I love the hell out of crime fiction. Like, if you take my Netflix queue, to-read list, and daily internet reading habits and add them all together, it's just hours of arrests and crimes and court transcripts. I LOOOOVE crime fiction. So I wanted to talk about some of the best crime fiction available in comic book form.
Special Note: For the purposes of this list, I'm separating crime fiction from detective stories. If the story is focused on the investigation officer, I'll cover it on another list, but if it's about the down and dirty lowlifes that perpetrate those crimes, then read on to find it ranked below. Just don't get caught.
Source: ranthollywood.com
10. A History of Violence
(Vertigo)
Man, this one is good. And I’ve heard that it made for a pretty good movie. I've never seen it. But I have read the comic.
A History of Violence starts with two criminals trying to rob a small café in Michigan and owner Tom McKenna beating the tar out of them. Seriously, that scene is awesome. Just pure unadulterated awesome. Tom tries to avoid the press, but he becomes a minor local hero, and pictures of him circle the country on the news. And some bad people take notice.
The New York Mafia shows up in town, led by John Torrino. He keeps calling Tom "Joey", and Joey seems to have screwed him over pretty hard 20 years ago. And he sure does want to kill him for it. Turns out Tom is Joey, and he pulled off a spectacular heist with his friend Richie, only for it to go bad. Richie was captured and tortured, and Tom disappeared into the night. And now it's time to pay the piper.
With violence.
Source: vertigocomics.com
9. 100 Bullets
(Vertigo)
If you knew you could get away with it, would you kill someone? The person you've always hated, someone who did something truly horrible to you…Would you kill that person if you knew you would 100 percent get away with it?
That’s the question asked in 100 Bullets. The mysterious Agent Graves presents various people who want someone dead with a gun and 100 untraceable bullets, and tells them to use them however they want. What each person does is up to that person.
The first trade in this series, 100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call is tense and thrilling crime fiction that is addicting as hell.
The book ran 100 issues, plus a miniseries focusing on the character Brother Lono. I have not read the entire thing at this point in time (I'm a busy man), so I can't vouch for the whole series, but what I have read already earns it a spot on this list.
Source: pinterest.com
8. Sin City
(Dark Horse Comics)
Sin City is universally recognized as the last good Frank Miller comic.
It chronicles the decline in sanity of one of comics' best creators into the racist psycho that would write Holy Terror. Woof. But most of Sin City is pretty solid.
Hard Goodbye is a great story with a good villain and an interesting protagonist, and That Yellow Bastard is the best Sin City story of all time. It's heightened noir, where every man is a monster and every woman is a prostitute. I seriously think every female character in the Hard Goodbye shows up topless at one point, and some of them are introduced that way. It's a tough read if you don't do it with your tongue in your cheek.
Not liking Sin City is a perfectly valid opinion to have, it's admittedly gratuitous and sexist and all that stuff. But if you can put up with it, you have a great read ahead of you.
Source: dccomics.com
7. Omega Men
(DC Comics)
Space Crime!
Tom King's Omega Men did something impossible. Something that I thought was un-doable, no matter how hard they tried. Something shocking. It makes me like the Omega Men. I"¦I never thought this day would come.
Tom King's story blends deep space adventure with a modern flair of crime and terrorism to create something wonderful. The story follows Kyle Rayner, the White Lantern, who’s sent into the Vega star system to de-escalate tensions between the terrorist Omega Men and the totalitarian regime ruling the system, an interplanetary corporation known as the Citadel. Rayner is immediately kidnapped and seemingly killed by the team, but is secretly held as their prisoner. He’s eventually swayed to their cause, and tries to help them free the star system from tyranny. They succeed, but at a deep personal and philosophical cost.
This comic is absolutely jaw-droppingly good. It's maybe one of the best things DC has ever published. It's a story that filters cosmic wars through the lens of very real recent conflicts written by a guy who KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THOSE CONFLICTS. Tom King worked counterterrorism for the CIA before going into comics. Dude knows a lot. And it shows here.
Source: kotaku.com
6. The Fix
(Image Comics)
Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber are some of the best in the business.
Another collaboration of theirs shows up later this list, but this currently running series is also excellent. The Fix follows Roy and Mac, two dirty LAPD detectives who are too busy committing crimes to solve any. When they become indebted to Valley Crime Boss Josh, the duo have to split up for their own good.
Mac is assigned to infiltrate LAX TSA with his canine partner Pretzels to help smuggle through a drug shipment. Roy gets a job bodyguarding a former teen starlet, but when things go wrong, he winds up trying to solve a crime of his own. The comic is laugh-out-loud hilarious, both in terms of dialogue and visual comedy. There are pages of this I want to own. Badly. I need a second page of Steve Lieber art in my home.
It's funny and fun and great. Buy it.
Source: comicsalliance.com
5. Crime Suspenstories
(EC Comics)
Come on, you guys, how could I not include some of the crime comics that made the government try to ban crime comics?
I woulda put Crime Does Not Pay up here, but I haven't read it yet, so here's some EC goodness. The book followed the EC/Twilight Zone formula of setting up a jerk, having them do something jerk-ish, and then paying them back with a hideously ironic punishment. And some great people did work on these.
Harvey Kurtzman did some serious work on these comics. Joe Orlando did, too! A lot of MAD Magazine people worked on these when they weren't working on MAD, so the art is straight-up top notch. The book ran about 27 issues, with each issue containing three stories. But these stories are crime books that aren't influenced by noir, which is something fascinating to read.
Read these. They’re good.
Source: comicvine.gamespot.com
4. Criminal
(Image Comics)
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal is THE Crime comic of the twenty-first century. It's the first thing you hand someone who likes crime.
The book is an anthology that tells the stories of various criminals in one very loosely connected universe. The stories are often about the Lawless family. Tracey and Teeg are both great characters with excellent arcs. But my favorite is the most recently released miniseries, The Last of the Innocent. Last of the Innocent is a dark crime story that draws heavily from Archie Comics. Like Riverdale, but with adults who are somehow even sadder. Riley is an immensely affecting protagonist whose tale of horror and sadness legitimately made me have to sit and think for a while after I finished it.
The first arc, Coward, is also excellent. In Leo Patterson’s story, the lead criminal is fundamentally not very good at crime. It's a great story, and one of the few that’s not about a Lawless. But don't let that trick you into thinking the Lawlesses (Lawli?) aren't great protagonists, because they are.
Criminal is definitive for a reason. It's the platonic ideal of a crime comic.
Source: talkingcomicbooks.com
3. The Superior Foes of Spider-Man
(Marvel Comics)
Not all crime books are downers! This one is not only fun and hilarious, it’s maybe my favorite Marvel comic of the twenty-first century.
The book focuses on the brand new Sinister Six, consisting of Boomerang, Beetle, Shocker, Speed Demon, and Overdrive. As you may have noticed, that's only five characters. Who's the sixth? No one knows! Maybe Dormammu.
The comic is centered around this little band of characters who try to pull heists while constantly screwing each other over. Constantly. Even the reader isn't fully briefed on what's going on until right at the end. Boomerang's narration is not just hilarious, but full of character. If only I could open every chapter of my own life with "This guy, right?" I would be happy.
The comedy is boosted by Steve Lieber's art, which is the best visual comedy I've ever seen from a dude who draws superhero action as well as he does. It says something that this isn't the only Nick Spencer/Steve Lieber book on this list.
Source: snappow.com
2. Kill or Be Killed
(Image Comics)
LOL, another Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips book. It's almost as if they're the best crime book team in the business or something.
Kill or Be Killed is still ongoing, but so far, it's shaping up to be outright amazing and much better than most of their previous work (which I also love).
Plot time: Dylan is a twenty-something in New York, and he’s unhappy with his life. So he decides to jump off the roof. But after stepping off, he immediately regrets it. He begs and hopes to live, and he does. But later, something comes to collect. A demon shows up, and tells Dylan that he’s going to end his life, unless Dylan kills someone for him. Specifically, one person each month. Forever.
So Dylan decides to comply. He starts by murdering a pedophile and child rapist a friend told him about, and then decides to only kill bad people. As you can assume, it spirals from there, until Dylan is a fugitive on the run from a major police presence, struggling to meet his body count while doubting his own mental illness.
It is a-maze-ing. Read it.
Source: destroythecyb.org
1. Parker
(IDW Publishing)
Darwyn Cooke is my favorite comic book artist of all time. Bar none. No contest.
We lost Cooke last year, which still hurts me to this day. But his Parker adaptations are a revelation in comic booking. Based on Richard Stark's novels, the books follow hard-bitten criminal Parker as he seeks revenge after the woman he loves teams up with his partner in crime to backstab him. And what ensues is a seriously intense thrill ride of crime and violence and murder. Parker is a force of nature – specifically, the nature of murder.
He is just a brutal son of a gun. And everything that happens, no matter how violent, is rendered in Cooke's beautiful style, all washed out in two colors. That blue-and-white palette makes it a unique experience that almost comes off more pulpy than it would otherwise.
A beautiful work about hard people.
And there you have it, ten crimey crime books to fulfill your illicit needs. Check ’em out as soon as you can.
