4 crampons out of 5

Covers v.1 – 4 of Criminal

Criminal has covered an important timeline in Ed’s career – at this point the stories were put out from 2008 through 2011, meaning Ed started his run on Criminal soon after his leap to big-boy stardom with his Captain America storyline, continuing with it as a sideline as his Marvel voice mutated into more standard comic book big-event fare during 2009 and 2010, culminating in the 2011 Criminal mini “Last of the Innocent,” the worst of the series in my opinion, which showed a need to distance himself even moreso from what he was playing at with Daredevil and Cap.  Also, within a year of starting Criminal we get ‘Incognito,’ a superhero / sci-fi version of the same noirish tales Brubes has been kicking around since ‘Sleeper,’ and – again, just to my readin’ eyes – a sort of plea with himself to balance his two loves, capes and crime, and leaning toward adulting it up, it’s gets over-packed with swears and stupidity.

Brief glimpses of my opinion of other Brubaker tales.

But the point is that Criminal survived around and through these other series, and though it definitely stays rooted to the same themes and concepts during its various mini-series, you can trace the changes and struggles of Brubaker’s style throughout its run.

Criminal opens with its best characters and stories – following Leo and Tracy Lawless through two loosely linked stories (kept as two separate arcs) about crimes being committed because of each figure’s past – pasts they can’t escape, in memory, in action.  These are perfect noir types – brittle and hard men of whose lives we get glimpses and we like them despite their flaws, thus we’re with them through their difficult decisions and the ups and downs of the ride.  Starting up in his Captain America career, Brubaker really had a handle on characterization – he was sort of afraid to get too into Steve’s head and so just poked around the character, scripting actions instead of thoughts, and this coincided with how Criminal was being written, so all was good.  He could get the heroics out of the way in Cap and just dole in some subtle emotions, then put the brittle in Criminal with the same balance.  Volume 2 of criminal – The Dead and The Dying and Bad Night – show a slight shift to a more brittle treatment of characters, echoing the dour writing that was going in Daredevil.  Thankfully, Criminal still holds on to something that’s important to me in noir – that we like the characters who are getting dragged through the muck.  We have to understand a little bit about who they are and why they’re doing what they’re doing in order to care about it, and volume 2 sticks to that principle, whereas Daredevil started to fall down a slippery slope into making Matt Murdock very unlikeable.  Ed seemed to be having a tough time here (his father died somewhere in this mix, and I’m sure events leading up to or surrounding that influenced things, along with the pressures of being a big name at a major publisher), as the Incognito series, as mentioned above, seemed like the fully frustrated side of his persona giving uncensored reign.

The dam starts to give way with the next mini – The Sinners, written 2009 / 2010, another Tracy Lawless story.  The link to an existing character seemed to be what saved Brubaker, but the Marvel influence was showing, as Lawless almost becomes faceless in the series, things focusing more on the story than the characters.  And Criminal finally sank to its knees with The Last of the Innocent, a story about greed and betrayal where no one is likeable.  It looks good, and reads like all of Brubaker’s noir stuff – clipped narration, poignant statements about the power of lust and guilt – but there’s no longer a human angle to the story.  It’s style over substance.

Sean Phillips is pretty predictable through the entire run.  I’m not sure how I feel about Sean’s art.  It was shockingly awesome when I first saw it, and no doubt matches the dark feel of crime comics, but after forming such a solid relationship with Brubaker, it starts to remind me of the Garth Ennis / Steve Dillon relationship – it becomes so ingrained to the series that you no longer notice it.  That speaks to the artist’s reliability, but I think Jesse Custer looked the same from Preacher #1 through its end, and although Sean got more or less sketchy in various issues of Criminal, it hasn’t really felt like growth, just doing what he’s expected to do.  Which is a horrible condemnation, as what he does is more than I could ever hope to do, but… well.  I’m just saying that it started to get a little tired by the last mini mentioned above.

So there you have it.  Criminal has been a wonderful outlet for Brubaker during trying times, and seem to be a good counterpoint for where else he was in his career.  I’m glad that he’s put it to rest right now, though a little worried to here that “Fatale” has become an ongoing, because I don’t want that title to fall into the same expectable rut that Criminal seemed to.  Perhaps he can take a break from that to write another Criminal mini, or get re-inspired to push his noir stylings in yet another direction.  Time will tell, as it usually does.