I say "anti-villainy", because you'd be hard-pressed to find a single hero in any of the six parts that make up Incognito. There's a protagonist, one Zack Overkill, who was once a super-strong villain but is now a heavily drugged civilian in the Witness Protection Program. He occasionally does the right thing, but never for the right reasons, and there are one or two truly unforgivable acts he commits along the way. Even the so-called good guys of this world, the SOS, are a morally gray, clandestine bunch who only recently stopped torturing their prisoners.

Brubaker chose to spin the universe of Incognito out of the pulp tradition of the 1930's, which is part of the reason this is now such a brutal world. As he argues in the collection's afterword, characters like Doc Savage and the Shadow were always more violent and ambiguous than the likes of Captain America and Superman, and the larger world of the pulps was one dominated by horror and noirish murder mystery.

Considering this background of pulpish adventurers and the current war between the omnipresent, villainous organization run by the Black Death and the heroic-by-default SOS, I couldn't help but be reminded of The Venture Bros. (There's another plot point that will really hammer home that connection, but I won't spoil it.) The comparison is a worthy one - both are superior explorations of how supposedly extraordinary people try but fail to lead ordinary lives, and the consequences of secret wars between good and evil for those caught in the middle. Oh, and they're both fantastic, if you prefer to keep things simple.

Between Sleeper and his truly epic run on Captain America, I'd rank Ed Brubaker as one of the top three writers working in comics today. After reading Incognito, you could definitely talk me into handing him the outright title. What's so impressive about his work here is that the story is grim, gritty, profane, ultraviolent, and more than a little offensive - and none of it feels gratuitous. He is telling a story from the perspective of a man without a moral compass, and there's no way such a story isn't headed for some pretty dark places. Still, because neither he nor Zack Overkill revel in it, all of the carnage feels artistically justified. Take note, comic book writers from the nineties. This is how mature comics writing is done.

At just six issues, the story barrels along quickly. Although the concept of a supervillian working an office job while in witness protection was the initial impetus for Incognito, Brubaker does not dwell on it for too long. He extracts a lot of great material from the premise - including Zack's one civilian friend and his rather inexplicable office crush - but puts a lot of other balls in motion while he does so. With at least five or six factions out for Zack, each with their own distinct interests, it's remarkable that the story is entirely coherent. Of course, based on Brubaker's track record, it's not exactly surprising.

Sean Phillips also deserves a great deal of praise for his work on the art of Incognito. A perfect visual fit for Brubaker's writing, he excels at bringing out the twisted, complex emotions of the book's characters. Although clearly capable of rendering an exploded head or charred corpse in all its exquisite glory, he too shows restraint, preferring to indicate the most horrific moments tastefully, rather than let them take over the panels. That isn't to say there isn't some brutal imagery in here - there definitely is - but much like Brubaker's script, none of it feels exploitative or gratuitous.

Incognito sets out to explore one possible fate of a supervillain and ends up tackling questions of morality, destiny, voyeurism, and whether there are limits to what humans can do to themselves in the name of power. It also takes the story of Zack Overkill and uses it as an opportunity to construct an entire world of pulp heroes and villains brought forward into the 21st century, one that Brubaker has promised he will return to. I can't wait.

The big single-issue release of the week is possibly Image Comics' Image United, which brings all but one of the original Image founders (Jim Lee is missing, due to DC Comics commitments, where he's a VP as well as an artist) back together for a mini-series that brings their biggest creations face to face with the newest bad guy around, Spawn. Yes, that Spawn.

But if that's not your style, maybe you'll be more interested in the relaunch of Powers, Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming's police-procedural-superhero-turned-epic, over at Marvel, the first issue of Jericho Season Three from Devil's Due, or my personal favorite, the first issue of an all-new series of The Tick. Spooon, indeed.

This week, however, is all about the collections. Let's start with Incognito, Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips' tale of a supervillain who can't quite bring himself to act normal even though he's in witness protection, which is highly recommended for those who like their superstories to be a little off-kilter.

If you enjoy that, then The Winter Men collects the eponymous series about Russia's supersoldier program, and what happened afterwards with a surprising amount of humor and humanity. But if you're more of a traditionalist, then Flash Vs. The Rogues collects some of the best stories of DC Comics' fastest man alive going up against his most popular villains from the Silver Age to today.

Getting away from superheroes, we come to the three books you owe it to yourself to pick up tomorrow: Chew: Taster's Choice collects the first storyline from John Layman's wonderful future detective series about a man whose taste buds can solve crimes (with art by Rob Guillory), which seems like perfect fodder for Thanksgiving reading... As does Shade The Changing Man, Peter Milligan's classic 1990s series about the insanity of America and true love and hair, which gets a re-released first volume and all-new second volume released this week. Truly a forgotten classic, it's probably the best thing you could pick up this week... even if the start of the first collection is a little rocky.

If you'd like more from your week at your local comic store, check out the official shipping list from Diamond Distributors and see what else is available for yourself. But don't leave the store without Shade and Chew. You can thank me later.

We've already told you that Incognito - the new series from writer Ed Brubaker (forever to be known as "The Man Who Killed Captain America") and his Sleeper partner Sean Philips - was the one essential comic to be released last week, but in case you didn't want to take our word for it, Brubaker offered up the skinny on the series on Newsarama.com over the weekend.

Calling the series "Apocalyptic Pulp Noir," the genre-bending series will offer "some real weird and alien stuff going on right next to these dark shadowed scenes of despair and sex" throughout its run, according to the writer:

I'd been thinking about how comics grew out of the pulps, in many ways. That many of our superheroes, if not all, have their roots in pulp characters - Doc Savage, the Spider, the Shadow - these harder-edged characters inspired Batman and Superman and a lot of others. And at the same time, I was thinking it was funny that noir in many ways grew out of the pulps, too - since Hammett and Chandler came out of Black Mask - but that no one had ever written a noir story in the worlds of Doc Savage or the Shadow.

And it just clicked — had no one ever done a noir pulp hero story? Taking two pulp staples and slamming them together? Was that possible?

The resulting story - about Zack Andersen, a former supervillain who is chafing at his new life in the supervillain version of the witness protection program - isn't necessarily what you might expect, even if you're familiar with the two creators' earlier series Sleeper (currently in the process of being adapted into a movie by producer Sam Raimi):

As you know, Sleeper is about a spy forced to live among the enemy for so long that he loses sight of which side he's on, lost in the shades of grey of his world, losing his moral compass. So I was thinking, what about someone having to go the opposite path? What would that story be? And I thought, it'd have to be about a bad guy, a real villain, who's somehow put into a position where they start doing decent things, accidentally saving people... stuff like that, and then you'd see what happened next — how that changed them, and what it would do to whatever life they're living.

Not that everything will be laughter and candy, as our anti-hero turns towards the light, of course:

The bad guys are definitely a lot of fun to write, but I think it's just figuring out what character you're going to write, and getting in their head to tell the story that drives me. And there are really messed-up things in bad guys heads.

The first issue of Incognito is in stores now.

Ed Brubaker: 7 Things to Know About 'Incognito' [Newsarama]

That said, this week's comics aren't exactly the most overwhelming bunch. But I think we can chalk that up to the holidays.

DC Comics have their Final Crisis Secret Files, acting as a stop-gap for fans of the much-delayed mini-series, but the rest of their week is relatively lowkey unless you're wrapped up in a number of ongoing storylines.

Similarly, Dark Horse and Image both have weeks to keep longterm fans happy, but offer little to newcomers.

Only Marvel steps up to the four-color plate with a raft of big name specials, and new series to tempt those few with some holiday money left over — including Ultimate Hulk Annual (in which the cannibal version of the big green giant goes on a road trip across America), Fantastic Four Cosmic Special (in which the FF have to go under quarantine and don't deal with it well) and Cable, Volume 1: Messiah War (which mashes up Terminator and Lone Wolf And Cub to come up with... well, Lone Cyborg and Cub, really).

The Iron Man fans amongst you may want to check out the first issue of War Machine, which sees James Rhodes cut loose in his own set of armor, kicking ass and taking names.

Everyone else, the one comic that you need to pick up this week is Incognito, the new supervillain series from the creators of Sleeper and Criminal. If you need convincing, here's the set up:

What if you were an ex-super villain hiding out in Witness Protection… but all you could think about were the days when the rules didn’t apply to you? Could you stand the toil of an average life after years of leaving destruction in your wake? And what if you couldn’t stand it? What would you do then?

If you need more convincing, you can find a preview of the first issue here, but trust me: This will be the kind of bad-mood treat that you'll find yourself addicted to throughout 2009.

In 2009, you'll still be able to find this week's shipping list here and also use the Comic Shop Locator to find your local comic store. But that's not to say everything will be the same in the future. For one thing, this week's comics arrive in stores on Friday, due to the holiday. But don't take that as a bad omen or anything.