a.k.a. “An appreciation of Val Staples”
Val Staples doesn’t get enough credit for Criminal. You always hear talk of how great Ed Brubaker’s story is or how fantastic Sean Phillips artwork is and they richly deserve the credit they get for their work. The story and art of Criminal are a near perfect blend but they’re missing one key ingredient. Without Staples, Criminal is a good, solid book, looking like a more serious and less sarcastic Sin City. Staples colors add passion to Criminal. They create the heat and sizzle, adding the temperature to Phillips’ artwork and the explosive kick to Brubaker’s story.
Criminal #5 is the perfect example of Staples’s work because the story has a near perfect balance of passion and violence, of sex and of brutal gun play. The storyline continues as Jakob, a former counterfeiter and now cartoonist, gets sucked back into the seedy life by Iris and her boyfriend Danny. They’re looking for the big score and they take over Jacob’s life and home to get him to cooperate.
Staples coloring heightens the mood and tones of the story. The general palette of Criminal remains dark and cool, using deep greens and deep blues to shade and provide the lighting to the world. It’s a color scheme that makes sense since so much of Criminal takes place at night or in the early hours of the morning. A deep blue or green hue lie over most of the book. But when the pressure starts to ramp up, the blue is replaced by a varying shade of red, creating a warmer or even hotter feel to the story.
We first see this in the opening pages. While Jacob toils away in his basement to create a fake Special Agent badge, Iris and Danny argue in his living room. The beauty of it is that they’re arguing the merits of Fellini with Danny calling him “a self indulgent, $%^&ing hack” which says loads about his own tastes and reveals depths to Iris without her ever saying what she’s arguing for. For this argument, the characters (particularly Iris) are bathed in a light reddish light. There’s passion building in her but Jacob and Danny remain in the cool blues with only brief hints of warmer colors peeping through.
One particular panel which jumps out is a few pages later and a simple shot of Iris dancing to some records. In the narration, Jacob talks about his relationship with Iris and how she’s a messed up girl. The panels immediately before dancing Iris recount a one night stand that Iris and Jacob had in the previous issue. The panels of them sleeping together are purplish, a bit confusing on the whole hot/cold theme but the panel of Iris dancing is pink, conveying an innocence and charm. The picture could be right out of a fifties comic about what kids do on a Saturday night, dancing with records strewn about the floor. With the coloring, there’s a strange innocence to the image, almost as if Iris isn’t responsible for her own actions or sexuality.
The play between blue and red continues throughout the issue, with the red building up and then exploding to show the building lust in Jacob or the smoldering sexiness of Iris. But later in the issue, we get a shocking reminder of the violence and bloodshed that’s also native to Criminal, when everything goes wrong for Danny, Iris and Jacob. The red becomes a blood red in this scene, emphasizing particular beats and coloring the underlying emotion of the aftermath of those beats.
Since the second arc of Criminal, “Lawless,” color has played an important part in the series. Staples has added a sheen to the book that recalls the graininess and feel of 70′s movies. With this latest storyline, “Bad Night,” color has become an important storytelling device, leading the reader to the points and sensations that the creators want the reader to go to. The color is doing more than just adding hues and tones to the black and white artwork. It’s adding to the emotion and power of the story.
Criminal #5
“Bad Night: Part 2″
Written by: Ed Brubaker
Drawn by: Sean Phillips
Colored by: Val Staples
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Tags: Crininal, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Val Staples