David Lapham’s Murder Me Dead is a nine-issue standalone series about a jazz pianist named Steven who gets caught in a web of violence and deception when he inherits a fortune following the death of his wife. We quickly learn he’s been having an affair with his sister-in-law, and this bit of dishonesty lends credence to his in-laws’ belief that he killed their daughter, despite the official ruling that her death was a suicide.
Soon, Tony arrives. Steven hasn’t seen him since high school fifteen years earlier, and didn’t particularly like him back then. It’s pretty obvious that Tony is looking to mooch off the grieving widower for an extensive bar tab at the very least, but perhaps something more. When Tony mentions that Steven’s high-school crush Tara is still around and always liked him, Steven tracks her down and rekindles the old spark they never consummated—although he nearly gets blasted with a shotgun first.
So begins a gritty, tragic tale populated by characters whose true intentions are always in doubt, whose sinister and ulterior motives are slowly revealed in suspenseful, page-turning fashion, and where everything goes from bad to worse for everyone involved.
Lapham fans undoubtedly know of his work on the noir crime series Stray Bullets, and Murder Me Dead taps into the same dark vein. But I found it easier to get into Murder Me Dead because, unlike Stray Bullets, it has a sympathetic main character who tries to do the right thing rather than a vast and largely unlikeable cast that seems perpetually hell-bent on always doing the wrong thing.
While Steven’s co-star Tara is clearly hiding things from him right from the first issue, her repeated victimization by other characters undermines our suspicion that she is a femme fatale. She makes too many blunders to be the conniving mastermind we often expect from that trope, and she appears to be more like Virginia Applejack from Stray Bullets—a basically decent person trapped in a world of felons, abusers, and perverts, yet struggling to make the best of her situation.
Its tight focus, relentless pace, sympathetic characters, and devious plot make Murder Me Dead one of my two favorite works by Lapham—alongside the similarly focused Stray Bullets: Killers which brought Virgina Applejack to center stage—and it’s every bit as darkly enjoyable as my favorite tales from Ed Brubaker’s Criminal. Highly recommended for fans of crime fiction.
Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips has long been one of all-time favorite works of fiction in any medium, and the greatest crime is that I’ve never written about it since discovering it around thirteen years ago.
My first exposure to this prolific creative team was the Sleeper series, which was either the first or second time Brubaker and Phillips worked together. Set in the same “universe” as the WildC.A.T.s (created by Jim Lee) and featuring the villainous mastermind Tao (created by Alan Moore), Sleeper was an unsettling combination of the two main elements which gave rise to the superhero genre: crime fiction and science fiction.
But Sleeper had little use for superheroes, beyond guest-starring Grifter. Instead, it focused on the adventures of villains doing covert operations for shadowy organizations. Subverting the superhero genre, Brubaker treated Sleeper like a pulp crime story with a first-person narration by a deeply broken, hardboiled protagonist you would expect to find in a noir detective novel.
When I discovered Criminal shortly thereafter, I was thrilled to see what Brubaker and Phillips could do with a pulp crime story without any of the superpowers and sci-fi. I joined the ongoing series around the time the first storyline was wrapping up, so I got a subscription and enjoyed the rabid, edge-of-my-seat anticipation of every new issue.
But it’s hard to say why I love this series so much. It’s hopeless, bleak, and downright depressing. Anything resembling a character’s redemption arc is sure to end in tragedy and tears. Everyone is either broken, or despicable, or both. Characters tend to be either victims of abuse, or abusers, or both. Any brief moments of happiness are either doomed, or illusory, or both. The world of Criminal is an inescapable hell that destroys everyone, even the most powerful and the most innocent.
Maybe my fascination with the series is related to that part of the human mind that can’t resist looking at a crash on the highway. That sick part of our monkey brains that slows down to see the carnage until the road is backed up with gawkers for miles. It’s probably the part of our minds that is responsible for slasher flicks and so-called “disaster porn”, the part that craves horror and violence even in otherwise well-adjusted people who normally avoid such things. Maybe Criminal channels that aspect of human experience into fiction where it’s safe, where no one really gets hurt. You can gawk at a fictional train wreck and not feel guilty.
Criminal is also a remarkable feat of storytelling. You can read any one of the self-contained stories on its own or, as Brubaker often says, in any order at all. The stories feature numerous recurring characters connected by the strands of their web of crime, and the stories are not delivered in chronological order. You might meet someone in one story, then discover their childhood in another. Someone who dies in one story might appear years earlier in another.
Through it all, narrative captions tend to focus on one character’s internal experience or monologue per issue, sometimes describing the action that appears in the panels, but more often a step removed from the story that Phillips tells visually, giving insight into what characters are thinking or feeling. You also see certain events from multiple perspectives—sometimes from issue to issue, and sometimes from story to story. This approach amplifies the feeling that all events are connected and inevitable.
Criminal influenced my approach to storytelling when I started writing fiction, but the criminals I write about revel in their lawless lifestyles. They experience horror, but they mostly enjoy being on the wrong side of the law and doing what they do. They have fun!
Any fun that Brubaker’s criminals enjoy is a short-lived uptick on their downward spiral to despair and disaster. If you’re looking for happy endings or uplifting messages about the human condition, Criminal isn’t for you. The most fortunate characters end up dead, and the least fortunate keep on living, trapped in Brubaker’s sprawling saga of doom, degradation, and mutual destruction.
But the series is so well-constructed, so impenetrably dark, and so well-told that I find it impossible to avert my eyes from the wreck, and I have read and re-read each story many times. I think the saving grace, what makes it possible to wander into this cruel, noir world, is that so many of the characters evoke sympathy and empathy. Many of Brubaker’s villains tend to have some spark of humanity that makes them relatable. They are rarely evil for the sake of being evil, like so many poorly done “bad guys”. Instead, they have been twisted and morally deformed by the awful events of their lives.
Even a complete scumbag such as Teeg Lawless, who often beats and abandons his two sons, is shown to believe that in his own fucked-up way, he thinks he loves his kids. His deranged and damaged brand of “love” is not one I would wish on any child, but it’s consistent with the way that even the worst villains in these tales tend to think of themselves as some kind of heroes, even when they are so incredibly wrong.
That’s something we need to think about more often but has become increasingly rare. It is now easier than ever for delusional people to find similarly deluded people in Internet echo chambers and rally around causes that range from nonsensical to dangerous. It has become increasingly easy for people to embrace messages of hate in the name of love, to proclaim treason as patriotism, to promote lies they accept as truth, and to advance anti-social policies under the guise of freedom.
We could all use a bit of self-reflection to step back and ask ourselves whether or not our heroic stances are, in fact, villainous. When writing a good fictitious villain, the best authors know that the villain should be a hero in his or her own narrative about the world.
But that isn’t something that’s only true in fiction. It works in stories because it expresses something true about real people. I often look back on my life and am filled with regret for things I did and mistakenly thought were right at the time, only to realize later that despite being a hero in my own story, I was the villain in someone else’s, and things I believed to be right were so very, very wrong.
Criminal warns this is a universal aspect of human experience, and if there is any moral compass or lesson to be learned from Brubaker’s tragic tales, it is that we need to question our own ideas, assumptions, decisions, and sense of justice. If we don’t, then we will remain as trapped as the characters in Criminal, and nothing good can come from that.
Collector’s Guide:Criminal is spread out over the first ten-issue series, the second seven-issue series, the third twelve-issue series, the four-issue The Last of the Innocent, a single-issue Special Edition, a tenth-anniversary Special Edition, a standalone graphic novel, and the standalone Wrong Time, Wrong Place, for which I can’t seem to find a link. Various TPBs and “deluxe” editions have collected parts of it, and they range from easily found to difficult. I would love to see a definitive Criminal Omnibus collecting the entire thing in one or two volumes, but that has yet to happen.
Like last week’s pick from the short box of indie comics, this week features another crime story with a bad-ass female lead. Down is a four-issue series by Warren Ellis with art from Tony Harris and Cully Hamner, and its portrayal of a police officer infiltrating a violent criminal organization reminds me in some ways of one of my favorite films: The Departed by Martin Scorsese. Down isn’t quite as complex, as the fast pace and tight focus relentlessly blaze through the story up until the bitter end. But like The Departed, this story doesn’t end where you think it will.
Down puts our leading lady into the middle of a conflict between crooked cops and even more crooked gangsters, and every step of the journey takes her into increasingly questionable decisions about just whose side she is on. In her quest to get close to the criminal leader, she is forced to consider just how far she is willing to go to maintain her cover.
Down has a high body count and graphic violence, but I feel the real intensity takes place around just how much her experiences deform and re-define the protagonist’s conception of who she is and what role she wants to play in life. At some point, she realizes she has crossed a line she can never step back over and return to normalcy, and her only option is to choose a new path of her own design.
It’s one of my favorite of Ellis’ short works, and all the better because it doesn’t end with a big explosion, a convention he tended to over-use when he seemed to be cranking out a new series every week. It’s a fun read if you like crime fiction and bad-ass women, and you can get it for about $2 an issue.
What’s inside the short-box of independent and small-press comic books this week? It’s Elephantmen from Image Comics! Now, you might argue that Image Comics is too big to be considered “indie” or “small press” anymore, and maybe you’re right. But I remember when it was a start-up company with only a handful of titles, and one important thing remains the same: a focus on creator-owned projects.
Richard Starkings’ Elephantmen is one of several books that made me pay attention to Image Comics after having written them off years before as having better art than story, and too much focus on spandex-clad super-types. While that judgment might seem more accurate if you consider the quality I encountered in the earliest issues of WildC.A.T.s and StormWatch when Image began, even those titles became pretty awesome a few years later. So, Image can thank Richard Starkings for getting my attention. I thank Richard for the amazing tutorial he created that taught me how to letter comic books using Adobe Illustrator. See the Comicraft company website for awesome fonts, and that tutorial which is well worth the $10 if you want to learn how to letter digitally.
In the Unnatural Selection story — one of my favorites — Joe Casey and Ladronn created a gruesome future history for Richard Starking’s Elephantmen. A future where soldiers are bred from men and beasts, incubated in horrific labs, and indoctrinated as murderous slaves. Dig the following sample pages from Elephantmen: Unnatural Selection. We witness the birth of the starring character Hip Flask and the strange brand that gave him his name. Also, we encounter the brutal training and combat our hybrid heroes endured before they gained their freedom. One thing is for sure: mad scientists are jerks!
Image’s The Maxx was creator Sam Kieth‘s utterly unconventional take on the idea of masked heroes. It starts out weird and gets weirder, and then totally shifts gears two or three years into the series. The story does make its own internal sense eventually, and the artwork is a visual feast. This is still a difficult series to collect inexpensively. Several key issues fetch high prices, and the collected trade paperbacks were printed in small runs. This would be a great omnibus for Image to print. Let’s have a peek inside!
Collector’s Guide: From Stormwatch #4; Image, 1993. Created and plotted by Brandon Choi and Jim Lee. Written by Sean Ruffner. Art by Brett Booth and Trevor Scott.
Travis Charest draws Wolverine and Zealot taking on the daemonites from the WildC.A.T.s series. Only here, the nasty aliens inhabit the bodies of Nazis in the 1940s. Aliens masterminding the Third Reich may not be the most original science fiction idea, but Charest and Scott Lobdell make it a solidly entertaining tale in the vein of Indiana Jones. Cool Jim Lee cover, too!
Image and Marvel made four WildC.A.T.s X-Men crossovers: Golden Age, Silver Age, Modern Age, and Dark Age, each with a different creative team. The first three also came in 3-D, and look pretty awesome.
In these pre-adamantium days, Wolverine doesn’t pop his claws. He opts for strapping some nasty hardware to his wrists, even though we’d seen four years earlier in Fatal Attractions that the claws were part of him. In these carefree days before Wolverine’s past became laid bare by Origins, he is also shown going by the name Logan in WW2 — not James Howlett. But don’t worry. You don’t need to be a continuity expert to kick back and enjoy this story! You can enjoy the first 1/3 in our gallery below.
After becoming a fan favorite for his work on X-men, Jim Lee helped found Image Comics in 1992. He began work on his own super-team, the WildC.A.T.s. Jim unleashed his artistic creativity on numerous mind-blowing splash pages, double splashes, and four-page fold-outs. This week we’ll take a look at some of our favorites!
Collector’s Guide: From WildC.A.T.s Vol. 1, #5; Image.
After becoming a fan favorite for his work on X-men, Jim Lee helped found Image Comics in 1992. He began work on his own super-team, the WildC.A.T.s. Jim unleashed his artistic creativity on numerous mind-blowing splash pages, double splashes, and four-page fold-outs. This week we’ll take a look at some of our favorites!
After becoming a fan favorite for his work on X-men, Jim Lee helped found Image Comics in 1992. He began work on his own super-team, the WildC.A.T.s. Jim unleashed his artistic creativity on numerous mind-blowing splash pages, double splashes, and four-page fold-outs. This week we’ll take a look at some of our favorites!
Collector’s Guide: From WildC.A.T.s Vol. 1, #5; Image.
After becoming a fan favorite for his work on X-men, Jim Lee helped found Image Comics in 1992. He began work on his own super-team, the WildC.A.T.s. Jim unleashed his artistic creativity on numerous mind-blowing splash pages, double splashes, and four-page fold-outs. This week we’ll take a look at some of our favorites!
Collector’s Guide: From WildC.A.T.s Vol. 1 #6-7; Image.
After becoming a fan favorite for his work on X-men, Jim Lee helped found Image Comics in 1992. He began work on his own super-team, the WildC.A.T.s. Jim unleashed his artistic creativity on numerous mind-blowing splash pages, double splashes, and four-page fold-outs. This week we’ll take a look at some of our favorites!
Collector’s Guide:
– From WildC.A.T.s Vol. 1, #7; Image.
Prior to becoming the regular artist on WildC.A.T.s, Travis Charest produced a few back-up stories and pin-ups for the title. Charest went on to produce a webcomic called SpaceGirl, major works like the science-fiction graphic novel MetaBaron, and remains in demand as a cover artist.
Collector’s Guide: From WildC.A.T.s Vol. 1, #9; Image, 1994.
In 2012, Neil Gaiman won a long-standing court case recognizing his creator rights to the Angela character, sixteen years after her first appearance in Spawn #9. But we’re not here to discuss the legal troubles of our favorite creators — just to celebrate their awesome work!
While we always enjoyed the artwork in Spawn, we were never huge fans of the book. Angela, however, struck a chord with us — and we were not alone. Fans dug her so much that she starred in her own three-issue limited series by Gaiman and artist Greg Capullo.
Today we’ll have a look at the first scene from the first issue of that series. It’s Angela’s hundred thousandth birthday. To celebrate, Heaven’s most ass-kicking huntress tracks down an alien dragon to put his fearsome head on her trophy wall.
Collector’s Guide: From Angela #1; Image, 1994. Reprinted in the Angela TPB.
Collector’s Notes: The Angela TPB does not include the first appearance of Angela by Gaiman and Todd McFarlane in Spawn #9 (reprinted in Spawn TPB #2.) Angela also appears in Curse of the Spawn #9-11 (reprinted in Curse of the Spawn TPB #3.) The Curse stories flashback to her origin.
Image Comics picked up licensing rights to Micronauts and launched their own series in 2002. We really enjoyed the artwork and seeing the Micros back in action. As far as the writing, it’s aimed at a younger teen audience. If you grew up on Micronauts in the 1970s, this probably isn’t for you — but your kids will love it like you loved the Micronauts in the Bill Mantlo days.
The Concept: Within our own universe, in a sub-atomic realm, lie endless worlds of scientific magnificence, under the rule of an evil tyrant, Baron Karza. Can a small band of misfit aliens and one human put an end to his reign? Find out in issue #1. Classic space opera with a modern twist!
Micronauts lasted a year at Image. They also spun off a cool four-issue series Micronauts Karza, involving a time-travel plot to kill the young Karza. Things don’t go as planned, but we learn a lot about Karza’s early life.
Yesterday, we looked at samples from Larry Stroman’s Black to the Future story from the Black Panther Annual. Larry Stroman is such a genius he even took on the WildC.A.T.S Annual #1 and made it rock hard! Dig Larry’s splash and double-page spreads as the WildC.A.T.S take on some gnarly daemonites.
Feast your subatomic sensors on these bonus posters of the Micronauts! These beauties come from the Micronauts 2002 Convention Special. In the early 2000s, Image comics picked up the licensing for Micronauts, a role formerly held by Marvel Comics. You can see our entire Micronauts Gallerywithout even breaching the spacewall of your own home!
Alien Pig Farm 3000, a four-issue series by Image in 2007, started off with this revisionist history of how an alien invasion really killed the dinosaurs. Throw in an astounding cover from the Dean of Dino, William Stout, and we’re there! Grossly immature themes may be unsuitable for all audiences everywhere.
Collector’s Guide: From Alien Pig Farm 3000 #1. Also available in TPB. Produced by Raw Studios.
Lamenting Pain is Josh Dysart’s follow up to Violent Messiahs. Dysart gets as weird as he wants to be. Image Comics gives him free rein to explore creepy grey areas where violence and intimacy rub shoulders. The result? A one-of-a-kind detective thriller that will challenge and amaze! Also, the strangest interrogation scenes we’ve ever read! Enjoy these excerpts, dirty doggies!
In the late 1990s, Image Comics put out 31 issues of Kiss Psycho Circus. Possibly a promotion for a Todd McFarlane line of licensed toys, Psycho Circus features some mind-shredding artwork from the Image studios.
If you like KISS, and you think seeing them as celestial beings of great power might kick some major ass, then this is right up your alley! A few of these issues have really solid stories, but mostly it’s about the WOW factor of the artwork. Dig some of these covers, splash panels, and 2-page spreads!