Review-- Criminal: The Sinners #4
"You're an idiot.""You're the one getting in gun fights.""Are you a complete idiot?""Take him."In Criminal: The Sinners #4 everything seems to point to the same conclusion; Tracy Lawless is an idiot who's completely over his head. This is the "oh crap" issue of this Criminal storyline as everything Tracy has been trying to do just completely falls down around him. Ordered by this boss Mr. Hyde to find out who has been killing Hyde's men, Tracy just fails at every step. He can't get away from an army C.I.D. Special Agent without getting shot and aid from some kid on a scooter. When he has to call someone to help him, he screws up and reveals an affair he's having that could get him in a lot of trouble. He doesn't listen to someone who just wants to give him some advice and help. And, in the end, he ends up getting a Japanese mob boss killed, which doesn't really sit well with the Japanese mob.So, yeah, Tracy is kind of an idiot but that's what Criminal is about. When you look at most of the stories that Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have told in Criminal, the main characters have these big blind spots in their lives that have them make stupid and dangerous mistakes. Leo Patterson, Tracy and Jacob Kurtz, the three main characters from the larger Criminal stories, have all made stupid mistakes that end up costing them dearly. Criminal isn't about the winners or the guys who do everything right. Instead, we see the losers and how they just continue to get pulled down by their own mistakes.As we see everything that Tracy is trying to work for in Criminal: The Sinners #4 fall apart, there should be a feeling of "haven't we seen this before" because we have. We've seen this in every Criminal story, where the losers continue to lose. Brubaker and Phillips keep it feeling new and fresh by how they tell the story. In this issue, it isn't just one thing that goes wrong but everything. The tension of this story is created by watching Lawless just completely and utterly fail to to anything, even as we're kind of pulling for him to find something that he can be victorious in. There's never the feeling that Lawless is a complete and utter loser; he just can't get out of his own way and ends up tripping over himself, falling further and further into a black hole. Criminal: The Sinners #4
Written by: Ed Brubaker
Drawn by: Sean Phillips
Colored by: Val Staples
Written by: Ed Brubaker
Drawn by: Sean Phillips
Colored by: Val Staples