Wednesday, October 22, 2014

CRIMINAL Returns This January!

Image Comics released its January solicitations yesterday, and -- as we had hoped -- they included the big project that Ed Brubaker mentioned in the latest issue of The Fade Out, the "secret thing" he and Sean Phillips are doing for January.

In short, CRIMINAL is back in January, not only with the new trade paperback of "Coward" but with an all-new, extra-long one-shot -- the first new material in more than three years, as "The Last of the Innocent" concluded in October, 2011.




CRIMINAL SPECIAL EDITION (ONE-SHOT)
story: ED BRUBAKER
art: SEAN PHILLIPS & ELIZABETH BREITWEISER
cover: SEAN PHILLIPS

JANUARY 28 / 48 PAGES / FC / M / $4.99

CRIMINAL COMES TO IMAGE!
To celebrate the return of CRIMINAL to print, BRUBAKER & PHILLIPS return to their award-winning title for the first time in years for a 48-page special sure the thrill their readers, old and new alike!

It's 1976, and Teeg Lawless is doing 30 days in county jail with a price on his head, his only safe company from the savagery a beat-up old comic magazine his dead cellmate left behind. It's CRIMINAL like you've never seen it before, with a comic within the comic and all those slick ‘70s thrills!

"Brubaker and Phillips are the gold standard of the crime graphic novel." – Warren Ellis
The "savagery" suggests a sword-and-sorcery comic like Marvel's Savage Sword of Conan, which began publication in 1974.  We'll see Sean Phillips' take on the genre with an over-sized magazine variant.



CRIMINAL SAVAGE EDITION MAGAZINE-SIZE VARIANT
story: ED BRUBAKER
art: SEAN PHILLIPS & ELIZABETH BREITWEISER
cover: SEAN PHILLIPS

JANUARY 28 / 48 PAGES / FC / M / $5.99
MAGAZINE FORMAT

As an added bonus—and due to the overwhelmingly positive response to the magazine-size variant of THE FADE OUT—the CRIMINAL SPECIAL EDITION will also be released in a Savage Edition, a variant in the style of magazine-size comics of the ‘70s!

Through Twitter, Brubaker confirmed that, as with The Fade Out movie magazine variant, this variant's print run will be limited to the amount ordered in advance, so to those who missed out the first time, Brubaker writes, "please tell your stores if you want the CRIMINAL magazine variant."

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Image Comics followed up the solicitations with a press release focusing on the series that is "so good, it's CRIMINAL."
"We've been planning the return of CRIMINAL for the past year, and I couldn't let the launch go by without returning to our underworld for a new story," said Brubaker. "With FATALE and THE FADE OUT, we've been hearing from a lot of new readers, so it couldn't be a better time to get the thing we're most known for back on the shelves."
In addition to focusing on the one-shot, the press release also formally announces that Image is reprinting the series "in beautifully designed new editions, beginning in January."  As Brubaker mentioned in The Fade Out #2, the six trade paperbacks will be released "one-per-month, from January to June."

--

I personally couldn't be more thrilled with the news.  It's just a one-shot and not a full-fledged series, but as Thomas Sowell has observed, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.  As with the 8-page Batman Black and White short stories or especially the triptych of single-issue stories that comprised "The Dead and the Dying," a story that is strictly limited by page count offers a quite different experience than sprawling epics like Fatale and The Fade Out.

Criminal is Brubaker's only work listed in the January solicitations; missing is The Fade Out with Phillips and Velvet with Steve Epting.  As we reported earlier, they're taking a "short break" between story arcs:  neither book was listed in December, either, but since both books seem to be running a little behind, I wouldn't be surprised to see The Fade Out #4 and Velvet #10 released that month or even later.

Ed Brubaker confirms that The Fade Out will return in February, as the hiatus was only to focus on the Criminal one-shot -- and after that?

Criminal will return.
The Criminal 48-page one-shot retails for $4.99, the magazine-sized Savage Edition for $5.99, and the "Coward" trade paperback for $14.99 -- the same price as the original collection from Marvel's Icon imprint.

All three books are scheduled to reach stores on January 28th.

That's just 98 days away, not that we're counting.

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