This month we honour Criminal and Green Lantern
By Miles Baker and Owen K. Craig
Miles’ Book of the Month
Criminal vol. 2: Lawless
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips
Icon, 2007
See I don’t just like Joss Whedon’s comics — I like Ed Brubaker’s too. There are so many things going right with this book. For starters, there is the creative team. Brubaker and Phillips are, after this and Sleeper (if you like things that are awesome you’ll like Sleeper — go right now), one of my favourite comic teams of all time. They both seem to get each other on a level a lot of writers and artists don’t. Brubaker’s dialogue and pacing are always well done and Phillips heavy inks make everyone look as tough and mean and cool as they should be.
Second, and the way more important thing, is what’s actually happening in Criminal. Each volume of focuses on the children, who are now adults, of a gang of big-time to petty gangsters. Both books stand alone quite nicely, but it’s great to see how they intersect and comment on each other. The first volume, Coward, was a slow burn — didn’t love it at first, but the more I thought about it the more I liked it. I ended up loving it and how unique the characters were. This volume, however, is way different. It starts with a beating (literally) and keeps up with the hits. All the characters in this book are immediately likable and Tracy Lawless, our protagonist, is more than a tough guy out for revenge. He’s much more layered than that.
What I like most about Criminal is that it’s more about family that it’s about crime. Yes, family is a common theme in crime and mobster fiction (The Godfather, The Sopranos), but in Criminal it’s more about the ghost of family — how it haunts you and informs every decision you make. Lawless is the perfect title for this volume: “You’e got the same cold eyes your daddy had… You’re a Lawless and in the end you’re all the same.”
It’s perfect.
Owen’s Book of the Month
Green Lantern #25
Written by Geoff Johns
Pencilled by Ivan Reis and Ethan VanScriver
DC Comics, 2007
Since my “Book of the Month” for October happened to be the last issue of Green Lantern to come out I thought twice about picking this as my book for December. But there was no doubt about it, this book is the most fulfilling, exciting, fun and gasp-inducing read I had all month. When an event builds steam it’s sometimes difficult to bring it to a logical yet satisfying conclusion (*cough* Civil War *cough*), yet The Sinestro Corps War nails the ending.
From beginning to end I was on edge. Reveal after reveal built up the Green Lantern mythos before my very eyes extending in shocking but logical directions. Ivan Reis and Ethan VanScriver’s splash pages were jaw-dropping. No wait, that’s not enough, SPECTACULARILY jaw-dropping. And that was only the intro to the issue. From there the war enters endgame, with two gigantic battles happening on Earth. To top it all off Hal and Kyle have a final fight with Sinestro sans powers. After all the green and yellow energy tossed around the pages during this war, the climactic battle is an old fashioned fist (and wooden board) fight.
I’m afraid I can’t go on any more. It’s all too exciting. If you haven’t been reading then do yourself a favour. Pick up the trades (or even hardcovers, it’d look nifty on a shelf). You shan’t regret it.
Oh, and that teaser at the end? I got chills.
