Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Yesterday, I posted about some stuff going on in the business of comics. Today, I thought I might talk about an actual comic book.

That comic book is Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.

Criminal is not an easy book to describe; it’s like trying to explain Doctor Who.

Essentially, Criminal is about a life of crime at the lower echelons of criminal activity.  The guys who pull off the petty busts with an occasional big score tossed in every now and then.

At the center of the Criminal saga is a minor league crook named Teeg Lawless.  Now to say he’s at the center of this saga may be a bit misleading. There are lots of Criminal stories that do not feature Teeg at all. Some feature his son, others feature fellow crooks and cons who know Teeg. 

Criminal is not linear. Stories jump back and for the across the decades from the 1970s to the present day and anywhere in between.

I’m only now beginning to immerse myself in the Criminal universe with the recently completed 12 issues series that chronicled among other things the death of Teeg Lawless.  Not a spoiler. The death of Teeg Lawless has hung over this story for years. 

Prior Criminal projects have been short mini series and one shots and I hope to catch up on those earlier stories via collected editions now that the Criminal monthly is over. 

What makes Criminal such captivating reading is Ed Brubaker’s almost surgeon like skill at digging into the damaged characters that populate his narrative. Many of those men and women know they are on a path to ruin with the lives they lead on the periphery of the law and of what might be called “normal life”.  Even as someone is plotting to rob somebody, I find myself rooting for them even as I know things will go badly. Inevitably, someone goes to jail, get hurt (and usually, very badly) or dies. This is no way to live but these flawed men and women keep trying to live this way.

Sean Phillips does an astonishing job bringing Brubaker’s stories to life, sometimes dark, sometimes scratchy but always evocative of the emotions in Brubaker’s script. Hope, fear, doubt, worry, all the nuances of emotion are conveyed in the faces of the characters Sean Phillips draws. And Phillips is adept at raw, bloody violence.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are an almost cottage industry of producing comic books that are not super hero books. I followed The Fade Out, a noir mystery set in the film industry of the 1950s. Kill Or Be Killed was about a serial killer who may or may not be possessed by a demon. Fatale turns the concept of the femme fatale on its head with a story about an immortal woman whose ability to get men to do what she wants is a virtual super power. 

If you’re a comic book reader who has outgrown super heroes or never cared for them or you just crave something different, almost any project by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips will captivate you. 

Here is some art by Sean Phillips from the recent Criminal series with a cover and some pages spotlighting Jane, the woman who would change Teeg Lawless's life and plant the seeds for his tragic end.