The Unattainable Past in Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ “Criminal: The Last of the Innocent”

Nostalgia powerfully pulls at us, especially as we get older. Deriving from the Greek words nóstos (homecoming) and álgos (pain), nostalgia relates to a longing for the familiar that has passed away. However, the authenticity of that past is not reality. It exists as a mental construction, one that plays up the feelings of youth and innocence while hiding the realities of the past. This is what Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Criminal: The Last of the Innocent (2015) addresses. It plays with and satirizes readers’ nostalgic desires.

Set in Brookview, The Last of the Innocent draws upon comics such as Archie to present an image of an idyllic, suburban American past filled with white teenagers who are innocent and good. The panels move from these Archiesque images to a more gritty and contemporary style in the present, where we see Riley Richards murder his wife Felicity (Felix) and frame her lover Teddy.

Even within the panels that depict a 1950s-1960s era Brookview, Brubaker and Phillips play with notions that the post-World War II era exuded innocence. One such sequence, “Riley’s Gal Pal, Felicity,” occurs immediately after Riley’s father’s funeral. The full-page sequence only contains seven panels, including the title. It begins by showing Felix getting ready for…