Friday, December 3, 2010

Read: "Criminal" by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Read: Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, 2009, 9780785142294 (deluxe edition).

Anthony Neil Smith recommended Scalped. When I was looking that up on the Amazon there was a reference to this title. I read both but so far I like the story Criminal series better. I like the artwork better in Criminal, too. I don't know where the heck I set down Scalped after I finished it.

Comic book short stories with interconnected characters set in what looks like a fictional San Francisco. Overall common thread of the Undertow bar, a criminal hangout.

First tale has Lou. Lou is a lifelong crook and very good at his job. Lou has never been busted by the cops and is completely under their radar. Lou never gets caught because when trouble starts during a job he walks. Others consider him a coward but Lou just has brains and reason, two things that are very lacking among his peers. "Prison is full of macho shitheads who valued their own lives only slightly more than anyone else's No one ever thinks there's consequences to their actions, but there are..." Lou also walks from violence, "I'm not ending up on death row because some asshole listened to too much hip hop growing up."

This has extra artwork and sketches in the back last most of these compendiums. Also included is a comic short story with a newspaper editor getting threatened to not print a story. The thug putting pressure tells tales of journalists around the world who have been murdered for their work. After those stories the thug and journo have this exchange,
Thug: "You what I'm hoping the difference is between you and all those men and women?"
Journo: "What? What?"
Thug: "They all had integrity."

Comments:
1. Brubaker likes bolding different words of dialogue.

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