Another week and we have another vision of a dystopian future in the 2007 comic The Last Days of American Crime. It is written by Rick Remender with art by Greg Tocchini and was originally published in 2007 as a 3 issue miniseries from Image Comics. This creative team has given us great stories like LOW and Uncanny X-Force. They come with the good stuff in this near future bank heist comic with a twist: the crew has to rob the bank the same day the government starts broadcasting a “anti-crime” signal which “makes it impossible for anyone to knowingly break the law in any way possible”.
The story begins with our main character, Graham Bricke (which is a combination of 2 units of measurement of drugs: Gram and Brick) finding out that one of the dafecracker in his crew has ratted him out to a rival mob. He deals with the problem but several new problems have bubbled up: he needs to find a new safecracker and he only has a week to do it before the American Peace Initiative renders all crime in America obsolete.
The Last Days of Crime in America tells a fast, tight heist story that is full of twists and turns that you don’t know who to trust by the end. It reminded Jon and myself of great heist movies like Thief, Ronin and The Grifters. We highly recommend the comic.
The reason we read the comic was that a movie version was recently released on Netflix. Here is the trailer…
We compare the comic to it’s movie counterpart. Listen to the podcast for the details.
Jim
Comics Misremembered Podcast 263
