Criminal Volume 6: Last of the Innocent

by Ed Brubaker, Val Staples (colorist), Sean Phillips (illustrator)

Genres: Comics

144 pages, Paperback

Published June 3, 2025

About the author

Ed Brubaker (born November 17, 1966) is an Eisner Award-winning American cartoonist and writer. He was born at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland.

Brubaker is best known for his work as a comic book writer on such titles as Batman, Daredevil, Captain America, Iron Fist, Catwoman, Gotham Central and Uncanny X-Men. In more recent years, he has focused solely on creator-owned titles for Image Comics, such as Fatale, Criminal, Velvet and Kill or Be Killed.

In 2016, Brubaker ventured into television, joining the writing staff of the HBO series Westworld.

Reviews

[Gary Sassaman]

It seems like Criminal has been in the works as an Amazon Prime series for years now, and it’s debut is supposedly imminent. I got curious about re-reading this particular volume, which is a standalone story in the ongoing Criminal saga, all about Riley Richards, a sociopath who likes being married to his rich wife, but also has steep gambling debts to pay off. You can figure out what happens next … I don’t want to give too much away, but the alliterative Mr. Richards is an obvious stand-in for one Archie Andrews and at times in this very short story (it reprints only four issues in the ongoing series), Phillips’ art slips into Archie mode, although the characters are doing very unArchie- like things. I enjoyed re-reading this and the simple design of this newer volume makes me want to go back and maybe get the previous ones, but we’ll see. Phillips’ art is a little rough in this one, but it’s a compelling story, intricately plotted by Brubaker. It will be interesting to see if this story makes the streaming series, since it’s tangental to the Lawless family characters that I think the series will focus on. I guess we’ll have to wait and see, but this would make a great neo-noir, standalone movie.

[TYL LE]

Crazy good

[roseaj]

Probably the weakest in the series so far.

[Joseph H]

Probably the best-written and most interestingly illustrated comic anyone will ever write or read