Blood In The Gutters: Week’s Crime Comics – Supercrooks, The Rinse, AKA, Kick-Ass 2

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This week down at the comical book shop: The super-heist is put into motion; You can launder cash, but not your soul; Gangster, guns, and girls; The fall of the homemade superhero.

Supercrooks #3–I think this book will go down as Mark Millar’s most well put together series since Wanted, or maybe the first Kick-Ass.  This is likely the least eye-rolling of the many eye-rolling books the guy has put out over the years.  The characters are believeable–sympathetic without sentiment.  The antagonists are not as off-the-charts bugfuck as most Millar antagonists are, but are still genuine shitheels.  And Leinil Francis Yu has been turning in some of the finest art of his career.  By this point, if you’re not buying these in single issues, you’re waiting for the trade, and I don’t think there’s much I could say to dissuade you from that.  But if you’re not planning on buying the trade, I’d change those plans if I were you.

The Rinse trade paperback–Well, if you indeed ignored me when I pushed this book on you in single issues, now’s your chance to grab up one of the best crime mini-series of the last year.  Money launderer Jeff Sinclair has made his career by not letting his emotions get away from him.  But he finally gets yanked into a job that makes even him question just what it is he’s doing with his life.  Penned to the utmost by living legend Gary Phillips, The Rinse raises the level of crime comics and makes you wonder why more people aren’t producing quality crime like this more often.  Buy it now or regret it later.

AKA graphic novel–From the depths of the small press, we have this little number, which sounds damned interesting.  Touted as an homage to the grindhouse films of the ’70s, AKA is the story of mob thug Guy Doyle, who has to hunt down gang leader Adrian Truelove after he knocks up Guy’s boss’ daughter.  The book gives of a pretty Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia vibe, but a little less bleak and bit more action-packed.  Pulling down art duties is Rob Reilly, whose work on Atomic Robo has definitely left me wanting more, and now it looks like I’ll have it.  These guys have been working to self-publish this for quite a little while, it would seem, and you wouldn’t want that to be for nothing, would you?  Dig some sample pages here.

Kick-Ass 2 premiere hardcover–Yeah, two Millar books in one column.  What can I say, the guy produces some good stuff, or at the very least, a bunch of stuff that falls within our wheelhouse.  Like with Supercrooks, the Kick-Ass comics are pretty stripped-down superhero stories, stories that return to the crime-fighting roots of the golden age, but with a whole lot more violence and swear words.  I think I might have liked this series just a bit more than the original because it actually made me a bit nauseated a couple of times.  Then again, it might have been a bad nausea, it’s hard to tell with me sometimes.  Suffice it to say, if you like your superheroes with more than just a dash of realism and more than a sprinkle of bloodshed, Kick-Ass 2 is the book for you.