While Brubaker doesn’t emphasize any of these elements with particular inventiveness, the way they come together is original and interesting. The story includes most of the tropes of modern crime fiction, from extreme violence and torture to sex and drug addiction. Delron, for instance, recalls Loren Visser, the villainous private detective of the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple, but somehow manages to be even more sadistic and patently evil. What follows is by far the most interesting part of the story, as Leo and Greta try to evade the people who set them up.Ĭoward borrows from a number of other works in the crime genre, but not in a lazy or uncreative way. The job goes horribly wrong, of course, and Leo gets away as usual (along with Greta) – but this time, for a change, he actually escapes with the score in his own hands. The web these characters weave is intricate, and it provides for a very satisfying number of double- and triple-crosses. The cop is actually working for a drug lord who wants one of his thugs, a man named Delron, released from police custody.

Leo is initially hesitant at the idea of working with a cop, but ultimately agrees when he learns that Greta, another old friend, will be in on the heist as well.Īs it turns out, Leo’s misgivings are justified. But when he’s approached by a corrupt cop and another survivor of the “Salt Bay job” for his help in knocking over a police van, everything changes. The first volume of Brubaker and Phillips’ Criminal picks up on Leo’s story five years after the “Salt Bay job,” a failure so terrible that Leo has left the big-time and now operates as a simple pickpocket. Leo is an expert at planning heists, but he’s also an expert at escaping disaster when his plans go horribly wrong. At least, that’s what everyone thinks, and not without good reason. |a Thieves |0 |v Comic books, strips, etc. So when an old friend and a crooked cop approach with a plan to seize millions of dollars in contraband from an evidence transport van, Leo must make tough choices, knowing there's nothing you can trust less in this world than a cop on the take.

But to some criminals, even professionals, the right payout is worth almost any risk. See, Leo is not a shoot-first think-later guy Leo is a professional. but only if he can be convinced the job is safe enough. |a Meet Leo, who can plan the perfect heist. |a 'Contains material originally published in magazine form as Criminal #1-5'-P. |a 1 volume (unpaged) : |b chiefly color illustrations |c 26 cm. |a Coward : |b a criminal edition / |c by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.

Criminal vol 1 coward ed brubaker