Criminal Volume 4 - Bad Night

Criminal Volume 4 - Bad Night - Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips - I like this series so much that picking it up when I see the trade is almost an involuntary muscle reaction for me. This volume focuses on the character Jacob. He is the counterfeiter we saw in Lawless(v2 of the trades), and the cartoonist behind the Frank Kafka comic strip we first see in Coward(v1 of the trades).

Jacob is an insomniac, a former counterfeiter that can't seem to stay all that former, even when he tries, a cartoonist, an easy mark, and a former suspect for murder. Like a good movie, or a really good series of comics that read like movies, we learn a lot about this interesting and flawed character while at the same time being pulled through a constantly moving and evolving story. Brubaker is really good at developing characters and giving insight and back story without it slowing down or taking anything away from the central plot. I think I become a bigger fan of his with each thing I read.

That being said, now that I am 4 trade paperbacks into this series and feel a need to rank them somehow, I am not sure where I put this story in order of favorites. I am almost inclined to say that I like them in exactly the order they appear. Coward is really my favorite, but I think I like the next three almost equally. This one may lose a few points for the sheer fight club-ness of it, but that is not to say that it has anything in common with fight club outside of the insomnia-surprise plot device. That aspect of it is only a piece of the total package, and certainly works.

The Dead and the Dying

The Dead and the Dying (Criminal v3)- Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips - It really is true. This series seems like each part that is written is done so just the make the next part even better. It's like each successive volume is the real point of the series. I am really glad that the series started out with Leo. If it had started with just dumping us right in the middle of the Lawless family, it would have probably kept me from enjoying the series. I swear that we got Coward as a way of making Lawless more meaningful, and even more tolerable. In this volume of the series we get to see one side of things first from a focus on Gnarly before he was tending bar at the Undertown. We get a story about a fairly sympathetic character first, before we see the Lawless side of things.

I have loved every bit of these three volumes. All of them are filled with real and tragic characters. None of the characters is without at least some humanity in them somewhere, even Teeg Lawless or Sebastian Hyde. We sort of see three downfalls in this volume, maybe four. I'll go with four. Four tragic tales of the beginning of the end for each of the people featured. One ends in death, one we know ultimately does, and the other two lead to internal changes and loss of friendships , and such.

Gnarly, the big bartender who states in the last volume that he is Switzerland, was a boxer. His father was behind the rise of Sebastian Hyde's father, and the two boys grew up as friends until a woman and other philosophical differences came between them. Danica is the woman that comes between them. We see her rise and fall as well. She plays a part in the stories of the three men that are detailed in this book, as well as having her story told out in aching detail throughout the whole volume.

We follow Teeg Lawless as he comes back from Vietnam forever affected by what he experienced there, and despite being an awful and abusive husband (and eventually abusive father) He loves his sons and refuses to let them suffer for his misdealings, only to resent them for affecting him that way later on in their lives. This is some heavy stuff, but it never feels anything but real. There is a lot of sex and violence, but that is because it is about characters for whom sex and violence are their stock-in-trade.

So I guess I have to wait until February or so for the next volume to come out.

Lawless

I just finished reading Lawless, Volume 2 of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal. I very recently reviewed the first volume . I enjoyed it so much i immediately picked this one up and read it. I am not sure how often this happens, but reading volume 2 actually made volume 1 even better. Nothing in Coward feels like it is actively setting you up for the second volume, not in the way that some movies seem to devote a lot of time just advertising their inevitable sequel. It set up the world, and a portion of the history from a certain perspective, and then volume 2 clicks right into place making full use of that history and setting and builds upon it.

Lawless is a fully separate story from the first one, but it has common points and locations and characters. Things that are casually referenced in the first volume are important in this one. You don't have to have read Coward, but it builds the scope and richness of Brubaker's creation. Also, the characters in this one are very different than the characters in the first. It is really some incredible skill at work here. These are stories about a certain level of the criminal element, but everyone we encounter is a fully developed character with loyalties and perspectives and family and history and their own sense of morality. Tracy Lawless is in no way Leo Patterson. He isn't his brother Ricky or his father Teeg either. Tracy is back in town after a stint in the military. His younger brother is dead and he wants to get some answers.

He and his brother had not been close ever, but he was family, and Tracy feel like he is responsible for how Ricky turned out. He believes that the crew Ricky ran with was responsible for his death, so Tracy takes up with them as a driver. During the course of his return he pissed of the wrong people and has to deal with way more than he bargained for. There is plenty of action and suspense, but we also see a lot of flashbacks to the rough childhood that shaped his worldview and ruined his brother.

I feel like this series could be about almost any sort of neighborhood or community and still be good. The execution is just great. It's like cheers if we went home with the patrons and found out they were all thieves and murderes, only minus the lousy writing. Brubaker has a formula here that doesn't even come off like formula. When it's really good I guess we have to call it something else. Brubaker is giving us a writing class with these. I am anxious to pick up volume 3.

Oh... Sean Phillips art is absolutely perfect for this as well. (bad form not to mention the art)

This just in!!

I have important breaking news* for the new year!!!

Ed Brubaker can sure write some crime fiction!

*I am pretty sure I am the last person for whom this was breaking news.

Coward (Criminal #1 tpb) - Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

This is just a terrific story. If you like crime fiction, or well written stories with great art, you'll love this. Truth is, you probably already love it. I am a bit late to the party on everything, but being first has never interested me. The goal is to read and enjoy good comics, not to break any records for reading them before everyone else.

I am a big fan of comics that read like really good movies. I know that not everyone is, but I don't really understand that prejudice. This reads like a good movie that I would like A LOT. I am really into the sort of movies where the main character is holding back and then despite trying to stay above such things, is eventually unleashed. (A History of Violence, The Unforgiven, etc.) This has a bit of that, combined with another thing I love, and that is the character type of the mastermind. The character that has everything planned out. They think of angles that you can't believe even existed before that person thought of them.

In Coward those things are presented in the form of Leo, a pickpocket and heist planner with a knack for making it out alive by following some solid rules, and a reputation for being a coward. The story is about a job gone bad, and throughout the course of the story we see a lot of compelling and well written characters, and really get into the mind of Leo and learn what he is really all about.

There is a lot of humanity in this book. There is a certain sympathetic view of a certain class of criminal that really rubs off on you when you read it. I highly recommend this, and have already picked up Volume 2: Lawless.