By: Ed Brubaker (writer), Sean Phillips (art) & Val Staples (colors)
The Story: A man returns his small town home when his father becomes ill and becomes embroiled in some nasty family drama.
What’s Good: What a nice first issue. We’ve been without Criminal for about a year since The Sinners wrapped up and the creative team cranked out Incognito: Bad Influences. Incognito is good, but after reading this issue of Criminal I feel like every issue of Incognito is stealing from us. If all comics were like Criminal, no one would ever had any shame at reading a comic in public. This is proper fiction for grown-ass-men!
The set-up for this story isn’t anything we haven’t seen before: man returns to hometown after years due to sick parent, sees old friends that have grown, assumes his parents’ obligations, etc. Toss in some adultery and yearning for old flames and you’ve got a pretty basic noir story. If you wanted to be cynical about the story, you could almost imagine Brubaker having a felt baggie and just pulling out chits with common noir themes written upon them, almost like a game of Clue.
But, what sets this story apart is the execution. For one thing, you never read a sentence in Criminal and feel mentally out of breath. Everything is quick and well paced as the reader is guided through the action on each page. The story is just effortless. You read this and you can see why Brubaker has 3 Eisner awards for best writer.
Phillips does a great job of showing us this story. This comic is a great example of old-fashioned comic storytelling: You could take the words away from most panels and get a pretty good idea of what is going on. I don’t think there is a single scene in the issue where Phillips doesn’t strongly establish the action: He shows a picture of a train (they’re on a train), then shows the protagonist walking down the aisle (the train is crowded), they show him sitting (and because of the set-up, you can’t wonder if he is sitting in a diner or living room). He also uses a neat shift to an Archie-like artistic style for the flashback scenes when Riley was a boy. Then, on top of that, the art is just beautiful from an aesthetic standpoint: characters are well drawn and shaded, cars look like real cars, buildings look like real buildings…. Just super nice stuff and that’s what you get when artists use proper reference materials.
And Val Staples shows why he’s one of the better colorists in the industry. I wish more colorists would take his approach to coloring and realize that extreme highlights to show off body contours are no replacement for good taste in selecting flat colors. These faces don’t look any worse that the noses and cheeks aren’t highlight to within an inch of their lives. My imagination knows what a face looks like and can fill in any blanks as long as you don’t distract me with wonky highlights that are at odds with the inking.
What’s Not So Good: Nothing. Great first issue. My only concern is how they’re going to deal with all these toys that Brubaker has gotten out of the toy box. They’ve got about 15 issues worth of material here, but I’m pretty sure this is a 5-6 issue series.
Conclusion: A great first issue. Series like Criminal are what the comic industry needs. You could hand this to your dad or your boss and they’d enjoy it because this is proper adult fiction, not something for overgrown fanboys with nostalgia issues (of which I’m one).
Grade: A
-Dean Stell
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