The Last of the Innocent: The Last Criminal Trade In Stores Today!

We noticed that, in the back-page ad of last week's issue of The Fade Out #7, the cover for the last Criminal trade paperback had changed; as with "The Sinners" before it, the color scheme for "The Last of the Innocent" had been altered.

Sean Phillips was gracious enough to send us a copy of the new cover art, which we're including below.

This sixth and (so far) final trade paperback is in stores today, and it remains one of the team's ambitious and satisfying works.  

A stand-alone story that is set in the larger Criminal universe, its commentary on comic books demands (favorable) comparisons to Watchmen, but it's not a formal exercise in meta-fiction:  it is both a meditation on nostalgia and perhaps Brubaker and Phillips' darkest pure noir.

We're working on a composite image of all six covers, much-needed changes to the blog's appearance,  and a very lengthy omnibus post that extends from the comics to noir and crime stories in general.  Until all that's done, we would have been remiss not to announce the completion of Image Comics' new editions of Criminal, for which the UK's OK Comics has tweeted a very nice picture of all six books.

Coward. 

Lawless. 

The Dead and the Dying. 

Bad Night. 

The Sinners. 

The Last of the Innocent.

All six collections of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips acclaimed and award-wining Criminal are in stores now.