| Title | : | Criminal, Vol. 1: Coward |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 078512439X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780785124399 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 128 |
| Publication | : | First published May 1, 2007 |
| Awards | : | Gran Guinigi Best comic series (2008) |
Criminal, Vol. 1: Coward Reviews
-
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, skillfully crafted story with a rich, twisty and layered plot plus subtly drawn, memorable characters that come alive for the reader.
In other words…if you’re a fan of crime fiction, especially noiry nastiness, this is the goods. The quality is in the upper echelon of the all the offerings you are likely to find strolling down the print isle of your local bookstore. So don’t pass this up simply because of some irrational prejudice against kick ass artwork complimenting an already terrific story.
PLOT SUMMARY:
Leo Patterson is not your usual criminal. He's complicated. Leo is brilliant at planning scores, but also has a reputaton as a coward for being who will cut and run if things go bad and has a knack for extricating himself from bad situations.
Ever since Leo's father died in prison, he's strictly followed a set of rules designed to keep him alive and out of the pokey. These rules include such commandments as never work with junkies and never partner with crooked cops. Item #1 in Leo’s rule book is absolutely no guns.
Leo has been scraping a living as a pick pocket trying to support his surrogate father, Ivan, who suffers from Alzheimer's. When approached by a former colleague to knock over a police evidence transport carrying millions in blood diamonds, Leo initially refuses due to the involvement of a crooked cop.
Rules are rules.
However, after a series of events, Leo eventually comes on board to plan the heist. As you can probably guess, things go seriously FUBAR, in part because not everyone follows Leo's rules.
Turns out that nothing is what it seems, double crosses occur in droves and Leo finds himself on the run from some very nasty, pissed off people.
MY THOUGHTS:
Putting aside classics like Hammett and Chandler, this ranks highly among noir crime stories that I've read. It's just really, really good. The plot is well laid out and the cast of characters is terrific. One thing I love to find in a good crime caper is a seriously deranged bad guy. An enforcer or lieutenant for the big boss who likes to hurt people and becomes a focal point for the reader's hate and disgust.
Coward has one and his name is Delron:
Delron reminds me of a caricature of a sweaty, overweight sheriff from the deep, deep south who turns out to be a wife-beating pedophile selling oxycontin to school kids. He's the quintessence of creepy and Sean Philips's artistic portrayal of him is just perfect. His inclusion in the story adds the right amount of tension and drama to the unfolding events.
In addition, the pacing is crisp and the plot has a geniune sense of authenticity about it. The realism of the characters gives the story a greater degree of emotional impact as there are no annoying distractions infringing on the reader's suspension of disbelief.
Finally, the ending. It's wonderful. The right tone for the story and the perfect wrap up for all that has come before.
4.0 stars. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. -
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 always runs away before the shit hits the fan. He's a good thief, and good at planning for jobs, so it's no surprise that an old partner & a crooked cop want his help on a job.
Is it?
I'm gonna stop there because I think the less you know about the actual story, the better. If this sounds like your type of comic, or you're a fan of Brubaker, go ahead and jump on in. I mean, even though this isn't normally the kind of thing I go for, I was really impressed with it.
Sure, I wanted to slit my throat by the time it was over, but...
The art? Ehhhhhh?
It's kind of what I think of as indie art. I don't actually like it, but whatcha gonna do?
shrugs
Recommended for fan of Brubaker & crime stories.
PS - This is the worst cover in the history of graphic novel covers. Just...ewwww. Looks like an aging porn star eyeballing his next cheeseburger.
-
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 him and it's just a matter of time before it all catches up.
Fricking awesome. Why didn't they write comics like this when I was a kid? Oh right, my mom would have burned them. I can eat them up now though. Old age rocks!
-
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 what people think of him. However, when an old acquaintance and a crooked cop ask Leo to help them steal a fortune in diamonds being transported to court as evidence in a trial, the pay-off is too great for Leo to resist.
Then the job goes off without a hitch and Leo retires to a tropical island…. Not really. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. Actually, as it usually happens in these kinds of stories, everything goes to hell, and Leo ends up with some very dangerous people after him. Even a coward has to stop running sometime.
This is an excellent start to the Criminal series in which Brubaker and Phillips do these gritty hard-boiled stories as self-contained gems, but if you read them all then an entire criminal underworld and its history is revealed as they take the basic noir scenarios and turn them on their head. Leo is an extremely well developed character with a backstory involving a criminal father, and the reasons behind his so-called cowardice are explored and explained in surprising ways.
In addition to Leo there’s a beautiful woman with a troubled past, dirty cops, psycho thugs, dingy bars,and shady characters; all the things that make crime fiction worth reading. -
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. -
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 team either did or did not know what they were doing from the beginning. When I first read this, a few years ago, I saw that it was riddled with crime cliches--a heist gone wrong, bent cops, drugs and blood diamonds--but it was so deliciously good, pulp fiction at its finest. What I appreciate this round is that the layered storytelling makes sense. The central characters here we will meet throughout, and it is nice to see them from the beginning, knowing the end.
Leo is almost born a con, raised by his Dad and friend Ivan when Dad was in prison, to be a grifter, a thief. He starts at 8. Yeah, the father-son story we return to in later volumes begins here. Leo is also careful--a coward-- and reluctantly gets involved in a heist with multiple. . . I'll just say surprises. In a later volume we see that Leo was always into crime comics, and here crime comics are referenced as well, through a Dick Tracy sort of comic they read every day. I love those kind of sweet and self-referential touches from the team.
Coward is a violent and gritty and amazing first volume of the Criminal series that got me into the Brubaker-Phillips team, and Brubaker in particular. I know some of you think this series is the best of his work and I won't argue with you, but let me put it positively, I think Kill or Be Killed and The Fade-Out are even better. They just get better at storytelling, drawing, dialogue, complexity. But this one I find on reread is even better than when I first read it. -
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. -
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, the first of which is his first book in the
Criminal series.
For the few that don't know, the series is a set of stand-alone but loosely connected noir tales that take place in the same city. This first volume, Coward, is a heist story about a meticulously picky career thief and pickpocket who reluctantly takes a shady armored car job, and of course it all goes to hell in a hand basket.
For those who dismiss graphic fiction as simply colorful books about Avengers, Superman, and skimpy Japanese anime, I submit this as Exhibit A as to why you're wrong. This is classic crime noir, a pulp offering of burnt-out criminals, crooked cops, regrettable pasts, and a whole lot of desperation. The writing is solid, and I could definitely see more first-time comic readers really enjoying this story if they tried it. At first, I didn't like the artwork, having gotten used to the crisper, sharper, more colorful 1990's art that I grew up with, but then by the end, I grew to love it. The rounder, rougher, grungier artwork is perfectly suited to the atmosphere and I can't wait to jump into the world of Criminal again for the next installment. -
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 the actual heist. After escaping a shootout with police that left most of his gang riddled with bullets, Leo is also insistent that there will be no guns on any of his hits. Due to this, the underworld tough guys are quick to label Leo a yellow belly, and he seems OK with it, preferring to spend his days on small time pickpocketing instead on Big Scores that might go bad.
The past though is catching up with Leo, and one of his former partners is half arm twisting, half persuading Leo to join him and a couple of crooked cops in a hit on an armoured van transporting jewelry from police custody to a tribunal as evidence. Leo smells a rat, yet he believes he can outsmart the crooks. A dame in distress is also thrown into the equation, the widow of one of his former gang members that was killed by the police in that infamous shootout.
When the s--t hits the fan, as it always does in the best of the noir pulp tradition that inspires the comic, Leo finds himself torn between his instinct for self-preservation and the need to take care of the persons that are dear to him : an old mentor in stealing that is fighting both Alzheimner and a heroin dependency, and the woman that could become more than a partner in crime to him.
Ed Brubabker really knows his stuff when it comes to crime fiction. Even without the great essays included at the back of the issues, paying homage to the classic noir movies, you can feel it in the way he handles the plot and the dialogue that he has absorbed and processed the tropes of the genre. He has done more than this. He has written not a fan-fiction but a grittyy, brutal modern version of the stories penned by Hammett or Chandler and Chase. Corruption, cops abusing their powers, drugs, broken families, existential angst are all part of the story, yet they don't get in the way of a damn fast action thriller that escalates quickly from one issue to another, forcing Leo to confront his inner fears and to come out perhaps not a better man, but a great deal more dangeous one towards the crooks that labeled him a coward.
Sean Phillips is a great choice for taking care of the graphic art, although I wouldn't rate him quite in the same class as Frank Miller, Gabriel Rodriguez or Fiona Staples (my current favs). Phillips does grit well, his panels feel lived in, tired, real. He captures the characters emotions skillfully and can handle dynamic moments (fights, car chases, etc) but sometimes I wished for a little more attention to detail. Or maybe I'm just still a little peeved by Leo's goatee which made him a bit of a clown when I first layed eyes on him in the comic.
All in all, the first album of Criminal turned out to be one of the best adult oriented comics I've read this year, and I plan to check out the rest of the series, as well as the other Brubaker comics inspired by noir sensibilities - Fatale -
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 the stolen loot and his deceased best friend's wife until events cause him to confront who he is and what he has to do.
I thought this was a typical noir tale that would be told at a pedestrian pace with good art but Brubaker does a fantastic job of keeping up the action once it gets going and keeping it there, knocking it up a notch for the final showdown. Having read this creative duo's other effort, the more recent book "Incognito" and finding it somewhat lacking in substance, I was glad to find "Coward" was a lot better. It was more interesting with better characters, especially the lead, and even Phillips' artwork seemed better in this.
If the other books in the series are up to this standard then I can't wait to get started on them, but this is a series that has books that can be read as stand-alones, they aren't connected by an overarching storyline. And if you're looking for a noir thriller that's got plenty of action and pace to it, you can't go wrong with "Coward" for an excellent read. -
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, fantastic. -
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 die here, don't get too attached.
The ending though and the characters all felt a little...movie like? Predictable? The story is really a big old "This is why crime is bad" but we know that. I wanted to care when characters died, but everything felt too self contained, too strict, so they didn't have time to flush out everyone. so when people died I was more like Oh, that sucks. Instead of "NOOOOO!" type feeling.
Still, I'll read the next one because the writing is solid, art is great, and maybe a different story will grab me a different way. -
This one focuses on a guy named Leo and he is pulled into a heist job by a cop named Seymour and his partner Jeff and Greta his old love interest joins him until they betray him sort of and then it becomes about survival, running away and we slowly learn of his past and Ivan another character and more revelations and ultimately a final face off after they run and hide quite a while! And the ending was spectacular! "You dont break the rules, more like laws on how to survive". It was a good book and the characters are so relatable and filled with flaw but heroic in the end and the art was good too. Its one of those classic 1990s TV episode but reads surprisingly well too.
-
2.5 Stars
A 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? -
Story: 5 stars
Artwork: 4 stars
Final score: 4.5 stars
This 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 Best Limited Series in 2012.
Update on 2019 reread: I'm upgrading this to five stars because on rereading it I realized that this a perfect noir story.
Dennis Lehane said that in Greek tragedy heroes fall from great heights but in noir, they fall from the curb. Ed Brubaker understands this perfectly.
My thanks to the folks at the
Pulp Fiction group for introducing this and many other fine books. -
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 story.
Phillips’ art is fantastic as usual.
The characters are interesting. At first I wasn’t interested in them because they’re assholes but as the story continues I became more interested in them. Despite them being criminals, making them the bad guys, they’re also people and it’s strange reading this because in this story there aren’t any good guys and bad guys, there’s bad guys and worse guys.
The action scenes are fantastic. Lots of great action that is well written and the art makes these scenes even more fantastic.
This book is full of suspense. I didn’t see most of the things that happened in this book coming!
The dialogue is so well written. It sounds like how these people would probably talk making this book’s characters and gritty atmosphere even better.
The brief (and few) moments of comic relief are well done.
Overall:
This is why I read comics. Then again, if you ask me “who’s the better artist: Leonardo DiVinci, Vincent van Gogh or Sean Phillips?” my answer is going to be Sean Phillips. If you ask me who my favorite author is, aside from God and The Founding Fathers, it would be Ed Brubaker (I have never read a bad book by him).
As society considers comics as being thought of as actual books, not just kids stuff nowadays (which is a good thing), unless the world ends soon, I think comics will probably be in many literature classes and there is no doubt that the works of Brubaker and Phillips will be part of high school classes (if you’re a teen from the future reading this, your literature class sounds awesome). Many people consider this a masterpiece in comics and they are absolutely right! If you haven’t read this already you really, really should.
5/5 -
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 cut of the take?
I was a big, big fan of this 1st installment. While I didn't love it as much as
Incognito, Volume 1 (another one of Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips collaborations), I thought it was excellent for what it was. Brubaker has a massive back-catalouge of work and I can't wait to dig deep into it.
Sean Phillips' work is tremendous. I loved his vision in regards to what violent scenes should look like as well as the resulting gore. He doesn't go overboard but creates an atmosphere that really gets the point across.
As with all great heist stories go, it's hard to tell who is geniunely on what side. Brubaker did a great job keeping me guessing until the very end. There really are no friends when it comes to crime - everyone is always out for themselves. -
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 noir stories. Reading Coward for the second time wasn’t as rewarding or interesting, even though enough time has passed for me to completely forget the actual story beats and twists. Overall it’s still a solid introduction into Brubaker’s universe of crime comics, but it’s definitely one of his weaker efforts that doesn’t compare to what came after this volume.
-
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 like real people who might actually try to plot a job like this, which is to say that hearts of gold are in short supply. The art is atmospheric and a perfect match for the story. A great read.
-
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 scene more baffling to me. He looks like the bassist for a 2000s era nu metal band. Seriously, was this guy in Creed? Stone Sour? Staind? Anyway, he's one of the smartest criminals and all that jazz.
There's Greta, who doesn't really seem to matter. I'm not sure why she was in on the heist at all? I get why she's doing it but the reason they give for inviting her to the job is really thin.
There's the pervert Ivan who's important to making Leo who he is. He seems like a major scumbag but Leo likes him so we just accept that.
The bad guys all kind of blend together for me. A mix of dirty cops and a straight up criminal.
I wanted more of Gnarly and Leo's relationship. This book feels a little unbalanced in that regard. Like, there's quite a bit of Leo and Ivan and that doesn't go where I thought it would. Perhaps because Brubaker wanted to emphasize the legacy of thieves? There's some of the dirty cops working with the big bad Roy-L (which sounds like someone's eleventh choice for a Krypton related Twitter handle) and I don't think we super needed that. Leo relies on Gnarly for a lot and I was interested in that relationship a lot more.
This is perfect for an adaptation. Even more than that, it made me want to see what Ed Brubaker would have done with Jessica Jones if given the chance. Granted, he didn't do well with the one female character in this but the way he does crime noir would have been really interesting with Jessica Jones. Anything would be better than the mess we got from Bendis' current run with it. -
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 if you're in a graphic novel slump as i am, i think this one will drag you out of it. -
Criminal volume 1 is the best most predictable story I have ever read. I admit that I found Coward a very engaging read despite the fact thay all heist cliches are there - an epic fuck up, crooked cops, vengeance and death, drugs, diamonds, armored vehicles.
What lacks in originality is being complemented by a good story. Coward has just the right touch of emotions to drive the characters do what they should, even if it is against their will. That emotional appeal of the story all throughout the pages is more than enough to make you pick this volume and start to read the Criminal books. -
**Buddy read with the Shallow Comic Readers, theme this week: Indies!***
WOW.
Reading Ed Brubaker's and Sean Phillips's Criminal Vol 1: Coward is like taking a ride deep into the dirty underbelly of every crime drama show, movie, or book you've ever read. Dirty, dirty, dirty. So rarely have I felt the iron-fisted grip of suspense around my heart as in this collection. Fuck! My heart is still pounding a half hour after finishing. Brubaker and Phillps do a great job of drawing you in to this story where there is no morality, everyone's crooked, but damn it, you still give a shit about these characters.
Although I enjoyed Brubaker's Gotham Central stories, this book right here is the author broken loose from the constrictions of mainstream comics. He deftly weaves a tale of intrigue, suspicion, and revenge, in a story that has plenty of heart as well. Phillips provides art that is as gritty as the story demands. Colors by Val Staples strike just the right mood.
I won't bore you with a plot description, as plenty of other readers provide that in their reviews, but if you like crime stories, pick this up. Published by Icon, a Marvel creators-owned imprint, it also includes an introduction by Tom Fontana, creator of TV shows Oz and Homicide: Life on the Streets.
Can't praise this book enough. -
A very solid take on the low-life dude does a heist gone wrong tale.
Like most of the Brubaker books I've read, he executes the genre to perfection but doesn't go beyond the trappings. This would make for a very good movie, but (for many reasons) I expect more from comicbooks. I want to experience something that I couldn't experience in a different medium. This book delivers everything you could want from a book called Criminal, but doesn't do anything new and spectacular.
Highly recommended for people keen on the premise as this is impeccably executed. For everyone else, however, this isn't essential reading. It's good but not extraordinary. -
If educators and law enforcement really wanted to turn youth off of a life of crime they'd make this series required reading in Grade 8 language arts.
-
This was recommended to me, by Goodreads. I'm not big on crime stories, but this was okay. I'm glad that it was a decent paced story...one that was not too fast that you didn't know what was going on, but not too slow to make it get old fast. Leo is a pickpocket who was trained as a child. He's "lucky", as he never gets caught doing a job. He doesn't get caught because he is a Coward, and at the first sign of trouble he runs. But this time around his luck has run out, and well you will have to read it to find out what happens....
-
I felt like the plot was all over the place in this one. And I had no idea who was who. I feel like what I was missing here was the backstory. There is clearly a lot of it, and what I was given was maybe a snippet, and definitely not enough to help make sense of what is going on in the present day, in my opinion. Additionally, I didn’t really enjoy the characters, and a lot of the scenes in this felt unnecessary and like they were there just to make the book longer and served no real purpose.
-
Leo is a career criminal. He’s never been caught, because he plans carefully down to the last detail, and he always makes sure he has a way out if things go wrong. But this latest job may be more than he bargained for ...
The only thing more entertaining than a good heist story, is a heist story gone wrong where the perpetrators have to struggle to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Criminal: Coward is an example of just such a story. Yes, what Leo does is illegal, but we're rooting for him just the same. We care about him and those around him. We understand their motivations, and want to see them come out on top. Honestly, this is one of the best mystery/crime comics I’ve ever read. Story and art are pitch perfect. Highly recommended! -
Ed Brubaker never really had to go into mainstream comics, but I'm glad he did. That being said, his crime/noir stuff is FANTASTIC. Such a good feel to it, I'm amazed he hasn't sold a bunch of rights to his stuff to movie studios and made a bundle, or at least rights to a TV miniseries.
Coward is Volume 1 in his Criminal series, and a fantastic story exactly the way you'd like a crime story to go, brutal hard, and no punches pulled. This is such a harsh place you expect Batman to show up at any time. Well worth a read. -
Well the beginning was obviously setting the story and it did kind of start slow but I did enjoy it at the end. If you don't like violence and blood do not read this as it is full of it. There is 0 happiness in this book and everyone is dodgy. I did like the twists and turns, I really liked Greta and it did leave me wanting to know what happens next.
