Comically Challenged-Criminal: The Sinners #5

For the record, I’ve never been arrested.  I have never really done anything that would lead to an arrest.  I’ve never fired a gun.  The fights I have been in never resulted in any severe injury to either party.  I know I do not have what it takes to be a hardened criminal.  I think Ed Brubaker does.

That’s why he’s so good at writing about the dark underbelly of society, right?  Because he’s seen it?  Well that’s how Brubaker’s lived his life in my mind.  I picked up The Deluxe Edition of Criminal a while back.  If you haven’t read it, do yourself a favor and pick it up.  It’s an intelligent read.  The last story in the book centers around a man named Tracy Lawless.

Here’s a guy that grew up in the crime syndicate, got caught, and instead of prison took the option of signing up for the military.  He gets news that his brother has been murdered, he goes AWOL and jumps right back into crime with the intent of finding his brother’s murderer.  Without going into major detail, I’ll just say that in his quest, he pisses off someone important.  Now he has to pay off a debt to the man.  Enter Criminal: The Sinners by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.

So right and left, people are being murdered.  Important men, not so important men, but all of them are evil.  Tracy’s boss wants to know who’s doing the killings (mainly because he doesn’t want to be next).  If Tracy can figure it out, he’s paid off his debt.  In the meantime, he’s being tracked down by the military so he can go back to the service and deal with his punishment.

I’m in love with the Brubaker Criminal stories.  I said it before, it’s intelligent reading.  It’s like you’re watching a game of chess when one player is trying to think three moves ahead of his opponent.  Well, that and there’s a lot of violence, sex and swearing.  You see the emotional struggle within Tracy when he really doesn’t want to shoot anyone that doesn’t deserve to be shot.  As far as hit-men go, that’s not a real great personality trait to possess but there it is.  It humanizes the scum of the earth and sucks you into the content.  There are dirty cops and crooked priests and you see their influence on the impressionable youth. Plus, the whole story’s told by an omniscient narrator and I can’t stop narrating my movements for a good couple hours after I read it.  ”Auburn went into her next paragraph, knowing that if she makes this love fest any longer, the reader would eventually lose interest.”

Sean Phillips’s art suits the book.  This man can capture brutality and seedy neighborhoods like nobody’s business.   It’s very similar to his work on Incognito-nothing fancy, just gritty inks with a lot of shadowing.  My favorite part to his work? Reflections in the blood pools.  That sounds gross but I think it’s one of the most beautiful aspects to the man’s panels.

This week’s issue #5 wrapped up this story arc.  The trade should come out towards July, as is the typical collection release timeline for Icon when dealing with these guys.  So soak it in, because there aren’t any plans for the book for the rest of the year.  It’s really good, guys.  Really, really good.  So help me, if you don’t pick up Criminal I will find you and…wait, no.  That’s just the book talking again.