Comics Ennui Officially Over, Thanks to Criminal
OMG! I just finished reading issue #5 of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s comic Criminal. Please pardon my slippage into jejune exclamation, but I can’t contain myself; it was that good. Wow.
Issue five is the conclusion of storyline “Coward,” about a thief named Leo. Leo’s never been caught before, but his latest heist might prove the exception to his many rules. There’s a good cast of characters, though many of them don’t survive the storyline. Brubaker has created a good canvas to work from. This is dark and violent; it owes a lot to noir. Its violence isn’t gratuitous, though. Each incidence serves the story.
My husband G. Grod highly recommends Brubaker and Phillips’s other collaboration, Sleeper, and I may not put off reading it.
At the end of Criminal #5, Brubaker asked a bunch of friends and comic-book creatives to share their favorite noir movies. Some I’d seen, some not. The ones I own, I’m going to re-watch. The ones I don’t, I’m going to seek out. And I’m not going to list them; go to your local comic shop and buy all five issues of Criminal for yourself. What? Your shop doesn’t have them all? Well, give my two favorite shops a try: Big Brain Comics in Minneapolis MN and Showcase Comics in Bryn Mawr PA. The trade paperback is due next month.
For a while, I felt bored with comics, and didn’t like anything I read. I think I see the light at the end of the ennui tunnel.