I just finished the first Criminal Deluxe Edition from Icon and, as y'all know. I absolutely love this series. It's surprising to me and I hope it's surprising to folk who have read my tastes. Criminal isn't about anything. It doesn't have a message, though it is deeply ingrained in the ideas of good and wrong and redemption and so on. I burn for messages, but Criminal actively avoids having a message. In fact, this first Deluxe even actively avoids having even conclusions. So much is left unsaid or unfinished both between the pages and at the end of each story. But that's also why I love it.
Criminal is all about characters. It's not enough to say these are broken people. These are broken people who have been placed into situations from which there's no returning. They change due to their situations. They've broken and are bending to accommodate their brokenness. And as the stories in the first Deluxe Edition show, there's no happy endings in store for these people. They looks for outs and opportunities, perceive the kinds of people they could be, the values they wished they espoused, but they aren't capable of attaining those things. They're ideas meant for people who aren't broken. For these characters, those ideas are a mirage. But really they all know that and they all know the truth in their hearts -- that they're just billiard balls rolling out the paths from which they're inevitably moving towards.
While it sounds like what could be the most depressing shit ever, that's where Brubaker's talent comes in. He takes what could just be viewed as a death march and turns it into something so intimate. He conveys the deepest thoughts, hopes, hatreds of these people's lives in a way that's honest, introspective, and so excellent at building empathy. That these individuals' fates are doomed matters so much less than being there with them.
Sean Phillips art does a great job of creating a realistic perspective for these stories while still maintaining a layer of the surreal so that it doesn't become disturbing. The result is incredible, though I'll admit that his more recent stuff is much more impressive than this earlier Criminal work.
What else can I say? Criminal isn't just a comic about heists. It's about people. Not necessarily so much different than anyone else. Surprisingly similar to each other in ways they'll never admit.