It’s completely predictable but I guess it’s nowhere near as bad as it could have been.

I read The Sinners and I think back to when Brubaker actually wrote real conversations. It’s like he uses Criminal‘s noir influences to excuse no one talking to each other, just at each other.

This issue features nothing new, no interesting developments in the criminal underworld of the nameless city, no insights into the Tracy Lawless character. It just trails off, cheating the reader out of the teenage killers getting killed. Their priest too. That scene with Tracy and the priest might be the lamest scene Brubaker’s ever written.

If I weren’t, basically, done with Brubaker, The Sinners might do it. I’m sure I’ll be back, I like Phillips too much (not to mention bitching about cheap narrative tricks). But it wasn’t too long ago I’d salivate over a Brubaker book.

I miss it.

I’m not trying to be a jerk with the following question. Really, I’m not. Has Brubaker ever read Criminal? Because this arc, with Tracy Lawless being an honorable man among the riffraff, it really feels like Brubaker hasn’t read his comic before. It might explain why Criminal‘s quality is always so sporadic.

This issue has better narration than the last, which is good. Brubaker mostly sticks to Tracy this issue–hey, maybe they’ll make a Tracy Lawless action figure! Brubaker seems to have turned Criminal into a sellable property with The Sinners. A little touchup and a little paint and it’s all set for a movie or a tv show.

Too bad the comic book is swirling around in the toilet bowl.

Brubaker’s pace is off with this series too. He’s all of a sudden hurrying to the conclusion, which he wasn’t doing in the first issue.

Criminal‘s gasping for air.

Well, I figured out one major problem–besides the contrived plotting–Brubaker doesn’t have a protagonist this series. He did the first issue, because he hadn’t introduced his teen killers for God (an ex-Army Catholic priest is getting kids to kill criminals), but now he’s got nothing.

The narration is awful this issue. It’s probably the worst narration Brubaker’s ever written in Criminal, maybe ever.

Brubaker is pushing the series from plot twist to plot twist and there’s nothing going on beyond them. He’s juxtaposing Tracy and one of the young killers, trying to get a neon arrow pointing between the two of them to show their concern for justice.

It’s cute how Brubaker acts like he’s being edgy. The Sinners is easily Criminal‘s safest arc.

Maybe saddest is how clearly Brubaker’s interest in the series has dissipated. Even when it used to be bad, you could tell he cared. Not anymore.

Brubaker opens the issue with some terrible adjective use, so I started out ready to nitpick. Of course, he didn’t have to prove me right… but he went ahead and did so anyway. I really loathe these types of reviews, because I really do love Brubaker’s work. It’s just… fallen off since he’s gotten to Marvel. Swan dived, actually.

Oh, before I get the complaints–great art from Phillips. It’s always great art from Phillips, but this issue he really gets to do a lot.

All right, the laundry list.

It’s just too contrived. Brubaker expects the reader to make a significant time and money investment and he’s not providing anything in return.

Brubaker further establishes Tracy as a hero (he cares for hookers and the disenfranchised).

Finally, Brubaker makes the killers Tracy’s hunting kids–and the only way to redeem the series is for Tracy to kill them all.

I guess Brubaker thought Criminal was out of control too, because for the Sinners, he returns to his most solid protagonist–Tracy Lawless (from the second arc of the first series).

For a while it works. We catch up with Tracy. In the year since the last story took place, he’s become a hitman with a conscious. He worries about his boss’s rebelling teenager daughter, cuddles his boss’s distraught trophy wife and seems to be an all-around nice guy.

He’s kind of turned into Burt Lancaster in a film noir. Not mean enough to be Kirk Douglas or Richard Widmark.

(At least he’s not Victor Mature).

The problems come from Brubaker’s lack of imagination. Sure, he’s got to be sleeping with his boss’s wife–it adds drama, but it’s pretty darn contrived, especially in Criminal.

Then there’s the ending–Tracy narrates an event he’s not present to experience. Huh?