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Criminal Reading Order, The Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Celebrated Comics

Originally published by Marvel Comics’ Icon imprint before being moved to Image Comics, Criminal is a long-running creator-owned comic book series by writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips (the duo behind Reckless). It has become the most prominent independent crime comic of the last twenty years.

Launched in 2006, Criminal started as a ten-issue series before coming back in multiple formats through the years, from graphic novel to one-shot. Every storyline works as a standalone story that takes place in a much larger narrative–mostly articulated around the Lawless Family and the mob boss Sebastian Hyde.

As a crime comic series, Brubaker and Phillips’ creation explores the many forms of the genre. In an interview with Tom Spurgeon at the launch of the series, Brubaker stated “The kinds of stories we’ll be putting all these characters through, though, run the gamut from the heist caper, to the revenge story, to the man on the run story, and even beyond that to the sort of meta-noir innocent man caught in a web of crime story.” That’s exactly what they did.

Eighteen years later, we have a collection of books, stories that were not written or published in chronological order, featuring a group of recurring characters whose lives we discover through dark and violent events. The following guide is here to help you find the stories you may have missed and to offer multiple ways to read them.

Criminal Comics Reading Order

The Characters of Criminal

Before exploring the way to read the Criminal stories, here is a short introduction to the characters who mostly lived in Center City.

  • Teeg Lawless: A Vietnam war veteran, career criminal, and overall terrible father.
  • Tracy Lawless: Teeg’s first son who joined the army to avoid going to jail. He came back to Center City to seek revenge.
  • Ricky Lawless: Brother of Tracy, Teeg’s younger son who followed in his father’s footsteps.
  • Sebastian Hyde: Center City’s main crime boss who usually kills anybody who’s a nuisance to him. All of the Lawless worked for him at some point.
  • Leo Patterson: Ricky Lawless’s childhood friend who grew up to become a criminal prodigy.
  • Tommy Patterson: Leo’s father, pick-pocket, and sometimes Teeg’s partner in crime.
  • Jacob Kurtz: Another longtime friend of Ricky, an expert forger turned comic book artist. He is the author of the newspaper strip ‘Frank Kafka, Private Eye’.
  • Jake ‘Gnarly’ Brown: Owner and manager of the Undertown bar–a place where Center City’s criminals meet. He is the son of Clevon, the right-hand man of Sebastian’s father when he built his empire.

Criminal: The Sinner

Reading Criminal in chronological order

  • “The Dead and the Dying” (collected Criminal vol. 3) – Set in the early 1970s, it tells the backstory of Jake “Gnarly” Brown, how the Hydes gain powers, how Teeg Lawless entered Sebastian Hydes’ world, and the woman who ruined all of their lives.
  • “Savage Sword of Criminal” aka Criminal: The Special Edition (collected in Criminal vol. 7) – Set in 1976. During a short stint in jail, Teeg is
  • “Teeg’s Christmas Carrol” (published in Image! 30th Anthology #9 in 2022) – A short story about Teeg waking up at his mistress’ home and realizing it’s Christmas and he has nothing to give his sons.
  • “Deadly Hands of Criminal” aka Criminal: 10th Anniversary Special (collected in Criminal vol. 7) – Set in 1979. Teeg takes Tracy on a road trip to find someone. While his philandering father roams around, Tracy is searching for a comic book.
  • “The Last of the Innocent” (collected in Criminal vol. 6) – Barely connected to Center City’s criminals–Teeg is barely a supporting character and Sebastian Hyde has a cameo–this story follows Riley Richards who decides to kill his rich wife. A classic film noir plot.
  • “Cruel Summer” – It’s summer 1988. It begins with Teeg falling in love and it ends with his death (an event shrouded in mystery for a long time if you read the series in publication order).
  • “Orphans” (Criminal (2019) #4) – Ricky Lawless needs to sleep off the drugs he took, but before that, he needs to find his friend Leo.
  • “Bad Weekend” – Forger Jacob Kurtz has to take care of his mentor, comics legend Hal Crane, who’s in town for a convention, but wants Leo to help him track down some stolen art. Somehow, Ricky gets involved.
  • “Coward” (collected in Criminal vol. 1) – Leo Patterson is keeping a low profile, but he needs money to take care of Ivan, a friend of his father who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. He reluctantly accepts a job, planning a heist with a crooked cop.
  • “Lawless” (collected in Criminal vol. 2) – When Tracy Lawless learns his brother Ricky has been killed, he goes AWOL and travels back to Center City to infiltrate his brother’s criminal group and find the truth.
  • “No One Rides for Free” (published in CBLDF Presents: Liberty Comics #1) – A really short story about Tracy intimidating a journalist to avoid killing him.
  • “Bad Night“(collected in Criminal vol. 4) – One might, insomniac Jacob Kurtz meets a beautiful stranger in need and soon gets himself stuck in a situation requiring his talent as a forger, and even more if he wants to survive.
  • “The Sinners” – Tracy Lawless has a debt to pay to Sebastian Hyde and accepts to investigate the murders of various high-profile members of the City’s underworld.
  • “21st Century Noir” (collected in Noir – A Collection of Crime Comics) – A short story about a man meeting a woman anonymously and things go bad quickly after that.
  • “My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies” – Teenage Ellie ends up at an upscale rehab clinic where she met another young junkie. They both dream of escaping their lives. What could go wrong?

Notes on Criminal’s Characters:

  • After “Coward,” Leo Patterson’s story as an epilogue in “My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies” which also reveals what happened to the young Angie who appeared last in “Lawless.”
  • Between “Bad Weekend” and “Bad Night,” Jacob Kurtz appeared as a supporting character in “Coward.”
  • Fictional comic book creator Hal Crane from the “Bad Weekend” story is the artist behind Teeg Lawless’s favorite comics “Zangar, The Savage.”
Criminal: Cruel Summer

Reading Criminal in Publication Order

What follows is mostly the publication order using the collected editions.

Notes on the short stories:

  • Criminal v3 #4 has not been collected in paperback but is in the Criminal Deluxe Edition vol 3.
  • The (optional) short story “Teeg’s Christmas Carrol” was published in issue #9 of the Image! 30th Anthology, and is not collected elsewhere.
  • The (optional) short story “No One Rides for Free” was published in Liberty Comics #1 from the CBLDF Presents collection at Image Comics (CBLDF is short for Comic Book Legal Defense Fund).
  • The (totally optional) short story “21st Century Noir” was collected in the anthology book Noir – A Collection of Crime Comics published by Dark Horse Comics. Only for extreme completionists.

Criminal: Deluxe Editions

The following are oversized deluxe hardback editions of the Criminal stories.

Discover more indie comics!

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