And both Teeg and Terry have reasons to find that appealing. The excerpts from Deadly Hands and Savage read like they could be real comics - books with care and craft, even if it’s mercenary care and craft, put into them. And the care that Phillips and Brubaker take in crafting Zandar and Fang makes Teeg and Tracy’s fascination with their comics believable. Zandar and Fang’s fantastical violence makes Teeg’s real-world violence hit out all the harder for its sheer unglamorous viciousness. The dance which Phillips and Brubaker choreograph between Savage Sword of Criminal and Deadly Hands of Criminal‘s two halves is critical to the comics’ success. And Fang’s melodramatic emotionalism allows Phillips to put more exclamation points in his expression work than Tracy’s guardedness around Teeg often allows.
Zangar’s vengeful reaving is bolder and more rambunctious than Criminal‘s real-world violence. Zangar and Fang’s adventures give Phillips an opportunity to stretch his muscles as a stylist. Tracy, a cunning lonely youth who’s being shaped by Teeg’s lessons in crime and failures as a parent, gets sucked into the youthful angst and flying claws of Fang: The Kung Fu Werewolf. Teeg, a violent goon-for-hire who struggles to understand other people (and for that matter, struggles to understand that he’s struggling), finds himself drawn to the mirth and melancholy of wandering barbarian Zangar the Valandrian. They split their pages between the stories of recurring Criminal characters Teeg and Tracy Lawless and the comic books both father and son read. Savage Sword and Deadly Hands emphasize metafiction. But the best of them - Savage Sword of Criminal, Deadly Hands of Criminal and Bad Weekend - pick up the blend Phillips and Brubaker crafted for The Last of the Innocent and run with it. The weakest of the Criminal stories collected in this volume is still a pretty darn good neo-noir comic. The Last of the Innocent runs on a really terrific blend of metafiction, pastiche, and classic noir storytelling.
The Last of The Innocent‘s villainous protagonist Riley Richards is precisely the sort of quivering cretin who’d glower enviously at Archie Andrews without understanding how vastly different they are despite their superficial similarities. The Last of the Innocent is one of my all-time favorite comics, a bleakly affectionate riff on Archie that pays homage to Riverdale’s famed art style and abiding goodness with a series of skillful contrasts. Prior to reading this collection, my main exposure to Criminal was its sixth story, The Last of the Inno cent.
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