Dick Tracy
Dick Tracy is a square-jawed police detective who fights a rogues' gallery of grotesque criminals, with names like Flattop, Pruneface, The Brow and Mumbles, using the latest scientific…
Start with The Complete Dick Tracy, Volume 1
The wider medium · 11 entries
Crime and noir
Detectives, gangsters, hitmen and femmes fatales, from the newspaper cops of the 1930s to the most acclaimed crime comics of the modern era. Comics have always been good at crime: the medium suits shadows, rain and faces in close-up. There is a strong British showing here, from Modesty Blaise to Button Man and Sean Phillips's art on Criminal, and a few European entries to show how the Italians and Spanish do it.
The Spirit
Denny Colt is a detective who is believed to be dead, and who fights crime as the Spirit from a hideout under Wildwood Cemetery, wearing a blue suit, a fedora and a small mask.
Start with Will Eisner's The Best of the Spirit: Artisan Edition
Diabolik
Diabolik is a master thief and killer who wears a black bodysuit and uses incredibly lifelike masks to impersonate his victims, and he is the hero of the story.
Modesty Blaise
Modesty Blaise is a former crime boss who has retired, very rich, to London, and who is regularly drawn back into danger by the British secret service.
Start with Modesty Blaise: The Gabriel Set-Up
Sin City
Basin City is a town full of corrupt cops, psychotic killers, prostitutes and a few tough, doomed men who try to do the right thing.
Start with Sin City, Volume 1: The Hard Goodbye
Button Man
Harry Exton is a former soldier who is recruited into a secret game in which rich backers, known as the Voices, bet on hired killers who hunt each other to the death.
Start with Button Man: Get Harry Ex
Stray Bullets
Stray Bullets is a series of interlinked crime stories about small-time criminals, their victims and the damage that violence does, particularly to children.
Start with Stray Bullets: Über Alles Edition
Road to Perdition
In 1931 Michael O'Sullivan, a hitman for an Irish mob boss in Illinois, has his wife and younger son murdered by his employer's son, and sets out for revenge, taking his surviving son with…
Start with Road to Perdition
100 Bullets
A mysterious man called Agent Graves approaches people who have been wronged and gives them a briefcase containing a gun, a hundred untraceable bullets and proof of who ruined their lives.
Start with 100 Bullets, Book One
Blacksad
John Blacksad is a private detective in 1950s America, and he is a black cat.
Start with Blacksad: The Collected Stories
Criminal
Criminal is a series of self-contained crime stories set in the same city, with recurring characters and locations, and each one is a small masterpiece of noir.
Start with Criminal, Volume 1: Coward