Criminal Vol. 3: The Dead and The Dying [Paperback]

Ed Brubaker (Author), Sean Phillips (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 23, 2008

Winner of the Eisner Award for Best New Series, and Winner of the Harvey and Eisner Awards for Best Writer! The third collection of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' critically-acclaimed noir series follows a different twist of the knife this time -- telling three interlinking stories that take place during the early 1970s and swirl around the fate of a hard-luck Femme Fatale, a boxer and a thief and killer just home from Vietnam. Each story is told from a different narrative point-of-view, so we can see the varied secrets and hidden desires that ultimately lead to a lot of murder and mayhem. Collecting Criminal Volume 2 #1-3

Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Marvel (July 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785132279
• ISBN-13: 978-0785132271
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 0.4 x 10.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #199,411 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Volume 3 is excellent prequel of Brubaker & Phillips' gritty crime series, November 9, 2008

By 

K. W. Schreiter (Conshohocken, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Criminal Vol. 3: The Dead and The Dying (Paperback)

This third trade paperback collects three 30-page issues of the consistently outstanding "Criminal" series featuring the same creative team of writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips. This story arc was billed as Volume 2, #1-3 of the Marvel series and serves as a prequel to the previous plotline. Back in 1972, the Undertown hosts a previous generation of thugs and miscreants, the final "N" of its neon sign still burned out. The three issues tell an overlapping story from three separate perspectives. Issue 1 centers on the pugilist past of Gnarly, the current Undertown bartender. #2 features Teeg Lawless, father of Tracy, the protagonist of the second TPB. #3 centers on hard luck Danica Briggs, pictured on the cover and deeply involved with the previous two characters. Unlike most comic book plots, the gritty, rated-R realism herein requires no leaps of faith from the reader. This book met my high expectations and is very strongly recommended for both regular fans of comics and graphic novels as well as a much wider audience.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Criminal Yet?, August 22, 2008

By 

Mr. Gone (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Criminal Vol. 3: The Dead and The Dying (Paperback)

This volume of Criminal is arguably the best yet. While the characters aren't as immediately likeable as Leo, or desperately engrossing like Tracy, they are perfectly crafted and shoved into a delightfully broken morality tale.

I agree word for word with S. Curly in his above review, except for the deduction of one star for the lack of essays. You can't judge this product on what it lacks, but on what it presents. The essays are an incentive to the monthly readers, but they're not Criminal. The book doesn't deserve to be penalized for not reprinting them. That's like penalizing a DVD release because it doesn't have a special feature that interviews the director's friends about their favorite things about the genre. You may catch such an interview on TV, but to decide the product is worth less because they're not included is flawed thinking.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brubaker and Phillips produce three compelling crime tales., July 17, 2008

By 

Sean Curley (Charlottetown, PE, Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Criminal Vol. 3: The Dead and The Dying (Paperback)

This third collection of stories coincided with "Criminal"'s relaunch as a new volume, with a new format, including more pages, though some of these are given over to the articles, which are, of course, not included in these collected editions, since they are meant as incentives to monthly readers. These trades feel somewhat incomplete for someone who reads the single issues, one of the few cases where a series debatably reads better in that format (for the record, these three issues featured: Duane Swierczynski, crime novelist and Marvel comics writer, on 'The Burglar' by David Goodis; Marvel/Vertigo writer Jason Aaron on his favourite film and TV tough guys; and Sony VP Michael Stradford on 'The Yakuza', a 70s Sydney Pollack/Robert Mitchum gangster drama). Brubaker and Phillips elect to take their new larger issue format to tell three one-shot stories, which nevertheless are indelibly linked by the story of one character, who appears in all three.

The first story ("Second Chance in Hell") details the origin of Gnarly, the bartender of the Undertow who appeared in the first two story arcs. We get his backstory as a down-on-his-lukc boxer with a childhood connection to Sebastian Hyde, the man we met in the preceding story as the aged, all-powerful underboss of the city. This may be the strongest of the three stories, though all are quite good (personally, I'd quite like to see a story about Gnarly set in the present day, to see what happened with him and the little girl Angie). The second story ("A Wolf Among Wolves") is about Teeg Lawless, the father of Tracy and Ricky Lawless, both featured in the preceding arc (aptly titled "Lawless"). Lawless is a drug-addicted Vietnam veteran who returns home to find himself indebted to the mob, and, in the course of trying to escape its clutches, may find himself relentlessly pulled in (much as his son Tracy was in the preceding story). Tracy is the least sympathetic of the three main characters (though characters in crime fiction don't need to be conventionally sympathetic; indeed, that's often the attraction). Phillips makes effective use of blacked-out panels to communicate Teeg's drug-induced stupor, and the ending has a rather bitter tone mixed with Teeg's parental sacrifice, knowing how his children will turn out. Finally, there is the story of Danica Briggs ("Female of the Species"), the first female main character in "Criminal"'s run so far (there is usually only one prominent female character per tale, the obligatory femme fatale). Danica is indeed a femme fatale of sorts, but, by the time she gets her solo tale, we already know her beginning (in Gnarly's story) and end (in Teeg's). It lends the finale a morbid poignancy.

Brubaker is a first-rate writer of crime fiction, and "Criminal" features him at the top of his game. The tone is brilliantly noirish, with a perfect atmosphere of desperation and sober immorality (with clearly levels, from those just out to survive to those who are out to dominate; the first story, in particular, gives an interesting spotlight on Sebastian Hyde, at the point where he was caught between entering the family business or staying out of it). Sean Phillips' art is perfect for the subject matter, bringing the properly grey sensibility to a noir world. This is probably a five-star collection, but I deduct one for the absence of the articles, which add a lot to the reading experience.