Sex. Violence. Booze. These three things are fun in real life, but honestly I think I’d rather be reading about them in the Criminal universe than sitting at the bar with some sexy dames and bruised knuckles. Not to mention the fact that this book comes out roughly once a month and sexy dames hang out at the bars I frequent every … never. The combination of Phillips’ perfectly gritty artwork and Brubaker’s excellent character narration and dialogue make the seedy underworld infinitely more interesting than it is when I find myself stumbling into it. All these things have been part of the series from the start and they are certainly here too, but this issue still feels different from all the others. This issue has much more humor and the main character here is more of a nerd than a tough guy with a mysterious murky past, but it still works perfectly. When we met him in a previous Criminal arc I didn’t really feel either way about Jacob but after this issue I’m fully on-board for this Jacob-centric arc. The guy is pretty pathetic, but not so much so that he becomes completely unlikable or un-relatable. I’m sitting here skimming through this issue again, and I still can’t think of anything more to say. Criminal is the best comic book being published.