Criminal: The Last of the Innocent 1

I was very slow in getting onto Brubaker, but I’ve become a big admirer in recent months. Criminal tells different stories with different characters with almost every run (apparently a sequel to ‘Coward’ is coming, so this isn’t always true), so it’s easy to jump on here with no prior knowledge. And it’s well worth doing so.

The story barely fits the title, up to the end at least. It’s about a man travelling back to his hometown because his father has cancer. He meets old friends, and reminisces. We learn something about his failing relationship with his wife, who joins him there later. There’s no crime action or anything like that, but there is a rare density and depth to the personal stuff. The characters and relationships are suggested and defined with immense skill, and this gives plenty of time for personal events and to show us a whole bunch of characters and their relationships with each other. There aren’t so many writers who could introduce a new character and their associations, without any significant plot action until the very end, and keep us interested, but this is compelling and gripping throughout. It also has an ending promising to justify the series title in future issues.

It’s helped plenty by Phillips’ art: there are one or two faces that seemed a touch weak or awkward, but mostly they are spot on and add plenty to the feelings of the scene. His buildings, interiors and so on are particularly good, precisely evocative, atmospheric and strongly drawn. Given that most of what he is given to draw is someone thinking or people talking, he does particularly well in never making it boring. The one odd technique is in the flashbacks to teen years, where he switches to an Archie style, which he handles pretty well too. I wasn’t sure if this was suggesting some sort of idealised version of his past – I don’t think so, from the script, maybe just that he saw that as a happier, easier time.

Anyway, this is a terrific comic, and I will definitely be around for the rest of the series, and I am very inclined to seek out collections of the past stories too. I more and more think that Brubaker is one of the three or four best writers in mainstream comics these days.