Mad at the World was the first full-length Reckless Life story and really laid the groundwork for the rest of the series in a lot of ways. Mad at the World also helped Reckless Life find it’s home. I started publishing it on my personal website and moved from comic anthology site to the next. I soon caught wind of a new anthology site in the Modern Tales that focused solely on action comics called Graphic Smash. Reckless Life never left Graphic Smash and I eventually became editor of the site but that’s another story.
As for this story, Mad at the World comes from a couple of places; I had long had an idea of Locke having a buddy who was a fellow criminal of a different sort and the action movie contract killer seemed the obvious crime story trope to put next to Locke’s dashing heist movie style thief. Not only are these the obvious stock crime story criminal types but it allowed me to put the two easily at odds. Locke is more of a rascal and very improvisational whereas Daniels is actually a pretty bad person and very tightly wound. A perfect criminal odd couple and what better meet-cute than to have Locke be Daniels’ target?
I also wanted to establish Locke as having a chip on his shoulder and my dad would often describe the teenage version of me (who very much had a chip on his shoulder) as being “Mad at the Word” so that’s where the title and premise of Locke’s spite-fueled theft comes from. A very intentionally on-the-nose take on the adolescent male power fantasy as as fellow Graphic Smash creator acutely pointed out.
Mad at the World definitely looks and reads like the very first major RL story but warts and all it has some fun to it and flashes of where the art would go once it had matured a bit.