Criminal Redux: Lay Down Your Burden

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have relaunched their crime comic Criminal with a new number one issue and a revamped format that includes more story pages, more back material, nifty new paper, and begins with a series of three stand-alone but connected stories.

But regret is all I have once I hit the streets. Memories and regrets. Aren't they the same thing?
--Jake "Gnarly" Brown, Criminal Vol. 2, #1, "Second Chance In Hell."

The past weighs heavy on Ed Brubaker's characters. Even those who manage to get away from it, start new lives, often can't escape it, and the unanswered question remains -- if you can't forget the past, can you at least learn to live with it? "Second Chance In Hell" focuses on Jake "Gnarly" Brown, a supporting character in the previous Criminal stories "Coward" and "Lawless." In those, he presides over The Undertow(n), a former speakeasy that serves as neutral ground for the criminals in The City. Though he maintains the bar's neutrality, through small details we know he's a stand-up guy who's found himself in a world of, let's say, moral ambiguity. In "Second Chance In Hell," we learn how he got there.

In 1954, Gnarly's father Clevon, an enforcer for the local crime syndicate, went against his orders and didn't kill Walter Hyde. Instead, he helped Hyde violently take over that syndicate, a choice that changed not just their lives but the lives of their families.

Now it's 1972. Walter's son Sebastian has returned from college, "taking the first steps towards inheriting his father's empire." Gnarly has found a place as a promising boxer, in part with the support of Walter Hyde, something Gnarly's dying father insisted and ultimately an irony. Gnarly just might escape his father's life, might in a way live the American dream, but the past weighs heavy on Ed Brubaker characters.

Enter Danica Briggs, a ghost of a woman from Gnarly and Sebastian's past. She is regret in a red dress, and her kiss "tastes like ashes and tears." To say more would ruin the story, but her presence in their past and her reappearance in their present unspools a series of events that tests friendships, affects the future, and leaves Gnarly asking that question, can you at least live with the past?

In Gnarly, Brubaker has created his most sympathetic Criminal lead, but the man isn't guiltless, yet like Leo in "Coward" and Tracy Lawless in "Lawless," Gnarly is his father's son. What that means exactly, again, I don't want to say, but the clues lie in one flashback panel late in the story. An elderly Walter Hyde stands in the foreground, looking over his shoulder at a stone-faced Clevon. Gnarly stands behind his father, mortified.

WALTER: Clevon, have someone take care of this girl.
CLEVON: Sure, Walt. No problem.

In the "who" and the "what" of that order lie the cruel irony of Clevon and Gnarly's lives.

Criminal is a comic, and Brubaker isn't working alone. Sean Phillips delivers the superb expressive, empathetic art work his fans expect. Here, he has to depict violence, multiple time periods, intimate conversations, boxing scenes, crowd scenes, bar scenes, characters at different ages, and he accomplishes it all. He creates a 1970s America that seems authentic without being too hip or too kitschy to overpower the story. He reveals the inner lives of the characters through their faces and body language.

His panels create tension. On page 20, for instance, he stages an argument between Gnarly and Danica with narrowing and widening panels. Instead of three rows of nine evenly sized panels, he uses varying sizes. On the second row, he moves from a narrow closeup of Gnarly with black space around him, to a wider panel of both Gnarly and Danica from the waist up, to a tight panel on their faces. This last transition creates a sense of motion and rising tension as Danica hits hard at Gnarly's emotional weak spot.

Colorist Val Staples deserves a lot of credit, too. He doesn't just provide colors here. He adds to the mood and emotion of scenes, uses the colors in cinematic ways to focus the reader's attention. For instance, on the colored version of the page above, the background buildings and characters have a beige look to them, but Gnarly and Danica get a full treatment. In Danica's case, she's wearing a red dress, and she jumps out just as she jumps out to Gnarly. He wears a brown leather jacket and a light brown shirt, but even these stand out against the much lighter background. Staples filters other scenes through purples, blues, greens, reds, and sepia tones, sometimes shifting from panel to panel. It all creates a slightly heightened reality but again never overpowers the story or Phillips' art work.

The issue ends with a loving essay by Duane Swierczynski about Philadelphia novelist and screenwriter David Goodis. As Brubaker reminds readers, these pieces won't get reprinted in eventual collections. Instead, they add value to what he likes to call "the magazine."

Last summer, Criminal won two Eisner Awards (the comics Oscar), one for Brubaker as best writer and one as best new series. Criminal continues to earn its keep, and though I find myself wishing for it when I read the stories, I doubt any of its characters will every fully leave the past behind, even if some might find a way to live with it.

Next up, this guy...