Turns out some of my major assumptions about the plot and its twists and turns were wrong. Unfortunately, just because the girl doesn’t double-cross the hero, Criminal doesn’t retroactively make intelligible sense.
After spending almost five entire issues glamorizing crime–in the most negative way of course–Brubaker ends with a really pat “crime doesn’t pay” message.
This issue is pretty bad, in terms of plot. He ludicrously turns the protagonist into an unstoppable killing machine. Maybe they wanted Ed Norton for the movie.
I think my biggest problem is how stupid the main character has to be to get himself into this situation. Everything goes wrong because he’s stupid, but when Brubaker introduced him to the reader, it was all about how he’s really smart.
Show and tell. Brubaker told the reader he was smart, but told him or her he was stupid.
Why?
Because there’s no story if he’s smart.
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