Criminal # 8 - Lawless Part Three

If Marvel's Icon imprint was only publishing Criminal, it would be reason enough for the imprint to exist. The Coward story arc was just brilliant. While Brubaker's love for crime noir fiction was very apparent, he showed us that he is incredibly skilled at writing it as well. He introduced us to the world of Criminal where every character has secrets and a sordid past. Each member of the cast is always much more complex then we first believe. With the Lawless arc we get a new leading character, that couldn't be any more different then Leo from Coward. While Tracy Lawless first reminds us of Marv from Sin City, he ends up being a much more complex character grounded in the real world. He has a solitary goal of finding out who killed his brother, but doesn't have an exact plan on how to do it. He does things knowing full well it's only going to make things harder for him, but admits to himself that he has no more reason for it other then being weak. He misses certain things and finds it to hard to resist them when they are presented to him.

This story could still have been good without adding anything else into the mix, but we get some new players in this issue. None of it is done randomly either. It has all the making of an extremely well crafted story by a great writer. While Tracy finds himself in some dangerous situations, he has no one else to blame but himself for it. There is no real hero in this book, but instead a main character that feels very real. That has been one of the main strengths of this series since issue #1. We learn a little more about Tracy's relationship with his younger brother, and as expected it's anything but perfect. To say that our main protagonist is flawed would be an understatement. All this is done without giving into cliches at the same time.

You really have to mention that Sean Phillips's pencils are just as important. The entire tone of the book, emotions sensed through body language and facial expressions tell as much story as the dialog in some cases. Brubaker and Phillips are a real creative team in every sense of the word. While Brubaker also writes Captain America, Daredevil, Uncanny X-Men and Immortal Iron Fist, I'd have to say that Criminal is his best work out of all of them. Phillips probably has a great deal to do with that. Even if you're not a fan of crime noir fiction, you should give this a try.