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Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Steve Phillips: Deluxe Edition Vol. 2 Review!

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Have you read Part One yet? Like Criminal, you don’t have to read anything earlier to enjoy what’s here. But, also like Criminal, you’ll be missing out if you don’t. All set? Because today we’re going over the second Criminal Deluxe Edition, with the continuing stories of Center City, and the people who live there.

Collected here, we have “Bad Night,” where we get to know Jake, an ex-counterfeiter and current cartoonist. In “The Sinners” we check in on Tracy Lawless who, against his wishes, has stuck around Center City. Finally, in “The Last of the Innocent” we meet Riley Richards, a character who is definitely and absolutely nothing like Archie Andrews, unhappily married to somebody that bears no resemblance whatsoever to Veronica Lodge. This second collection continues the quality that Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips showed in the first. Their first collection was notable for stylistic choices, and playing with the norms of the crime genre. Here they ratchet those choices up to eleven, managing to do so without any loss of story or effect.

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Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips: Deluxe Edition Vol. 1 Review!

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What do you look for in a story? There are different aspects that speak to me. Tropes or characters or techniques that draw me in. Art’s a big one, of course. Comic images, comic panels, they’re little portals, simultaneously drawing you in and showing you the world the characters inhabit. Cleverness is something I look for. Sometimes a character’s clever, in their speech or actions. Sometimes the plot itself is clever, all the different pieces fitting together, feeding into one another.

But most of all, what I’m looking for are characters. People. People who are true to life, who have motivations, and desires, and needs. Who fear, who love, who have secret thoughts and feelings. People who I relate to, or, if I don’t relate to, who I recognize. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Criminal delivers on every one of these points. [Read more…] about Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips: Deluxe Edition Vol. 1 Review!