Ricky Lawless is in the hole for $25k with a psycho bookie. To make him even - even Steven - he’s gotta wait in the room of a fancy hotel for a high-rolling gambler to return with their winnings and then rip them off. Ricky’s problems start when he gets bored and blows his nose off - except it isn’t coke he snorted!
A year with one Criminal book is a pretty decent comics year already - but a double helping? 2025’s-a spicy meatball! Especially when both The Knives and this one-shot comic, The High Roller, are both such quality. Ed Brubaker is 59 and Sean Phillips is 60 years old and they’re doing some of the best work in their already-storied careers.
What surprised me most about this comic was how funny it is. I expect it to be dark and violent - and those scenes are in here too - but I don’t expect Criminal to be genuinely funny. So this comic caught me off guard by making me laugh out loud twice at how silly Ricky’s evening turns out to be waiting for his mark.
There’s also a flashback with Teeg, Ricky’s dirtbag dad, where the two have an unexpectedly sweet moment - maybe their only sweet moment as father and son that we’ve seen in the series thus far.
The biggest problem for me is how short this comic is. 35 pages counts as “Giant Size” by today’s standards but Brubaker/Phillips’ output these past few years has trained me to expect book-length stories from them rather than ye olde comics format. So I read this thinking that that was a fine opening chapter - and then realising that was it. Also, you can see that ending coming a mile away, but it’s still fun.
Also included is an RPG game written by Kieron Gillen; a truncated overview of the series main characters for readers new to Criminal; and a couple of one-page strips by Sean Phillips about the behind-the-scenes at the Criminal TV show (on its way next year) which were also funny.
I was happy with The Knives as my Brubaker/Phillips fix for 2025 but having The High Roller pop up unheralded right at the end of the year is a wonderful cherry on top. Criminal fans already know to expect the goods from this creative team but what you won’t expect is a funny Criminal story, which this series has never had yet. A great, albeit too short, Ricky Lawless story all Criminal fans will enjoy.
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