Just two days before DC releases Ed Brubaker's often extremely clever rewrite of the early days of the Joker, Batman: The Man Who Laughs, the man jumps ship.

These exclusives wars are starting to get ugly, though technically they're nothing new. Back in the sixties and seventies, it was just assumed that you could only work for one company at a time. Honestly, though, I think the fans win when creators are free to work on whichever characters or properties they want to, for whomever.

No more Brubaker Batman for a while. On the other hand, we've got Brubaker Captain America for a while. It's up to fans to decide if that makes them feel better.

UPDATE: I've just picked up that Brubaker himself announced this at Emerald Con in Seattle Saturday -- at the DC panel. These wars are getting classy, aren't they?

From Marvel:

Ed Brubaker and Marvel Comics are proud to announce that they have inked a deal for the fan-favorite comics scribe to write exclusively for the House of Ideas.

“After years and years on exclusive at the competition, I wasn’t planning to be anything but freelance for a long time,” reports Brubaker. “But Joe and Dan simply made me an offer that was too good to refuse.” The agreement between the writer and Marvel is of a very special sort, one that Brubaker seems highly pleased with. “It offers me the chance to work on characters I’ve loved since childhood, as well as unprecedented freedom to finish all my prior commitments and to do creator-owned work, either at Marvel or elsewhere.” Brubaker is currently penning his debut series with Marvel, CAPTAIN AMERICA.

Brubaker is perhaps best known for his long run on DC’s CATWOMAN and for co-creating the award winning GOTHAM CENTRAL series. He’s also especially prideful of SLEEPER, his critically acclaimed project with Sean Phillips for Wildstorm. Nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Writer four times in the past five years, Brubaker has in addition gone on to win two Media Awards, the Prism and the GLAAD award. He’s had creator-owned projects optioned for film adaptation, one of which, “The Fall”, is currently in development by fellow-writer David Goyer’s Phantom Four Films.

Reflecting on his recent project, the busy writer says, “Honestly, I’ve been having the time of my life on CAPTAIN AMERICA, thanks to Steve Epting, Frank D’Armata, Michael Lark, and Tom Brevoort and his hench-people. It’s probably the most flat-out fun I’ve had in the entire work-for-hire part of my career. So, the opportunity to continue doing that and some other big projects that are on the horizon, approaching fast, just makes Marvel the perfect fit for me right now.”

“Never let it be said that Mighty Marvel is home to fantastic artists only,” says Joe Quesada, Marvel Comics’ Editor-in-Chief. “We have a history of having the best writers too, and when he heard that Ed would be interested in settling down for a stay with us we knew we had to jump on this opportunity. Ed’s work is hard-hitting and that dark under-belly of the Marvel Universe is calling his name.”

Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley sums it up tersely. “We just know that Ed’s going to blow us away. Bring it on!”

For news of Ed Brubaker’s future projects and all the low-down on Marvel Universe happenings, please visit Marvel.com. Visit soon, visit often.

Derek McCaw