Criminal (comics)
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| Criminal | |
 Leo, the protagonist of "Coward" wraparound cover of Criminal #5 art by Sean Phillips |
|
| Publisher | Icon (Marvel) |
|---|---|
| Schedule | Monthly |
| Format | Ongoing |
| Publication date | Oct 2006 - present |
| Number of issues | 11 |
| Main character(s) | Leo Patterson Tracy Lawless Jake "Gnarly" Brown |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Ed Brubaker |
| Artist(s) | Sean Phillips |
| Colorist(s) | Val Staples |
| Creator(s) | Ed Brubaker Sean Phillips |
Criminal is an ongoing American creator-owned crime comic book by writer Ed Brubaker with artist Sean Phillips published by Marvel Comics' Icon label.[1]
The series is a meditation on the clichés of the crime genre while remaining realistic and believable.[2] In some ways it's an attempt to recapture much of the mood and style of Sleeper while removing the usual superhero trappings found in most mainstream comics.[3]
Criminal was re-launching in February 2008 with a new #1, and an expanded format.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The series' story arcs are self-contained and focus on different characters, but these central characters inhabit the same world, frequent the same bar, and share a common history of two generations of crime. With his partner Ivan, Tommy Patterson ran the city's most proficient crew of pickpockets and taught the trade to his eight-year-old son, Leo. When Tommy was arrested and imprisoned for the murder of Teeg Lawless, Ivan took care of Leo and explained to him how following certain rules can keep a criminal "out in the world," out of both prison and the morgue.
Around the same time, Teeg Lawless' two sons were arrested. While his fifteen-year-old brother Ricky was sent to a juvenile work camp, Tracy Lawless was given the option of going to prison or enlisting in the armed forces. Tracy joined the U.S. Army, abandoning Ricky but honing his skills as a soldier.
Coward (Issues 1-5, Oct 06-Mar 07) begins fifteen years after Tommy Patterson was killed in state prison, and five years after Leo survived the disastrous "Salt Bay job." Since then, Leo has been keeping a low profile as a pickpocket as he struggles to take care of Ivan, who suffers from both Alzheimer's disease and an addiction to heroin. Leo closely follows his own rules for survival, and so he has a reputation, not only for being brilliant at planning scores, but also for being a coward who always manages to escape a bad situation. Both aspects of this reputation attracts the attention of Seymour, who also survived the Salt Bay fiasco, and a crooked cop named Jeff. They try to recruit Leo to work an armored-car heist, telling him that the police evidence van is carrying $5 million in diamonds. He refuses because he has a rule against working with corrupt police officers, but Seymour knows Leo won't say no to a woman named Greta, a recovering heroin addict who's working the heist to start a new life with her daughter Angie. Leo eventually agrees to join the crew and recruits his friend Donnie, an epileptic con man.
When Jeff includes his own partners in the score, Leo and Greta suspect a double-cross, but they continue with the heist's planning and execution. Leo thought the double-cross would occur after the heist, so Jeff and his partners have the element of surprise when they open fire during the robbery, killing Donnie and wounding Greta. Leo still followed his rule about having his own back-up escape route, so he and Greta manage to drive away with the score, which he discovers isn't diamonds but rather a briefcase of heroin.
Jeff and his partners work for a drug kingpin named "Roy-L.T." Hyde, and the evidence-van heist was intended both to retrieve his merchandise and facillitate the release of his lieutenant named Delron. Furious with their failure, "Roy-L" kills one of Jeff's partners, and he then sends the recently freed Delron with Jeff to track down his nearly $1 million in heroin. While she recovers from her wound, Greta, Ivan, and Leo lay low at his grandfather's farm. He and Greta fall in love, and while they're sleeping together after a night of passion, Ivan finds the suitcase of heroin, and Jeff and Delron track down Greta's mother and daughter.
When Leo wakes up, he finds that Ivan died, overdosing on the uncut heroin. Leo withdraws emotionally from Greta, refusing to talk to her about his past, and while he buries Ivan behind the farmhouse, she makes the mistake of calling him a coward. Leo suddenly takes the heroin back to the city to find a way out of their predicament. There he meets "Genuine Jen" Waters, an old friend who now works in Internal Affairs for the police and who tells him about what "Roy-L" and Jeff were planning: they had hoped Leo would escape, but without the drugs, so that he could be the cops' sole focus. Meanwhile, distraught over how Leo left and tempted by the one remaining bag of heroin, Greta makes the mistake of calling of her mother's house, where her mother has been murdered and where Jeff is waiting to trace her phone call. Leo breaks into Seymour's apartment, hoping to use him to get out of the dire situation, when he finds a message on the answering machine: Jeff and Delron have found Greta.
Leo races back to the farm, but he finds Greta has been tortured and murdered. Still threatening to kill Greta's daughter Angie, Seymour forces Leo to take him to the briefcase of heroin. Seymour tells Leo that he has him figured out, but he doesn't, and Leo explains that his father didn't kill Teeg Lawless: Leo did. Leo's afraid of what's inside himself, and he quickly distracts and kills Seymour. He then tracks Delron to the local motel and kills him, too, rescuing Angie. He makes his way back to the city, tracking down and killing "Roy-L" and Jeff -- killing Jeff because Jeff helped torture Greta. Severely wounded, Leo can't escape the police who arrive on the scene of the brutal firefight, and he realizes that dying is a lot harder than killing.
Lawless (Issues 6-10, May 07- Nov 07) occurs shortly after "Coward." After an incident that began in a bar in Baghdad's Green Zone, Tracy Lawless served eighteen months in a military prison, isolated from contact with the outside world. Upon release, he discovers that his brother Ricky was killed nine months earlier, and he soon goes AWOL to find out what happened. On the way to the city, he stops at the Center City docks long enough to rob two men carrying a briefcase of illicit cash, shooting one in the process. He finds an old acquaintance named Jacob, a now-crippled criminal who specializes in creating false identities. Since even Jacob didn't recognize him, he plans on infiltrating Ricky's old crew to discover who killed him and why. Tracy finds the crew -- Gray, Nelson, Davey, and Ricky's lover Mallory -- meeting frequently at the Undertow in obvious anticipation of an upcoming heist. Tracy quietly introduces himself to certain criminals as Sam West, a "wheelman" looking for a score, and, after killing the crew's driver Davey, he approaches Gray and Mallory and tells them that he's "a guy who can drive."
[edit] Collections
| Title | Issues collected | ISBN |
|---|---|---|
| Coward | Criminal #1-5 | ISBN 0-7851-2439-X |
| Lawless | Criminal #6-10 | ISBN 0-7851-2816-X |
[edit] Reception
The series has been generally well received in the media, and additionally the series won the 2007 Eisner Award for Best New Series.[4]
