Criminal 6: The Last of the Innocent
Yeah, I didn’t feel very proud going to sign this one out of the library. Not with that title and cover. Afraid I might catch some dirty looks from the librarian.
But the thing is, the picture on the cover doesn’t really reflect anything about the content and the title left me scratching my head. I guess this is a picture of Lizzie and she’s the last innocent person Riley Richards knows?
To fill you in: Riley Richards is a generally worthless guy who married into a super-rich family. His wife, however, is a slut (something he should have seen coming) and he decides to kill her and frame an old rival (who is also now her lover) for her murder. As part of his plan he makes use of an old friend who is a lifelong drug user, but the friend finds out what he’s done after the fact and even though he promises not to tell anyone Riley kills him too just to be safe. Then he arranges to have the rival killed in prison, leaving Riley rich, safe, and free to ride off into the sunset with his hometown sweetheart Lizzie.
It’s a pretty simple crime story, with the main hook being a visual one as Sean Phillips draws all the flashbacks in a different style, like an Archie comic. Which fits because these are all drawn from Riley’s high school days and the characters have different Archie analogs (Riley Richards is Archie Andrews, Lizzie is Betty, Felix is Veronica, Freakout is Jughead, etc.). But it’s also incongruous because Archie and company didn’t find themselves in the sort of adult situations this crew do.
There’s very little connection here to the main Criminal story arc, though Tracy Lawless and Sebastian Hyde have brief appearances. I would wager though that there is more to come in this series about Riley, as The End feels more like To be Continued.
