Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips return to their best comic since Sleeper and give us a peek into Gnarly’s past. In both Coward and Lawless, Gnarly appears as the proprietor of the Undertow, a former speakeasy that has since become a favorite hangout for thieves, rapists, and murderers. The only rule in the Undertow is don’t start anything unless you feel like getting finished in return.

But that’s all in the present.

Brubaker writes another fantastic piece of fiction as we get the generational stories of two characters who have, until this point, been relegated as background characters: Jake “Gnarly” Brown and Sebastian Hyde. How they grew up together because their fathers, Clevon and Walter, owned the streets of the city in the fifties. How they grew apart because Gnarly wanted to be a boxer instead of live that life like Sebastian did. And the girl that drove the final wedge between.

But that’s not even as interesting as the familial aspect. Brubaker has been playing with how family informs almost everything his characters do in these crime stories. Leo Patterson and Greta, in Coward go along with Seymour and Jeff’s diamond heist because of Ivan, Leo’s father’s partner, and Greta’s daughter Angie. In Lawless, Tracy Lawless escapes from military prison and returns to the city after many years because his little brother Ricky has been killed, and he needs to find out who was responsible. Add to that that both Leo and Tracy’s fathers were into the game as well and you’ve got the latest Chinese melodrama, the latest Shakespearean play, the latest episode of Lost: it’s all about family, whether it be one you’re born with or the one you choose for yourself.

Brubaker continues his foray into family affairs in this first in a triptych of stories centering around a robbery of some of Sebastian Hyde’s property. Both Clevon Brown and Walter Hyde were hardcore gangsters, and they both had sons. But Clevon told his that nobody ever has “to grow up to be [their] fathers,” whereas Walter wanted his to take over the family business. Without giving anything away, Brubaker continues to show that even in the world of criminals, family is very important.

And can I just talk about the composition of that first page for a second? A wide expanse set in a field in the middle of the night with the comparatively small figures of Clevon and Walter in the lower right corner and the caption boxes in the upper left. That’s just beautiful. I kind of wish this was a double page spread with the grass and stars going left for another page. Nothing says you’re gonna get whacked in the middle of nowhere like a page like this. If you were unsure of whether or not Phillips knows what he’s doing, let me tell you that he does.

And don’t forget the backmatter in this issue, which features Duane Swierczynski writing about his love of all things David Goodis, a pulp noir novelist and screenwriter from Philadelphia.