A Picture Speaks Volumes in Ed Brubaker’s Criminal, Volume One: Coward

Ed Brubaker’s Criminal, Volume One: Coward echoes several of the books we have read this term: Parker’s Early Autumn, Block’s Sins of the Fathers, and especially Macdonald’s The Goodbye Look. Brubaker tackles several themes, but the one I choose to focus on is that of fathers and sons. Fathers teach their sons many things; bravery among them. Our “hero” Leo Patterson is repeatedly accused of being a coward, and even accuses himself. If true, where did the pattern originate, and why do others continue to recognize it? The panel showing Leo on his subway ride home after his initial chat with Seymour and Jeff at the museum is the most significant thematically because it encapsulates his present and his past by invoking both memories of his father and visions of his future self.

Memory is a tricky business, and Leo Patterson is a man with a lot on his mind. Throughout the graphic novel, his thought bubbles more than likely tally a larger word count than his speech bubbles, if one were to count them. The reader has been given Leo’s back-story and he confesses, “I’m scared of ending up like my father.” As he rides the subway train, he thinks about the proposition presented to him by his former crony Seymour and crooked cop Jeff as he stares off into the cityscape. He recalls what corrupt police have done to his friends and family, and as he stares at his own face, he remembers the countless widows and orphans made manifest by street violence. Leo knows that violent world, and he knows it because he was brought into it by his own father. Sure, Leo’s dad went to jail for him and died there for him, but at what cost to his son, in the end? Leo is left fatherless, as Greta’s daughter Angie is, and fatherless by the same root cause. Sure, he has the addled junkie Ivan, but Leo has become more of a father to him than Ivan ever was in return. Leo says he can “never forget,” and so that paternal memory nags at him in empty moments like a subway ride.
Thoughts of memory lead to thoughts of present, and of future. Even if the thought bubble were not there, the panel would speak. Leo is a man looking at his own reflection: a moment of reflection. Buildings, streets and their garbage whizz by, yet there is his image, strong and clear, reflected in plexiglass. I am no artist, so I cannot determine if those lines are scratches on the subway window or representations of the outside world passing by. I believe that they tie in beautifully with the words in the panel, be they scratches or lines: they are scars. We are given Leo’s thoughts: “Those wounds were scars that’d be easier to hide, but they were scars all the same.” Brubaker – through Leo – is absolutely correct. Leo sees his reflection, and he can see both actual scars – some from battle and some from age – as well as deeply embedded internal scars.
Travelling via subway, it should not be forgotten that there is one sense that could be missed altogether, especially when reading a book, and that is sound. Leo is having a moment of reflection, but certainly not silent reflection. Blocking out subway noise – musicians, lunatic homeless, screaming children, fervent preaching – is not an easy task, and I daresay Leo has no intention of trying. Entirely shutting out the noisy world leads to the type of silent contemplation that could lead to deep depression – and an uncovering of past internal scars – and Leo wants no part of that. He is thinking of his past, and he is thinking of his dad, and he does not want to become his dad. It could be imagined that the one noise that supersedes all is the train on the tracks – that clack-clack-clack. I imagine that repetitive trance-inducing auditory pattern creating a mantra in his head: I won’t be like him, I won’t be like him, I won’t be like him… Leo tells Greta that “Violence just…it’s got a ripple effect. You know that. And I try not to cause any ripples.” Ripples echo outward both visually and acoustically, and Leo gets a dose of both in the reflection of his image.
The difficulty in looking at oneself – and I mean really looking at oneself in a literal sense, i.e., the window reflection – is that what one sees is a representation; in actuality, what is seen is a backwards image. There is no way to see oneself as others do. I realize the panel I chose is incredibly simple, but I honestly think it speaks volumes about the entire graphic novel. In the end, the story is not about pickpockets, shootouts and drug deals. When Leo needs a hideout, he heads to his ancestral homestead – the place where past, present and future meld. Beyond the blood, violence, and death is a man with a history. In the end, the past does invoke the future – the violence he is capable of – or, as Leo puts, it, “of what’s inside of me.” His redemption complete – saving young Angie and returning the heroin – Leo and his family farm both end as ashes blowing past the window of a rapid subway train.