character driven story lines.
Unfinished Tales is a wonderful example of the kind of work that can produce when they are firing on all cylinders. Using the story seed of a certain well-known author who seems to be unable to finish is book series, they have spun a story that is one of the finest examples of character building I've read in comics, with a twisting tail that is a slow burn of tension building with a healthy dose of dramatic irony.
There is a twist in this tail, and as a reader you can see it coming from very early on but you're never sure where or when it's going to happen until it arrives. Even though the majority of the story is based around the life of writing and does not rely on noir tropes or violent action to build its narrative, it is no less dramatic and gripping throughout. Unfinished Tales is a perfect example of how the genre can transcend its roots to tell a nuanced tale with emotional impact.
Of course, I would be remiss to fail to mention the color work of Jacob Phillips, who uses a muted palette that matches the tone of the story and adds depth to the art without overpowering it, which always a risk in comic coloring.
If you have not read anything by Brubaker and Phillips before now, you are in fan eye opening experience with this book. If you have read them, you're still in for a treat as they successfully explore new narrative grounds in a familiar context. This is a book that deserves a place on every mystery reader's and comic book lover's bookshelf, and if it doesn't win an Eisner, illegal my copy of A Contract With God. With mustard.

If youve been eagerly awaiting the release of the winds of winter for the last 15 years and counting this book is for year. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips bring their hard boiled crime approach to the world of highly antipcated (and highly delayed) literature, in this extremely entertaining genre mash up 5/5