Image Comics has announced that two key issues of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Criminal will be re-released as facsimile editions coinciding with the debut of the Amazon Prime show. The show has had a tumultuous publicity season after a production assistant filed a harassment and assault lawsuit against Brubaker, to which Amazon challenged the accusations with a demurrer. The releases of these Criminal comic facsimile issues will coincide with the streaming debut of the television show. Criminal #1: Coward Facsimile Edition and Criminal Part One: Coward will release Wednesday, January 13 while Criminal #6: Lawless Facsimile Edition and Criminal Part Two: Lawless will be released on Wednesday, January 27.
Criminal is a crime thriller comic which has spun out into an entire crime noir connected universe, with self-contained stories. Originally published by Marvel’s now defunct creator-owned imprint Icon Comics, the first two volumes of Criminal follow two generations of two career criminal families. Criminal #1: Coward Facsimile Edition takes readers back to the beginning of the “Coward” storyline. Per the press release,
In Criminal #1, readers meet Leo, who can plan the perfect heist…but only if he can be convinced the job is safe enough. But when an old friend and a crooked cop approach with a plan to seize millions of dollars in contraband from an evidence transport, Leo must make hard choices, knowing there’s nothing you can trust less in this world than a cop on the take.
Criminal #6: Lawless Facsimile Edition then goes into the past of some of the characters introduced in Part One and begins the “Lawless” storyline, summarized here,
Then, in Criminal #6, fans discover where the Lawless story began in this replica edition of Tracy Lawless’s first appearance from 20 years ago. The beginning of Criminal’s second arc, this is where Brubaker and Phillips began to build out the world they’d created in volume one and expand the boundaries of what crime comics could be.
These facsimile editions will feature a pair of collectible wraparound variant covers, foil versions of the wraparound covers, and blank sketch covers. Brubaker had this to say about looking back on his series, “With the TV show finally coming out, it’s wild to look back at the first issue from 20 years ago when we were a scrappy little crime comic trying to make an impact in a very rough market.”
Criminal #1: Coward Facsimile Edition and Criminal Part One: Coward will release alongside Part One of the show on Wednesday, January 13 with Criminal #6: Lawless Facsimile Edition and Criminal Part Two: Lawless will be released alongside Part Two on Wednesday, January 27. Fans can check out The Beat’s coverage of the teaser trailer here and preview the new covers below.
