A life of crime is not for the faint of heart.But what if you're born into it? What if all you ever learned is to pick pockets and case the joints and stick it to the 'filth'?What if keeping your skin unpunctured by bullets is more important to you than the Big Score?Leo has a reputation as one of the smartest, most talented guys in the bank robbing business. He is also famous for running away at the slightest sign of trouble, planning his escape routes with even more attention to detail than th...

2.5 StarsA man gets pulled into a heist involving police evidence by a man in his old crew who is now a cop. Things turn out differently than planned. I’m not sure how I feel about this one. It was just ok. If you’ve read this, should I continue with the series?

Brubaker and Phillips give us a story we've all read before, but they tell it so well it kept me hooked. Leo is the best thief in town, but he has a reputation for rabbiting at the first sign of trouble. A crooked cop comes to him with a big score, to rob the evidence track as it's shipping diamonds to a trial. Of course, things don't go as planned. Leo's in a lot of trouble and has to figure out how to extricate himself from it.

I have said it many times: Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are the best crime comics team going. I am also reading their current Kill or Be Killed, which I love, and have read this whole series through before, but I did the rare thing for me and bought the whole 2015 re-release of the series and because I had important other work to do last night, sat down and re-read this one through. Oh, I am going to enjoy this! What is true of the re-read of any book or series is that you get to see how the te...

Well, damn. That was depressing.I thought this was going to be heist-y & fun, or something! But this? This was a cautionary tale. Like, they should hand copies of this out in high school, the same way they do condoms. Don't do anything illegal, kids. It will end badly! And here's the proof... That's not to say it wasn't good. It was! Nobody does crime/noir the way Brubaker does, and this was no exception. But make no mistake, it's dark.The main character is a coward, in the sense that he alway...

Hmmm…. No superheroes. No dragons. No faeries. No elements of the fantastic. No alternate dimentions. Nothing speculative. Nothing odd or strange. Why do I love this book so much? Good character. Good pathos. Story. Story. Story.

Wowsers! This is Brubaker and Philip's best work hands down. This entire story from page 1 captivated me. It's about a job. An inside job and the guy running the job guy hires the best thief in the city, but they say he's a coward. He always runs from trouble. So why do they need him? This crime heist is beautifully put together. All the characters shine. The tragedy, the lies, the back stabbing and the crime all come together to fulfil one incredible story, not to even mention the artwork. Wow,...

A solid start for the Criminal universe, but not the best Criminal story by a long shot. It’s a well-crafted tight noir story, but the spark of later-day Brubaker & Phillips collaborations is missing here — everything is a bit too lifeless and sterile, the characters are just cardboard cutouts without personality, and it’s all just a bit... blah. I did seem to enjoy this story much more when I read it for the first time, when I wasn’t as familiar with other works by Brubaker or different crime n...

This gets pretty dark and super depressing real fast. It's such a short story but it definitely packs as much into it as possible, i could have done with this being a little bit longer. You're not really given time to care about the characters or what happens to them really. There's a few shocking moments in this and they may have hit harder if it was bit longer. Saying that if you're after a quick shock read then this is definitely worth picking up. It's not my fave Brubaker/Phillips title but

Story: 5 starsArtwork: 4 starsFinal score: 4.5 starsThis was a surprisingly good noir story with way more character development than seen in most print-only books. If you have any misconceptions about whether or not graphic novels can be quality literature, this is a great place to exorcise them. FYI: Coward is part 1 of a 6-part Criminal series published between 2007 and 2011. According to Wikipedia, The series was awarded the Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2007 and the Eisner Award for Be...

I thought I'd like this more. I guess maybe if I read it BEFORE I read Kill or Be Killed I would. That and maybe if I liked the character's more. The themes and ideas in here are solid. I really loved the art. I love how it was explained on each character and how they're different. One of the biggest thing being that each person the main character meets he interacts differently with. I also loved the backstabbing and betraying, because it gives shock value, but in the best way. Characters will d...

Four things to know going into Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips: 1. It's a comic book... …there are pictures and panels and dialogue bubbles; 2. Within these pages you will NOT encounter any bulging, brawny costumed superheroes or mutant-powered, tight-wearing freaks; 3. This is 100% crime noir, meaning you WILL encounter violence, blood, sex, potty mouth talk and some powerful images that may haunt you; and most importantly... 4. Criminal…is…dripping with gold. A well-written, ski...

There’s a whole lot of people writing ‘serious’ crime fiction books who don’t do it half as well as Brubaker and Phillips do in this this comic book.As the title indicates, the main character Leo is a criminal and a coward. He’s a pickpocket who used to plan robberies despite his reputation for being a yellow belly who would do anything to avoid a fight. Leo quit heisting after a job went sour and left his partners dead even as he managed to slip away which didn’t exactly do anything to change w...

The first book in writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips' noir series "Criminal" gets off to a blistering start with the excellent "Coward". The story of a career criminal who started out as a pickpocket before moving onto heists, this man's trait is of surviving each time he gets confronted with danger and getting away. Is he a coward or just smart? He gets involved in a diamond heist with bent cops and shady past accomplices which inevitably goes awry leading to him going on the run with

There is a villan in this graphic novel named Roy L. T.. I mean seriously, that's awesome. Leo is a career criminal - Hell, it runs in his family! The son of one of the best pick-pockets in Philly, Leo has evolved the family business into a much larger, more ambitious livelihood. While he hasn't partaken in a job in quite a while, he's lured into a risky heist targeting hundreds of thousands of dollars in diamonds. Teaming up with dirty cops, can Leo trust his associates and walk away with his c...

No one does noir like Ed Brubaker. I give him a bit of a pass for the typical useless female character in a heist film because the rest of this was well executed.The main character is kind of your usual mastermind character type. He grew up in the life because his father was a pickpocket and thief and he's never sought another career for himself. He's not super interesting but he's at least good at what he does so points for that. He's not particularly attractive, which makes the unnecessary sex...

Leo grew up being a pickpocket. His old man and "uncle" Ivan taught him well. Now he is a heist planner with rules that he lives by. No guns-No cops- He calls all the shots.A recipe for disaster when he agrees to pull a big job. Things go south in a hurry.He ends up on the run with an elderly Ivan. (who has a bad drug habit, Alzheimer's and is pretty much a pervert- My favorite graphic novel character yet) and a woman friend that helped with the heist. He has the cops and the bad guys chasing...

This year, I decided to download the Comixology app and jump back into reading graphic novels and comic books, which I was a big fan of when I was a wee lad. Back then, I was more into the superhero reads but now I wanted to venture into more reality based, "non-super" stories. In my search, the name Ed Brubaker kept popping up, and I thought, "Hey isn't that the dude that wrote some Captain America stuff and a few Batman stories?" Then I decided to drop some dough on his work and give them a go...

So, this series was recommended to me by a bunch of people but I have no idea why... By that I mean no idea why I didn’t read it sooner!What’s it about?Leo and some other criminals get themselves involved in a heist job, the thing is, this job ends up being much more dangerous and crazy than he could have ever anticipated, that’s all I can say without spoiling it.Why it gets 5 stars:The story is very interesting, well written and intense.The narrative is super well written throughout the entire

Our hero, Leo, is not a hero, and that's the point. He's not a hero because he's a crook. He's not a hero because he'll choose to save his own skin over honor, money, and friendship. But he's also good at what he does, which is plan heists. His troubles begin when he breaks his rules (no guns, no cops, no druggies) and gets in on a heist that goes very, very wrong, and which he just can't escape from. From that point, the storytelling and characterization are detailed and realistic. These feel l...