Criminal: Bad Night

Jake spends his days in a waking coma.  He walks the streets at night, produces a syndicated comic strip during the day, and grabs sleep when he can.  It’s not a bad life considering he was once accused of murdering his wife, a charge he managed to avoid due to a lack of evidence.  But Jake isn’t entirely innocent.  While he never did kill his wife, he did at one point run a counterfeit ring in his youth, but those days are long behind him.  Or so he thought..

After witnessing a young couple fighting inside a local diner, Jake takes a shot at an honest-to-goodness good deed and offers one half of the couple – the beautiful and sexy Iris – a lift home.  Fortunately for Jake, the two end up back at his place and after a wild night in bed, he awakes alone.  However, it isn’t long before she returns, this time with her criminal boyfriend, and the two threaten to kill Jake unless he mocks up a fake FBI badge.

Sean Phillips is on point here, as always, presenting stunning artwork that is as integral to the story as Brubaker’s writing.  One without the other would almost certainly present a weaker form of art when it comes to this series and like all of Brubaker and Phillips’ Criminal books, I read this in one sitting, which isn’t a difficult task to accomplish given how easily the pair suck you into their seedy, seductive world.  I just had to know what happened next!

Criminal: Bad Night is fearless fiction with a frighteningly fantastic femme fatale.