Hi there. Yeah, I know, I know. You don’t read comics. But just gimme a minute to say my piece before you run off to the exciting environs of ‘Count to a Million’ or ‘Show Your Hot Family Members’. Please?
My friend and I swap comics every couple of weeks or so. Whatever I’ve blown all my non-drink money on in exchange for whatever he’s blown all his non-drug money on. Come the next time we swap meet (tee hee) I’ll run through everything with the usual ‘
Did you like blah blah blah?’. As you do. This week everything was met with a
‘Yeah, it was alright’. After about ten of those I felt a little deflated. He hadn’t shared the same enthusiasm I had for the righteous sequential art I’d gifted him.
Conversation dies. Back to the X-Box. I frag a n00b.
‘Oh… But I LOVED ‘Criminal’.
My god, I swear if I could have captured his eyes at that moment I would just print them here as the review and you would all rush out and buy this book immediately, so convinced would you be by his enthusiastic and emotional hard-on for this fine collection.
‘Coward’ collects the first five issues of Ed Brubaker’s new series ‘Criminal’. It is absolutely shit hot. It deserves a wider audience than people who like reading about men in spandex beating on each other.
The story itself is a basic heist-gone-wrong number. If I were to give you a plot synopsis here it wouldn’t strike you as anything particularly special. Where this book stands out is the quality of the writing (which, when you think about it, is a good place for a fiction writer to concentrate his efforts). Brubaker’s characters, losers one and all, are so well-drawn (figuratively and literally) that I defy anyone to read this and not ache in sympathy for them when the shit goes down. And yes, the shit doth go down. This book is harsh. More sensitive readers may feel a tear or two begin to make its way inexorably down their cheek. Comic book readers will shout ‘COOL!’ and take another bong hit while they wait for that 8gb of porn to download.
I never feel qualified to talk about art. I'll let
MarkMono do that. But it's pretty badass. Check
Ed Brubaker's website and download a lovely little teaser trailer for this series to whet your appetite.
If ‘Criminal’ was a tv show it would be ‘The Wire’. If it was a movie it would be ‘Heat’. If it was an AltNation.com member it would be
Charlie Parker.
I love it and I would love it if you loved it too. It’s a tenner, which is like an hour and a half’s work, and you can pick it up in Borders et al so you don’t even need to brave the hordes of pimply geeks and future paedophiles blocking the aisles in your local comic book store.
Come on. For me?
Thanks for your time.
