DC Comic Book Writer Paul Levitz Releases New Thriller About Brooklyn

Known for his work in DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes, Paul Levitz has written and published his first original comic in 40 years, outside of DC comics.

Titled Brooklyn Blood, Levitz’s new comic book centers around a bitter Marine veteran working as a cop in Brooklyn, all the while struggling with PTSD. The protagonist, Billy O’Connor, also struggles with how much Brooklyn has changed since he grew up there as a kid. One of the first lines in the comic book reads, “I got Brooklyn in my blood. But it sure as hell isn’t this Brooklyn.”

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Levitz, who grew up in Brooklyn, said, “O’Connor is channeling my amazement at the borough changing. Not disgust, part joy, part amazement…and some worry that the working class transformative power of Brooklyn may get lost in the shift.”

Brooklyn Blood is part detective thriller and part horror story, driven by O’Connor’s trauma. While still suffering from flashbacks from his time spent serving in Afghanistan, O’Connor must work to unravel the mystery of a serial killer in Park Slope, running into supernatural elements along the way.

When asked why the comic book is set specifically in Park Slope, Levitz said, “Well, I could argue the contradiction between a ‘peaceful’ neighborhood and the manic crimes add texture…but mostly it was the history that led me there.”

A far cry from superhero comics, Levitz say’s his new work is grounded in the detection fiction of Ed McBain, utilizing his “great procedurals and often structured to work around not developing too much detail about an adversary.”

Levitz has also collaborated with Tim Hamilton, who brings Brooklyn’s 7th Avenue to life in a more visually stimulating way, using a color palette “full of mustards, soft blues and bursts of pink that feel somehow like a woozy borough at dusk, humid even in the fall when the story takes place.”

https://twitter.com/paul_levitz/status/1013764722708107266

Levitz, who has since moved to Manhattan, is still connected to Brooklyn through his daughter, who has lived in Williamsburg. Although the Brooklyn of today is not quite the Brooklyn in which Levitz grew up, he is still haunted by the city’s relics of his childhood. The Prospect Park Zoo, the Children’s Museum in Crown Heights, and even the Brooklyn Academy of Music where he used to take classes as a child, all present themselves as “ghosts of his childhood.”

“Brooklyn was the place you worked to get out of in my day,” Levitz said. “It’s long been a launching pad for immigrants and their families (I’m first generation American), and still is, but now there’s this cool aspirational dimension for young people. I think that’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before…and amazing.”