Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal is the latest ongoing title from Marvel's tiny Icon line. 

Essentially, Icon is a boutique imprint that publishes creator-owned books by people who have signed exclusive deals with Marvel.  From Marvel's point of view, Icon is primarily an incentive for creators to sign with the company.  From the creators' point of view, on the other hand, this ought to be the place where they can stretch their wings.

By Icon standards, Criminal has been a heavily promoted book.  People have been singing its praises for months.  Frankly, it's been talked up to such an extent that there's a risk of raising expectations too far.  To hear some people talk, you'd think it was a revolutionary title.  And that would be going a bit far.

Setting the hype aside, though, this is another excellent piece of work from Brubaker and Phillips.  They worked together before on Sleeper, a memorable cross between the crime and superhero genres.  This time they've dispensed with the fantasy elements altogether and gone for a straight crime book.  Be under no illusions; this is an unashamed genre piece.  But it's a magnificent, skilful genre piece.

The plan, apparently, is for each arc to focus on a different character.  From the sound of it, the book is going for the "series of miniseries" format, with the stories linked by a shared backdrop, but otherwise self-contained.  I'm all for that; open-ended stories wouldn't really suit the pulp fiction style.

The first arc, "Coward", introduces Leo, an expert thief who rigidly follows his highly cautious rules.  Having seen a heist go horribly wrong in the past, he has learned an important lesson - don't get caught.  And Leo has never been caught, simply because he never takes any risks at all.  But because he's so good, he's under pressure to get involved in jobs he'd rather steer clear of.

There's a tricky balancing act with these stories, to make the characters believable and still make us like them.  After all, they're career criminals.  With Leo, they've pulled it off.  He's a completely unrepentant career thief but, on a personal level, a basically decent guy.  He's effectively operating on two totally different moral frameworks, but he does so in a way that makes total sense.  He's part of an underworld community; his victims aren't.  That's the crucial thing about this book; it draws us in, and we're seeing their community from the inside.

Around the edges, there are some strange flourishes that seem to be setting up recurring gags - a bafflingly enigmatic "Frank Kafka, Private Eye" strip being the most obvious example.  I have no idea where Brubaker is heading with that, but it's confusing in the right way.

The crime genre is a natural for comics, and Brubaker and Phillips have already shown that they know how to get the most out of it.  Criminal looks like it'll be further proof.  It's not the second coming of Jesus, but it's as good a crime book as you'll find.

Rating: A+

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