By: Ed Brubaker Publisher: Marvel Comics Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Marvel Comics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 128 Publication Date: June 06, 2007
Product Description: From Harvey Award-Winning Best Writer Ed Brubaker, and Scream Award-Winning Best Artist Sean Phillips comes the first collection of Criminal, one of the best reviewed comics of 2006. Coward is the story of Leo, a professional pickpocket who is also a legendary heist-planner and thief. But there's a catch with Leo, he won't work any job that he doesn't call all the shots on, he won't allow guns, and the minute things turn south, he's looking for any exit that won't land him in prison. But when he's lured into a risky heist, all his rules go out the window, and he ends up on the run from the cops and the bad men who double-crossed him. Now Leo must come face-to-face with the violence he's kept bottled up inside for 20 years, and nothing will ever be the same for him again. Collects Criminal #1-5.
Noir Scored With A Triphammer Heartbeat Ed Brubaker is an award-winning comic scripter who has written about superheroes and superheroines (Batman, Catwoman, Captain America, Daredevil). However, the man has a heart carved from the deepest, darkest noir. His criminals and anti-heroes sing with muscle, malice, and desperation, lifting from the pages to hold readers hostage to their own need to know what's going to happen next.
My first brush with Brubaker came through a four-issue comic series from Vertigo - the adult, edgy line published by DC Comics. I enjoyed the private eye feel of the story and couldn't help comparing it to Raymond Chandler novels. I'm certain that's what Brubaker intended.
However, with CRIMINAL: COWARD, the first volume in Brubaker and Sean Phillips's ongoing series, the storytelling drives drastically into Humphrey Bogart and Jim Thompson territory. Leo Patterson is the kind of guy Bogart would have portrayed on the screen and Thompson would have written about in his crime novels.
See, it's not enough that Leo is a professional criminal. He's also trying to take care of Ivan, his father's one-time criminal associate. Years ago, Leo's dad and Ivan raised Leo in a life of crime, taught him everything he needed to know to become a professional pickpocket. Leo graduated from that and became a heist artist, stealing from banks and armored cars, cracking places and organizations that were supposedly impenetrable. Now Ivan's a junkie and struggling with Alzheimer's, and no one else is there to take care of him.
That part of Leo's motivation for everything that follows is magic. No matter what he does, he's trapped, struggling and trying to take care of Ivan. The old man doesn't make it easy, either. He's constantly chasing off the nurses Leo is forced to hire to take care of him. Leo talks about family a lot, and that's what much of Brubaker's exploration of the criminal element in this series seems to be about. All these families seem inevitable, and they're all inextricably tied up with each other.
I enjoyed the way Brubaker and Phillips start the graphic novel in mid-bank robbery, with the wheels coming off and everything going wrong. A sense of immediacy instantly pulled me in and I was hanging onto every frame of Phillips's gorgeous art as the dice continued to roll snake eyes on the robbery.
Brubaker's first-person narrative is awesome and reminded me of all the old Gold Medal novels I scavenged from secondhand stories while I was growing up. When I wasn't determined to grow up to be a private eye and rescue damsels in distress, I wanted to be an anti-hero and steal from the truly bad guys. The worlds in those stories are extremely small, but everything is critical, balancing on the knife-edge between life and death.
As the story progresses, Leo gets blackmailed by Seymour, a crooked cop. Everyone who's familiar with noir knows this is a bad deal. Leo says no thanks and walks away. Until Greta, the widow of one of Leo's old partners, steps back into the picture and forces him to throw in with Seymour's gang.
I don't want to go much more into the plot because Brubaker provides a rollicking ride with plenty of twists and turns I didn't see coming. His dialogue is great, and the character motivations for everyone involved is multilayered and well portrayed.
I can't say enough good things about Phillips's art, either. The style is loose and flowing, and Phillips uses shadow and darkness like a lethal weapon. He draws (literally) the reader into a grim and gritty world.
So far there have been two graphic novels released in the CRIMINAL series. I've read them both, the second one CRIMINAL: LAWLESS first, actually, and didn't notice any plot spoilers. There are a couple things, though, but I got around them okay. Brubaker keeps his world of criminals and baser emotions tight, though. So far all the major characters of the series have been in each other's lives for years. In the third graphic novel, it appears Brubaker is going back to the 1970s and revealing even more backstory. I'm looking forward to it.
Coward puts crime comics back on the map! First of all, let me just say that if you want to experience Criminal to the fullest, you really have to buy the single/monthly issues. I know, it's tough. Suck it up. The monthly issues include the wonderful essays and reviews of noir films and books from industry giants and friends alike including Warren Ellis, Greg Rucka, Matt Fraction, Charles Ardai (Hard Case Crime) and of course, Patton Oswalt (who's taste in noir I like better than his comedy routine). There's more I'm forgetting too. There, I've stated the case for the monthly issues... I mean, aside from noting that monthly sales keep the book on the shelves at all! If you're already a fan of Brubaker (or the Brubaker/Phillips creative team) then this book is a no-brainer and you should already own it and be buying copies for your friends! For someone who is new to the writing style of Ed Brubaker I will go into some detail, followed by some comments on Sean Phillips' art. This collection is begging to be read by fans of crime/noir fiction. If you like reading Richard Stark or James Ellroy or even Elmore Leonard, then this is right up your alley. Don't expect the humor you'd find in an Leonard novel though. This is a story peopled by flawed characters with the main focus centering on Leo "the coward". Leo is built up as a thief-planner with a knack for never getting caught. He gets tapped to help run an armored car job by a corrupt cop on a gangster's payroll. Brubaker's captions and dialogue read like street vernacular that suggests he's actually walked these streets and ducked down these alleyways and spent some time in The Undertow Bar. There aren't any wasted words, it's very straightfoward and no-nonsense. There is that dry, clipped quality to the dialogue that speaks to the "don't waste my time" attitude of many of the characters. That attitude isn't exclusive to the characters though, it's the attitude of the entire landscape, the entire world (or underworld). The inner monologues, Leo thinking back on things and pondering his next move, also read with a level of authenticity that's almost unheard of in any medium, let alone mature audience comics. The tone of the story is personified by Leo's constant struggling with his obligations to his friends, to himself and the dilemma of a job gone wrong. He's constantly trying to get out from under and "figure things out" so to speak and as more and more time passes, there are less and less options. The story culminates when Leo actually makes a decision and acts on it (with bloody consequences). The people of Criminal are scraping by in a world that doesn't want them to succeed and punishes them at every turn. Brubaker brilliantly captures the essence of a low man doing the only thing he knows how to do. While Leo never gets caught perhaps, he has nothing to show for it beyond broken and burnt associations with the few people in his life ultimately. I can't praise Brubaker enough, really. I mean, how many words are in an average comic book? Brubaker gets it all across and then some with Sean Phillips fantastically picking up all the subtext in his lovely visuals. Segue into the quick art review. Sean Phillips art is not what I would call "comic book art". No, "comic book art" is what I would call guys like Jim Lee and Marc Silvestri. I'm not knockin' those guys but stylistically they're on the other end of the spectrum from Phillips. His art completely compliments the subject matter. Lots of shadows and heavy black swathes for shading. The lighting he creates is EXACT. I can't say it any better than that. He excels at facial expressions as well which is something of a premium in comic book artists. Every background and environment has a dull, washed-out quality too as if the color has sort-of seeped out of this little corner of the city (of course, credit goes to Val Staples for the coloring but Phillips' designs probably make his job very easy). Phillips not only captures faces and gestures well but he's also adept at portraying action and brutally skilled when it comes to intense scenes of violence. Make no mistake, this book isn't for kids. What more can I say? Buy this book; it's retangular bound perfection.
Brubaker and Phillips make a great team "Coward", a crime-oriented graphic novel, reunites writer Ed Brubaker and illustrator Sean Phillips, creators of the stunning superpowered spy saga, "Sleeper." I gotta say, I really like this creative team - Phillips really captures some intangible element of Brubaker's writing, and the results are quite delicious. The forlorn, downbeat (or beat-down) sensibilities of Brubaker's savvy antiheroes comes through in every panel, and the mood they set oozes out of the pages. I was thoroughly engrossed by this story, sorry to see it end so soon (and also sorry about the finality of this particular plotline...) Looking forward to "Criminal", v.2, though! (ReadThatAgain book reviews)
Dissapointingly Derivative I'm a big fan of crime genre in both fiction and film and a moderate fan of graphic storytelling, so I've been starting to seek out books that bridge the two. The comic book series collected in this volume got great reviews (and an Eisner award I think), so I picked it up with high expectations. The book covers a storyline that spanned five issues, although it oddly doesn't include the issue covers or text that appeared at the end of each.
Set in a comicbooky version of '70s-'80s San Francisco (here known as "Bay City"), it starts out well. We meet Leo, a 30-something thief who was literally born into a life of crime, learning how to pickpocket at young age from his criminal father and one of his associates. Leo is the titular coward, known throughout the underworld for his refusal to use guns, refusal to work for anyone else, and making sure that he always has at least two escape routes. He also doesn't really have any personal attachments to speak of. The main storyline kicks off when he gets suckered into planning a sketchy heist that requires him to abandon most of his rules and go up against crooked cops and gangsters with considerably less ethics than himself.
At this point in the story I was feeling fairly let down because it was exceedingly evident that both Leo and the plot were almost entirely recycled from various crime films -- especially Michael Mann's two films Heat and Thief. Coupled with this is a distressing amount of cheese factor, for example, the name of Leo's bar hangout (The Undertow, get it?), the involvement of an innocent kid and the requisite curvy love interest, the past coming back to haunt Leo, and don't get me started on the dialogue... Other reviewers have pointed out how hokey it is, my own favorite example is the last line of the book: "But like I said, dying... dying is harder than killing... Just my luck." Wow, deep stuff, eh?
I guess I was expecting something a little smarter, cleverer, more unusual, or just plain distinctive. The artwork by Sean Phillips is fine, not too clean, not too rough, not a lot of character period. All rendered in appropriately deep and dark tones, contained in totally straightforward paneling. The story is the real disappointment, as it fails to bring anything new to the table. Maybe this first storyline is just Brubaker finding his ground, and future installments will be more nuanced and original, but I'll definitely have to keep looking to find the right crime comic book for me.
Great book First book a read in this series, but I'm surely going to read more.
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