The bestselling, fan-favorite Criminal series by multiple award-winning team Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Reckless, Houses of the Unholy, Fatale) will get a glow up this year with trade paperback reprints featuring new cover art and design from Phillips and published by Image Comics.
A television adaptation of this iconic series was in production most of 2024 with Brubaker serving as showrunner, and is coming to Amazon Prime later this year, starring Charlie Hunnam, Luke Evans, and Emilia Clarke. The first season of the TV show will cover the first two story arcs of the comic book series, Criminal, Volume One: Coward and Criminal, Volume Two: Lawless.
“Preparing for the wider world to discover Criminal as a TV series, Sean and I wanted 2025 to be a big celebration of Criminal, and I couldn’t think of a better way to start that off than redesigning the entire series from the ground up, with these amazing new covers that Sean has created. Our next step in the celebration is still a surprise… but expect to see it announced soon, too,” said Ed Brubaker. “Running the Criminal TV show was a life-changing experience, but it also made me appreciate the comics more than I ever had, at the same time, and I can’t wait for new audiences to discover this wide world of crime that Sean and I have spent all these years building.”
In the first installment of the bestselling, multiple Eisner Award-winning crime noir series, Criminal, Volume 1: Coward, readers meet Leo, a world-class pickpocket who is pressed into helping the cops pull off a heist. But when the job goes terribly wrong, Leo must go into hiding, his dire situation escalates, forcing the thief to put his skills to the test.
Criminal, Volume 2: Lawless is a story of brotherly love and hate, as Tracy Lawless returns home to find out who murdered his kid brother, and how much their family history has doomed them both. This is where Brubaker and Phillips take the world they created in volume one and begin stretching the boundaries of what crime comics can be.
Originally published in 2007, Criminal, Volume 1 and Criminal, Volume 2 are just the beginning of the critically acclaimed comic book series that follows a cast of characters connected through a shared criminal history.
