Bad Night: A Criminal Edition ***

Written by Ed Brubaker.
Illustrated by Sean Phillips.
Compiled and published by Marvel Publishing Inc.
from Criminal Volume 2 #1-4
Copyright 2009.

This is the third graphic novel from the award winning series Criminal.  I'm big fan.  This is probably the best mainstream comic available.  I'll read anything by Brubaker (several years back he wrote a portion of the Daredevil comics.)  The books are gritty, violent and the story telling is simple and straightforward.  The pages are filled with creeps, weirdos and the violently psychotic.  It's good fun reading.

So what about this one?  It's the story of a widowed and lame guy that use to be a counterfeiter but now is on the straight and narrow, mostly because of the death of his wife for which he suffered terribly.  His suffering was heightened by the fact that the cops didn't believe he was innocent in her death and neither did the underworld (who the parents of his deceased wife was connected to).  He was beaten horrible and walks with a limp.  This all takes place before the actual story starts.

Our (anti)hero has insomnia and walks the streets at night.  One night at a diner he meets a violent couple of which one was a beautiful woman.  Her boyfriend is looking for a fight and the cook has to subdue him.  Our hero seems to have run away though.  he sees the girl on the street, and finds she's almost as crazy as her boyfriend, but she's a knockout.  they end up having an affair.  The boyfriend finds out about it and because of fear, the counterfeiter is forced to work for these petty criminals.  Meanwhile he still lusts after the girlfriend.  There's going to be a job to be done, and there's a series of twists and turns where everything goes awry.

The story starts out great and is typical of the quality i expect from the series.  It seems to fade in the end though.  I wasn't satisfied with the ending,. Usually I look forward to the straightforward stories the series has, but the ending is a little  convoluted involving the ghost of his wife (we do find out what really happened to her) and a voice inside his head that is one of his characters in the comic strip he publishes.

Still a great book, but I'm afraid not as strong as the previous two.  Start with those first, though you'll also enjoy this one too.