Comic Relief
My Current Pull List:
-Angel: After the Fall
-Buffy: Season Eight (TBPs only)
-Criminal
-Dead, She Said
-Spike: After the Fall
-Supernatural: Rising Son
-Tek Jensen
-Twelve
Criminal is a hard comic to like.
Everywhere, Criminal is mentioned as a classic, and people are scolded for not giving it higher sales. It nearly tanked and had to go for the whole relaunch. Its future is moment to moment. And I can see why.
The style that Criminal wants is noir, but the art goes farther, trying very hard to look like a 70s B movie. In this, it succeeds, I suppose, but it's so awkward because with references--to events and things like laptops--it's clearly set in a vague now. So they toss the 'gritty realism' they wanted to give you a sense of something set nowhere, nowhen.
Still, if you ignore that and accept what they're going for, you've got solid elements of noir here--the tragedy, the bleakness, and such. It's odd when Frank Miller does a preface, because the first impression is: this does it better.
But Criminal has some other problems. The stories are designed to tell the same tale from different perspectives. It's a good idea, and it could serve great purpose. But it gets wasted here. Several issues read as repeats. Nothing new happens, no new angle is introduced. The killer is the chars are all bland stock. You don't just know what happens, you already know why. The theory is beautiful, but the execution not so much. The idea was also that you could pick up any issue and be right in, but instead it punishes those who follow it.
And that's a problem with noir anyway. Because of the expectations of the genre, it's hard to find anything new here. Not unless you twist the rules, and that won't ever happen with these guys.
The biggest turn off for Criminal is the creators think they're brilliant, and they feel the need to tell you this. A lot. Every issue has supposed extras, which are really basically prefaces, afterwords, and 'essays'. This a super peril for any writer. Like any commentary, if you do them well, they're chummy chats with the reader that reveal neat details and add layers. Old Stephen King comes to mind here. If you do them badly, well, you just sound like an arrogant full of sack dick.
Sweet yes, sometimes, art gets spoiled by meeting the artist.
They're so worked up by how very awesome they are, and yet whining about how no one knows their brilliance, that it's a real massive gagging turn off. Now, they probably didn't intend for it to read that way, but I don't intend to babble or use big words.
I've stuck with Criminal this long because I do like the genre, and there is some talent there. It's just...off what it could be. Since the issues are now getting long delays, I think it's on the limp to death for good. That's kind of sad, and kind of not.
And that's Criminal.
-Angel: After the Fall
-Buffy: Season Eight (TBPs only)
-Criminal
-Dead, She Said
-Spike: After the Fall
-Supernatural: Rising Son
-Tek Jensen
-Twelve
Criminal is a hard comic to like.
Everywhere, Criminal is mentioned as a classic, and people are scolded for not giving it higher sales. It nearly tanked and had to go for the whole relaunch. Its future is moment to moment. And I can see why.
The style that Criminal wants is noir, but the art goes farther, trying very hard to look like a 70s B movie. In this, it succeeds, I suppose, but it's so awkward because with references--to events and things like laptops--it's clearly set in a vague now. So they toss the 'gritty realism' they wanted to give you a sense of something set nowhere, nowhen.
Still, if you ignore that and accept what they're going for, you've got solid elements of noir here--the tragedy, the bleakness, and such. It's odd when Frank Miller does a preface, because the first impression is: this does it better.
But Criminal has some other problems. The stories are designed to tell the same tale from different perspectives. It's a good idea, and it could serve great purpose. But it gets wasted here. Several issues read as repeats. Nothing new happens, no new angle is introduced. The killer is the chars are all bland stock. You don't just know what happens, you already know why. The theory is beautiful, but the execution not so much. The idea was also that you could pick up any issue and be right in, but instead it punishes those who follow it.
And that's a problem with noir anyway. Because of the expectations of the genre, it's hard to find anything new here. Not unless you twist the rules, and that won't ever happen with these guys.
The biggest turn off for Criminal is the creators think they're brilliant, and they feel the need to tell you this. A lot. Every issue has supposed extras, which are really basically prefaces, afterwords, and 'essays'. This a super peril for any writer. Like any commentary, if you do them well, they're chummy chats with the reader that reveal neat details and add layers. Old Stephen King comes to mind here. If you do them badly, well, you just sound like an arrogant full of sack dick.
Sweet yes, sometimes, art gets spoiled by meeting the artist.
They're so worked up by how very awesome they are, and yet whining about how no one knows their brilliance, that it's a real massive gagging turn off. Now, they probably didn't intend for it to read that way, but I don't intend to babble or use big words.
I've stuck with Criminal this long because I do like the genre, and there is some talent there. It's just...off what it could be. Since the issues are now getting long delays, I think it's on the limp to death for good. That's kind of sad, and kind of not.
And that's Criminal.
<< Home