Criminal is an American creator-owned comic book series written by Ed Brubaker and illustrated by Sean Phillips. It was originally published by Marvel Comics' Icon imprint and later by Image Comics. The series is a meditation on the clichés of the crime genre while remaining realistic and believable.
Publication history The first series began in October 2006, and ran for ten issues, which were published as two trade paperback editions, Coward (issues #1-5) and Lawless (issues #6-10), in 2007. In Coward, pickpocket Leo Patterson gets involved in an armored car heist that is not what it seems. In Lawless, AWOL soldier Tracy Lawless infiltrates his brother Ricky's former gang to find out who murdered Ricky. A second series began in February 2008, and ran for seven issues. The first three issues, overlapping stories from the points of view of three characters involved in organized crime in the 1970s, were collected as The Dead and the Dying (issues #1-3, 2008). Issues #4-7 were collected as Bad Night (issues #4-7, 2009). A third series ran for five issues in 2009–2010, and was collected as The Sinners (2010). A fourth series followed in 2011, which ran for four issues, and was collected as The Last of the Innocent (2011).
In 2009, Coward, Lawless and The Dead and the Dying were reprinted as a 432-page "Deluxe Edition" hardcover. Included in this edition are a number of extras, including three of the original backpages "essays" with all 13 original accompanying pieces of art, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund short story No One Rides For Free, the original Coward "trailer" announcing the series, a covers gallery, and a number of pages describing the "process" of making the book. A second hardcover collecting Bad Night, The Sinners, and Last of the Innocent was published in October 2012.
The six trade paperback editions were republished by Image Comics in 2014. Two one-shot issues of new material, Criminal Special Edition (February 2015) and Criminal 10th Anniversary Special (April 2016), followed, and were collected as Wrong Time, Wrong Place in September 2016.Criminal at Image Comics
In 2017, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips released , a hardcover standalone book. While the author notes that the volume is not officially book 8 of Criminal, it does feature a minor character from an earlier volume, now in a central role."The Secret Ingredient is Crime", Criminal #1, January 2019.
In December 2020, a third deluxe hardcover volume was published, collecting My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies and Bad Weekend.
Brubaker and Phillips, along with Jacob Phillips as colorist, returned to Criminal with a new series published by Image in January 2019. The first issue's story takes place in 1988 and focuses on Teeg Lawless. At the end of the story, Brubaker notes that part of the impetus for the new series is to tell stories of various lengths (from single issues to serialized) with jumps in time. Brubaker writes that he "doesn't want you to know where you're going. Just that it's probably to the wrong side of town". Twelve issues were published between January 2019 and January 2020, with two issues collected in an expanded format as the novella Bad Weekend in July 2019. Nine of the remaining 10 issues were collected in 2020 in a deluxe hardcover titled Cruel Summer, which can be seen as the fourth volume in the collected deluxe hardcover series.
In January 2025, Image Comics announced they would reissue trade paperbacks of all previously produced Criminal material as a way to promote the Criminal television series. Volumes one and two, Coward and Lawless, were republished with new covers and trade dress on 22 January 2025. These books include comics originally released in 2006 and 2007. Further volumes were released on a monthly basis through the rest of the year.
The resissues culminated with The Knives, a new original graphic novel written by Brubaker and Philips, which was released into comic shops on August 27, 2025. With only four days of sale, it went straight into the top-10 graphic novel charts for that month.
Plot The series' story arcs are self-contained and focus on different characters, but these central characters inhabit the same world, grew up in fictional Center City, frequent the same bar, and share a common history of two generations of crime. With his partner Ivan, Tommy Patterson ran the city's most proficient crew of pickpockets and taught the trade to his eight-year-old son, Leo. When Tommy was arrested and imprisoned for the murder of Teeg Lawless, Ivan took care of Leo and explained to him how following certain rules can keep a criminal "out in the world", out of both prison and the morgue.
Around the same time, Teeg Lawless' two sons were arrested. While his fifteen-year-old brother Ricky was sent to a juvenile work camp, Tracy Lawless was given the option of going to prison or enlisting in the armed forces. Tracy joined the U.S. Army, abandoning Ricky but honing his skills as a soldier.
Volume 1 Coward (Issues #1-5, Oct 06 – Mar 07)
The story begins five years after Leo Patterson was the only survivor of the disastrous "Salt Bay job", and fifteen years after his father Tommy, in state prison for the murder of Teeg Lawless, was killed by another inmate. Since then, Leo has kept a low profile as a pickpocket while he struggles to take care of Ivan, Tommy's old friend and partner-in-crime, who suffers from both Alzheimer's disease and an addiction to heroin. Leo has a strict set of rules he adheres to, and a reputation for being brilliant at planning scores, but also as a coward who runs from conflict and always manages to escape a bad situation. Both aspects attract the attention of Seymour, another Salt Bay survivor, and crooked cop Jeff. They try to recruit Leo for an armored-car heist, telling him a police evidence van will be carrying $5 million in diamonds to the courthouse. He refuses, unwilling to return to that life, but Seymour knows Leo can't refuse Greta, a recovering heroin addict and widow of Terry Watson, who was also killed at Salt Bay. Greta needs the money from the heist to start a new life with her daughter Angie, and blames Leo for her husband's death. Leo reluctantly agrees and recruits his friend Donnie, an epileptic con man.Criminal, vol. 1, #1
When Jeff includes his own partners in the score, Leo and Greta suspect a double-cross, but they continue with the heist. Leo, however, doesn't anticipate that Jeff and his partners will pull guns and start shooting in the middle of the job, killing Donnie and wounding Greta. Leo, having made a back-up plan, manages to escape with Greta and the score, which they discover isn't diamonds but a briefcase full of uncut heroin. Jeff and his partners work for a drug kingpin named "Roy-L.T." Hyde, and the evidence-van heist was intended both to retrieve his merchandise and facilitate the release of his lieutenant, Delron. "Roy-L" kills one of Jeff's partners as punishment, and sends the recently freed Delron with Jeff to track down the heroin. While she recovers, Greta, Ivan, and Leo lie low at Leo's grandfather's farm. As Leo and Greta succumb to their mutual attraction and have sex, Ivan goes looking for a fix and discovers the stash of heroin. Meanwhile, Jeff and Delron track down Greta's mother and daughter.
The next morning, Leo is devastated to find Ivan dead, having overdosed on the uncut heroin. He withdraws emotionally from Greta as he buries Ivan, and she lashes out in frustration, calling him a coward. He returns alone to the city and meets with "Genuine Jen" Waters, and old friend now Internal Affairs officer, who theorizes that Jeff hoped Leo would escape, but without the drugs, drawing the attention of the police while he paid his debt to "Roy-L". Meanwhile, distraught over Leo and tempted by the heroin, Greta calls her mother's house, where Jeff and Delron are waiting to trace the call after having killed Greta's mother. Leo breaks into Seymour's apartment, looking for leverage against him, but finds a message on his answering machine: Jeff ordering him to join them in going after Greta.Criminal, vol. 1, #4
Leo races back to the farm, finding Greta tortured to death. Seymour appears, having stayed behind with a picture of Angie behind held hostage. As they retrieve the briefcase of heroin, Seymour tells Leo that he's just as much a coward as everyone says; Leo retorts that his father didn't kill Teeg Lawless: Leo did. Leo throws an open bag of heroin in Seymour's face and coldly executes him, saying that what he's really afraid of is his own capacity for violence. He then tracks Delron to a local motel and stabs him to death, rescuing Angie. After leaving her with Gnarly, a bartender and old friend of his father, he tricks Jeff into leading him to "Roy-L" and kills him and his men in a gun battle. Jeff and Leo shoot each other several times; Jeff calls for backup and tries to flee, but Leo, knowing that Jeff participated in Greta's torture, follows and finishes him off. Severely wounded and too weak to escape the arriving police, Leo realizes that dying is a lot harder than killing and quips, "just my luck".Criminal, vol. 1, #5
Lawless (Issues #6-10, May 07 – Nov 07) After an incident that began in a bar in Baghdad's Green Zone, Tracy Lawless served eighteen months in a military prison, isolated from contact with the outside world. Upon release, he discovers that his brother Ricky was killed nine months earlier, and he soon goes AWOL to find out what happened. On the way to the city, he stops at the Center City docks long enough to rob two men carrying a briefcase of illicit cash, shooting one in the process.Criminal, vol. 1, #6 He finds an old acquaintance named Jacob, a now-crippled criminal who specializes in creating false identities. Since he isn't recognized by Jacob, Tracy is confident he can infiltrate Ricky's old crew to discover why his brother was killed. Tracy finds the crew—Gray, Nelson, Davey, and Ricky's lover Mallory—meeting frequently at the Undertow in obvious anticipation of an upcoming heist. Tracy quietly introduces himself to certain criminals as Sam West, a "wheelman" looking for a score, and, after killing the crew's driver Davey, he approaches Gray and Mallory and tells them that he's "a guy who can drive". As the team gets ready for the upcoming score Tracy investigates his brother's death. This brings him closer to Mallory, who figures out his real identity. It is later revealed that it was Mallory who killed Ricky as he was too self-destructive and would beat her regularly. This makes Tracy kidnap Mallory during the heist leaving the rest of the crew to the police. During the chase, Tracy is followed by men who work for Sebastian Hyde, who owned the money Tracy previously stole. After considering killing her, Tracy lets Mallory go only for her to be kidnapped by Hyde's men. This forces Tracy to meet Hyde, who wants retribution for his stolen money. Instead of having Mallory killed as revenge he lets her go and recruits Tracy into his outfit because his skills as a soldier would be useful.Criminal, vol. 1, #10
Volume 2 The Dead and the Dying (Vol. 2, issues #1-3, Feb 08 – Apr 08)
Three stand-alone interlocking stories are set in 1972. The first centers around prizefighter Jake "Gnarly" Brown, and tells of how the Hydes came to be the crime bosses of the city.Criminal, vol. 2, #1 The second centers of Tracy Lawless's father Teegar, a newly return Vietnam war veteran and his involvement in a heist pulled under false pretenses.Criminal, vol. 2, #2 The third is centered on Danica,Criminal, vol. 2, #3 a femme fatale involved at various points with Jake, Lawless and Sebastian Hyde.
Bad Night (Vol. 2, issues #4-7, Jul 08 – Nov 08)