The thinking behind Criminal, starting it's second volume this month but by no means exclusive to established followers, is a revisionist approach to the medium. One that takes the reader and the format back to pulp days of hard-boiled crime literature, iconography and film.

The concept; a short, accessible narrative foot-noted by a brief insight into classic works is a solid one. The execution; a glossy format with a high-end price tag ($3.50 for this first issue) is a little shakier. The shakiness soon shifts to unbalance when the reader gets stuck into Brubaker's writing. An homage to everything noir, everything voice-over, every cliche, isn't a rare spectacle in modern pop-culture and here there's little offered beyond an average slice of crime. The characters are mostly cut-out, and appropriately so, but rather do a lot with a little, the shallow prose serves merely to highlight the blandness of the package in all its block-colored glory.

Sean Phillips' artwork is consistant but drab. Alex Maleev has pushed noir to its highest high and managed to give readers a life-line of humanity through his perfectly selected frames in Bendis' grit-and-grime underworld.Criminal doesn't come close.

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