Interviews 

“Criminal: Special Edition” Goes Back To The Big House: A Chat with Ed Brubaker [Interview]

By | February 25th, 2015
Posted in Interviews | % Comments

Like its namesake, “Criminal” has been lying low for the past few years. The most recent issue, “Criminal: The Last of the Innocent” #4, hit stands back in September 2011. But the book that made people finally take notice of just how good Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are is now back on the streets and ready to make up for lost time. Finding a new home at Image Comics, the award-winning crime series is not only re-releasing its earlier arcs in new trade paperbacks, but marking the occasion with a brand-new story focusing on one of its often-mentioned-but-rarely-seen characters: Teeg Lawless. It seems Teeg has found himself off the streets as well…in prison!

And if 70’s crime fiction isn’t enough for you, there’s also sword-wielding barbarians, disrobing sorceresses, and ages undreamed of. Seriously.

I had a chance to chat with Ed briefly about the book’s return and the multiple ways to experience Teeg’s story.

How does it feel to have a new “Criminal” issue on the stands? It’s been a while!

Ed Brubaker: It feels great. I wasn’t sure about taking a two month break from THE FADE OUT to do this special double-sized “annual” but I’m really glad we did. It was a lot of fun to put together.

I’ll ask about the Special Edition in more general terms in a minute, but I’d like to start off with the fact that not only is this the first issue published by Image (celebrating the back catalog making the move over from Marvel’s ICON line), but it’s also the first issue with Bettie Breitweiser on colors. Although she’s definitely in a groove with Sean already from their work together on “Fatale” and “The Fade Out”, was there anything specific about the “Criminal” world that you felt she needed a head’s up on before diving in?

EB: No, certainly not from me. Any color talk is between Sean and Bettie. My comments are usually on the “wow” variety, when I see the pages. Bettie took to coloring our books so naturally, that really we just let her do her thing. Sean may occasionally ask for something, or do some greyscale painting over backgrounds, like in “The Fade Out,” but mostly it’s just Bettie doing her thing and making us look good.

When you’ve been asked to try and give the ‘high concept’ for “Criminal”, you never quite seem to be able to do it. But you obviously have a strong sense of what the series is and isn’t on some level, because your other work with Sean had some aspect that made you decide they clearly weren’t right for plugging into the “Criminal” world. Do you have an easier time articulating that?

EB: Articulating why something wouldn’t be a “Criminal” story? Well, you know, “Fatale” had a supernatural element to it, so that couldn’t have been, and “The Fade Out” is a period piece about Hollywood, so that really doesn’t feel like the same thing, either. “Criminal”‘s high concept is that there isn’t one, I think. It’s a series of interlinked crime stories, that all take place in a fictional city and its surrounding fictional towns and suburbs. It’s our version of pulp, in a way, so it’s a bit more raw and hard-edged.

“Criminal” has been called ‘the gold standard of crime comics’, and I think one of the many reasons it stands out is that you & Sean really embrace the comics aspect as much as the crime aspect. From evoking Dan DeCarlo-era Archie comics with ‘The Last of the Innocent’ to even further back with the Chester Gould-esque Frank Kafka from ‘Bad Night’, these comics are more than just movies on paper. The Special Edition continues that trend in a surprising direction. How did B&W sword & sorcery make its way into everyone’s favorite crime comic?

EB: I’d heard years back that in the 70s and 80s, comic mags like “Savage Sword of Conan” and “Heavy Metal” and “Creepy,” the more ‘adult’ comics mags, had a lot of subscriptions to prison inmates, and that story always stuck with me. So when I decided we should do a sort of “annual” to celebrate the return of “Criminal” at Image, that story just came back to me, and I had this image of Teeg Lawless lying in a prison cell reading some crazy barbarian comic. And then it just fell into place. I enjoy experimenting, and it’s fun to get Sean to draw in different styles in the same story. He really had fun on these Zangar pages here, too.

Continued below

Did you have to go back and re-read some of those old Conan/Kull comics to get just the right amount of over-the-top for the Robert E. Howard-by-way-of-Roy Thomas captions, or was that particular voice already so ingrained it just came naturally?

EB: Well, I didn’t HAVE TO, but I did it anyway. Maybe more for the text pages and letters page stuff than for the comics themselves. I grew up reading those, so yeah, that wasn’t something I needed to study too much. Heh. The tone of the fake letters page, though, that took some research.

While all six of the “Criminal” arcs to this point can be read independently of each other and in any order, you started revealing a cohesive timeline in all directions from the first panel of ‘Coward’. Since you’re not telling these stories in a straight chronological line, what makes any one of them the one you work on next over another?

EB: It’s always just as simple as which one feels like it’s ready, or that it needs to be next. I have a lot of ideas for “Criminal” stories, but I have no idea which one will be next until a week or so before I start writing it usually.

Not only are we getting a new “Criminal” story, but this Special Edition is getting its own special edition. This issue will have the second magazine-sized variant you & Sean have done for one of your books, when comics of anything other than normal US trim-size are given a shifty eye from some readers & retailers alike. Was there any hesitation about doing it? Any chance of future issues getting similar variants?

EB: Well, I certainly hope we do more things like this, but I don’t think we can do this specific idea again. We love trying different formats, though, certainly. And no, after the immediate sell out of “The Fade Out” magazine variant, I had no hesitation doing this one. I know a lot of retailers won’t carry the magazine size, but I’ve never gotten a bigger reaction from readers and press, than over these magazine editions. The people who get them are really into them, and they become hard-to-find almost immediately. That’s really gratifying to see.

“Criminal: Special Edition” #1 is in stores today.


Greg Matiasevich

Greg Matiasevich has read enough author bios that he should be better at coming up with one for himself, yet surprisingly isn't. However, the years of comic reading his parents said would never pay off obviously have, so we'll cut him some slack on that. He lives in Baltimore, co-hosts (with Mike Romeo) the Robots From Tomorrow podcast, writes Multiversity's monthly Shelf Bound column dedicated to comics binding, and can be followed on Twitter at @GregMatiasevich.

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