This isn’t the first time I’ve praised the work of Ed Brubaker.  He may be the finest comics writer working in the mainstream, as his Bourne style take on cheesy Marvel stalwart Captain America has brilliantly proven.  And the fourth volume of his creator-owned series Criminal is just out, a collaboration with superb British artist Sean Phillips.

Titled Bad Night, and under a lurid pulp style cover of a woman pulling a sheet up to cover herself while holding a gun, it’s a dark noir tale where noone comes out of what happens smelling of roses.  The protagonist is a cartoonist called Jacob Kurtz who draws the Frank Kafka P.I. strip for the local paper, a gig he picked up after recovering from the traumas associated with losing his wife in a crash that many thought he was responsible for.  He caricatures one of the town cops in the strip, which has shown up in Criminal previously, and that hubris is ultimately responsible for his downfall.

Jacob’s nemesis is that cop, who’s tired of being called Officer Wrong as per his cartoon lookalike, and sees himself as relatively decent by local standards.  Which doesn’t stop him hatching a plan to get a slice of some triad money that involves making use of Jacob’s skills as a forger and killing a triad member while he’s in the cells.  Most fatally though, he sets it up for Jacob to fall for a twisted woman, the one on the front cover, a messed-up nurse turned stripper: Iris.

So far, you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve seen it all before.  Bad cops, crazy women, and intrigue.  Which is kind of the point: Criminal is Brubaker’s vehicle for telling classic crime stories, and this is a particularly noir one.  Like noir, and you’ll love this.  Simple as.  What makes it different is that it’s told in the form of a comic where there’s subtle continuity of characters and place between the different storylines, and the stark and moody artwork that Sean Phillips provides, with note-perfect colours by Val Staples.

The other difference is unique to this particular storyline, and that’s the use of a device that’s very much a comicbook one to get insight into the mind of Jacob Kurtz: now and then his creation Frank Kafka P.I. is present in the panels, drawn and lettered as Jacob illustrates him in his newspaper strip.  It’s an effective device that becomes even more powerful when we realise how mentally damaged Jacob is, and probably the only example in the history of Criminal of a technique that couldn’t be used in the pages of a dimestore novel.

It’s maybe because of the tight focus of the story on a small group of characters that I rate this over other Criminal collections.  They’re all good, and one day when I read them all I’m sure I can look forward to understanding more of the connections between them.  But this one in particular is exquisitely executed, an example of what happens when a writer is in command of his material before he writes the first part.  The last chapter, which explores what’s happening from other perspectives, proves that brilliantly.

I was only once pulled out of immersion in the story, by what could be an in-joke, when a brutish character makes a reference to Fellini.  It’s not just the fact that Fellini is mentioned: it could have been any real world reference.  But it momentarily serves to burst the bubble that Brubaker and Phillips have so cleverly created.  That’s one reference out of however many pages: in every other respect the story and characters pull you into the world of its creators.  And that’s one of the highest compliments you can pay to people involved in any form of creativity.