Criminal #1

This first issue of Image's Criminal announces itself with raw, bruising confidence — Sean Phillips's cover puts a battered, silver-haired man in a dark suit front and center, his bloodied face and raised fists aimed straight at the viewer like a dare. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips bring their hard-boiled sensibility to this 2019 series, and that cover image alone — equal parts weariness and defiance — sets the tone perfectly. If gritty crime fiction drawn with this much visceral craft sounds like your kind of thing, this is exactly where to start.