Criminal

"That's when Ivan explained it to me. About the rules and how they protect you...Sometimes even from yourself. You learn these rules over time, through hard experience. And you never write them down, but you never forget them. They're the rules that will keep you out in the world. Safe."

—Leo Patterson, "Coward"

From writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips (who also did Sleeper and Incognito), Criminal is a deconstruction of the crime genre, through the lens of thieves and con-men. Each trade paperback is a separate story arc, which can be read on its own, but each is a part of the same universe and take place in the same city. The same background characters show up, with characters going to the same bar.

So far, there are five volumes, with more to come:

• Coward: Five years after Leo Patterson survived the disastrous "Salt Bay Job," another criminal named Seymour and Jeff, a crooked cop, try to recruit him for a plan to heist diamonds from a police evidence truck. A notable deconstruction of A Simple Plan, when not only don't things turn out the way Leo thought, but they get worse.
• Lawless: Tracy Lawless, the older brother of Leo's friend Ricky Lawless, gets out of military prison and goes AWOL to find out how his brother died. A deconstruction of Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• The Dead and the Dying: Three stand-alone, interlocking stories set in 1972, setting up the backstory of the generation of crooks before Leo, Tracy and Ricky.
• Bad Night: The writer of the comic strip Frank Kafka, P.I. gets drawn into a complicated scheme, involving impersonating FBI agents.
• The Sinners: Continuing from the end of Lawless, Tracy Lawless investigates the string of seemingly perfect murders of the underworld's top men, while someone from his military life comes looking.
• The Last of the Innocent: A Deconstruction of Archie Comics that follows former all-American teenager Riley Richards as he returns to his old hometown Brookview upon a family emergency and finds his memories of his carefree youth impacting on life with murderous consequences.

Tropes used in Criminal include:

• Abusive Parents
• Anachronic Order
• Anyone Can Die
• A Simple Plan
• Asshole Victim: Teeg Lawless. Delron, Jeff, Seymour and Roy-L.T. Oh, and Sebastian Hyde. And everyone Father Mike's soldiers killed.
• Anti-Villain: Many characters, particularly Leo and Tracy. Neither of them are angels, but they take no pleasure in the awful things they do.
• The Bartender: Gnarly, who turns out to have his own Dark and Troubled Past, in The Dead And The Dying.
• Batman Gambit: Leo's an expert at making these, and always includes a way for him to escape.
• Betty and Veronica: Deconstructed in "The Last of the Innocent", and in particular deconstructing the Trope Namer; Riley Richards, a clear analogue of Archie, after years of unhappy marriage to the shallow, manipulative and adulterous "Veronica", realises he really should have stayed with the "Betty" instead. His solution to the problem... gets ugly.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Leo may look like a coward, but don't hurt the people he cares about. Ever.
• Bittersweet Ending: The best we're likely to get thus far.
• Black and Grey Morality
• Broken Bird: Danica. It's hard to imagine someone more broken.
• The Caper
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Delron gets off on this. Tracy Lawless isn't above it if he decides the victim deserves it
• Complete Monster: Delron. Gets off on torture? Check. Hinted to be a pedophile rapist? Check. Likes to sell children to Russian slavers? Check.
• The Con
• Con Man: Plenty of characters, including Leo, Ivan (Leo's father's old partner, a master pickpocket succumbing to Alzheimer's and heroin addiction), and Leo's friend Donnie - who milks crowds by faking epileptic attacks, despite the fact he is epileptic.
• The Chessmaster: Played straight by crime boss Sebastian Hyde, and subverted by Leo, who is a master planner, but his fate is sealed and no rules can save him from his own true nature.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Pretty much everyone.
• Dirty Cop: Jeff.
• Downer Ending: ALL the frigging time. The Dead and the Dying takes the cake, but 'The Sinners' comes close.
• Evil Versus Evil: Gnarly is the closest to a truly good person in the cast, and he does his best to not get involved.
• Expy: Delron seems to be an even nastier version of the mob enforcer played by Joe Don Baker character in the 1970s Film Noir Charley Varrick.
  • Most of the characters in "The Last of the Innocent" are grown-up versions of characters from Archie Comics transplanted into a noir setting and subjected to a process of Deconstruction. A private detective also appears who is a grown-up version of Encyclopedia Brown.
• Fiery Redhead: Greta
• Foreshadowing: Leo starts off explaining how his father broke his own rules and how Leo's not going to do that. What do you think happens towards the end of the storyarc?
• Gory Discretion Shot: Teeg's Villain Episode uses this to keep him from being painted as a Complete Monster.
• Generation Xerox: A recurring theme, as the modern day characters attempt to avoid the roles of their criminal parents. The local bar isn't called the Undertow for nothing.
• Impersonating an Officer
• Karmic Death: Happens here and there. Notably to All the bad guys of 'Coward' courtesy of Leo. Sebastian Hyde and Father Mike receive theirs thanks to Tracy's plans.
• Karma Houdini: Riley Richards in "The Last of the Innocent" gets the girl, gets millions of dollars after screwing his father-in-law out of his business and all signs indicate that, despite the suspicions of the private detective hired to investigate his wife's death, will get away with murder.
• Manipulative Bastard: Seymour knows just how to push Leo's buttons, while Sebastian Hyde turns an embarrassing situation around to end up with Tracy Lawless in his pocket.
• Moral Event Horizon: Delron's plans for Greta's daughter. Father Mike crosses it when he has one of his young soldiers murdered for saving Tracy Lawless
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Leo is the one who killed Teeg Lawless. He goes on a royal rampage at the end as well.
• Signs of Disrepair: The "n" on the local Speakeasy's sign burned out in the 50s, and the Undertown has been known as the Undertow ever since.
• Sinister Minister: Father Mike, who indoctrinates young men as soldiers in a war on crime.
• Show Within a Show: Frank Kafka, P.I., written by Jacob K., a Shout-Out to Franz Kafka and his type of stories.
• Sympathetic POV: Considering the series title, it's unsurprising that most of its cast has pasts blackened by crime and violence, but most of them are portrayed as making hard choices in difficult situations. Amazingly, Teeg Lawless, Tracy and Ricky's violent, alcoholic thug of a father, is referred to as a Complete Monster by everyone who knows him, but the story that focuses on him depicts him as a tragic figure, hopelessly out of control in his life and in constant pain without understanding why.
• Technical Pacifist: Leo is by no means a pacifist, but he dislikes guns and refuses to work with them. As he puts it, "And I won't work with people who don't use their brains before their bullets..."
• Villain Episode: Teeg's chapter in The Dead And The Dying.
• Xanatos Gambit: Leo comes up with these in his spare time. Seymour and Jeff pull one on him one, however.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Roy-L.T. to Jeff's partner. Father Mike to Evan.