Sean @ Comic Book Resources.

CBR posted a few things from Sean Phillips today, an interview and a tour of his studio. The interview includes an image, left, of the final cover for Issue #1 and three black-and-white preview pages of Issue #2, which apparently may be titled "A Wolf Among Wolves" rather than "Before the Living End." The studio tour gives us a very detailed look at the space Sean works in to create Criminal: the bookshelves, art supplies, computers, and the occasional toy.

What I find most interesting is that one picture features a model of the General Lee, from The Dukes of Hazzard. I grew up watching the show, and I can tell you that, aside from the custom paint job, this Dodge Charge bears an uncanny resemblance to the muscle car Tracy drove in "Lawless."

"Tracy wasn't some kind of car fanatic or gear-head, but he knew what he liked.

"And his whole life, he'd liked the Dodge Charger."

Yes, I suspect Tracy was driving the General Lee.

"Second Chance in Hell."

Issue #1 of Criminal, Volume 2, is in stores tomorrow: "Second Chance in Hell," a stand-alone story focusing on Gnarly during his days as a boxer, and the first of three interlocking stories set in the 70's. As part of the promotional campaign, "Criminal Week" at myspace.com/comicbooks wrapped up, and there was more than just the issue-length previews of "Coward" and "Lawless." Bill Hader had a rather odd video interview with Ed Brubaker, Michael Lark interviewed Sean Phillips about his stunning artwork, and there's a substantial black-and-white preview of the new issue, here.

Over at his blog, Sean relays that his studio will soon be featured at Comic Book Resources.

And, I forgot to mention this earlier, but late last month Newsarama published a Word Balloon podcast with Ed Brubaker, about Criminal along with his recent work in Captain America. Ed discusses the double-edged sword of creative freedom that he has with Criminal, especially in the complexity of these three stand-alone "novellas". He talks about the informal community of writers and artists that has emerged around the extra content in the monthly issues, and he and John Siuntres even discuss recent crime movies like Eastern Promises and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

During the interview, Ed briefly mentions that Criminal doesn't have a concise "hook", but I think his summary of "Lawless" is an perfect high-concept description of the entire series.

What is Criminal? "A character exploration with random moments of crime and violence."

Bullets: Myspace, Wizard, Newsarama, "Blast of Silence"

The promotional campaign for the return of Criminal is picking up, so I figure I'd cover the highlights of the last couple weeks as a quick list of -- appropriately enough -- bullets.

• Myspace. It's the middle of "Criminal Week" at myspace.com/comicbooks, and while I'll probably have more to say about their features after it wraps up, I'd like to go ahead and highlight the fact that they're featuring substantial previews of the first two story-arcs. If you or a friend still haven't given Criminal a try, you can check out two full-length issues for free:
  
  Criminal Volume 1, Issue 1: Part One of "Coward"
  http://tinyurl.com/2a9jle
  
  Criminal Volume 1, Issue 6: Part One of "Lawless"
  http://tinyurl.com/2cctg4
  
  I'm presenting the links via TinyURL so they're easier to pass along.


• Wizard. For the first time in a very long while, I bought an issue of Wizard this week, Issue 197 for March 2008, and its "Book of the Month" is Criminal. The feature notes that Volume 2 will be getting better paper stock, which I hadn't heard before, and it includes a sidebar list of Ed Brubaker's top five criminals in noir fiction. It's now clear that any list that includes characters portrayed by both Steve McQueen and Lee Marvin is a good one.


• Newsarama. Between the reveal this week of a new Captain America and his publicizing Criminal before the order cut-off that's apparently next week, Ed Brubaker's been a busy man. Before he talked again with Newsarama in the wake of Captain America #34, he conducted a lengthy interview that was published earlier this week. In Part 2 of that interview, here, he talks about Criminal.
  
  On the business side, he reiterates that the monthly issues include the substantive bonus features to make the format more attractive, because the monthly sales are so important to the series' success. And, he reveals that he hasn't paid himself for the work on the series, holding what money he can as a sort of "rainy-day fund."
  
  On the creative side, he answers that it is possible that, like Greg Rucka's work with Queen and Country, the fictional universe he's created with Criminal could spill over into novels. It has a bit of a precedent in the fact that Issue #1 includes "Caught in the Undertow," a short story written from Gnarly's point of view, about the night of Ricky Lawless' wake. Frankly, I'd love to see a Criminal novel, written by Brubaker and with a cover illustration by Sean Phillips, and I think I know the perfect publisher.


• "Blast of Silence." Finally, Sean Phillips announced that Criterion is releasing a DVD of Blast of Silence, the obscure noir film from 1961 that Patton Oswalt discussed in Criminal #4. Phillips did the artwork for the cover and a four-page comic book that covers the film's opening scenes and will be included in the release. There's a preview of the comic at his blog, and the art style is not a million miles from Criminal.

The Criterion Collection release of Blast of Silence will be out this April, and I'll try to cover its release here. In the meantime, I'll keep updating this blog with the latest news and reviews of Criminal; if anyone sees anything interesting, do feel free to let us know in the comments section.

Hustlin'.

In his brief interview with our own Alan David Doane, here, Ed Brubaker explained that he was doing a whole lot of "hustling" to publicize Criminal before its October, 2006, release. Fans got involved by showing retailers the PDF "trailer," and I was wondering if there was anything that we could do leading up to the February debut of Volume 2.

So far as I know, Ed and Sean haven't mentioned anything in particular that readers can do to help promote Volume 2. Ed has said here that he hopes a few more retailers take a chance on Criminal, but so far as I can tell, all the comic book stores in my area have already ordered issues in the past and are likely to continue ordering it.

As much as I love this book, I want to see it do as well as it possibly can, so I've decided to do some hustling on my own.

Besides loaning my trade collections of Criminal to a friend or two to see if they like the series, I've decided to become a veritable "pusher" of this very addictive book. I've talked to the very cool owners of my local comic book shop, and they're letting me buy a copy of Criminal Vol. 2, Issue #1, for three of their other customers.

I asked them to check their customers' pull lists to find the ones who are the most likely to become Criminal fanatics. Specifically, I asked them to find customers who were already regular readers of Daredevil, Marvel Zombies, and 100 Bullets. If the customer is already a fan of Ed's writing, Sean's art, and crime comics, he's a perfect fit for Criminal.

I found out last weekend that they've found a few good candidates, and when February rolls around, three of them will each have a free copy of Issue #1 waiting for them. With any luck, they'll like the self-contained story and will start picking up issues on their own.

Like any good dealer, I'm handing out freebies hoping a few people will get hooked.

No one's asked me to do this -- not Alan, and certainly not Ed or Sean -- but Criminal's a book I'm happy to share with others. And if other people take my idea and run with it, I won't complain, either.

Another Interview, and Warm Christmas Wishes.

Christmas is upon us, "Lawless" is out in stores, and we're just over a month away from the relaunch of Criminal. Ed Brubaker conducted another lengthy interview this month, this time with IGN. In the interview, published last week and available here, Ed elaborates on the reasons for the relaunch and its expanded format, and he talks about his process for writing the book. He discusses the genre of noir and its appeal as serious literature. And, most interestingly, Ed not only confirms what may be coming immediately after the three one-shot issues, he also gives us a peek at the big picture:

"Part of the problem I'm having right now is figuring out what to do after these three standalone stories, because I have three different stories all sort of fighting for dominance and each one wants to be the next story. They're all stories I totally want to tell. It's either Leo's next story, Tracy's next story, or Jake – the guy who was in 'Lawless' - his story. He's the guy who made Tracy's ID and walks around in crutches. He has a couple of stories mapped out for him. Eventually, I'm building towards the story that is partially about their parents, and it'll be this multigenerational thing where a lot of it will be about this little crew that their parents were a part of and the teenage kids who wanted to be like their parents."

It's a lot to look forward to.

For now, we'd like to wish everyone a good Christmas. We hope that you have a chance to spend some time with your loved ones, and we hope that your family isn't nearly as dysfunctional as the Lawless bunch.

Excerpt of "Lawless" at New York Magazine.

Over at his blog, Sean Phillips pointed out that New York Magazine's website is featuring a lengthy excerpt, here, of "Lawless," Criminal's second trade paperback collection.

Images of the ten pages from issue #6 are displayed down the webpage in a single column. Criminal's standard layout of three columns per page not only makes this preview easy to read online, it really gives the impression that we're seeing one continuous page. Still, Sean's sense of page composition remains intact: transitions from one scene to another almost always occur between pages, rather than within a single page.

It's definitely worth checking out if you're new to Criminal, but even fans might get a kick seeing this excerpt presented so seamlessly.

"Lawless" will be available in stores this Wednesday, December 12th.