Criminal Vol.1: Coward (Criminal, 1)

Phenomenal noir - I've yet to be disappointed by anything Brubaker and Phillips do together, it's all startling and satisfying. Plays out like a movie, and it'll get you hooked and buying the rest.

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.