[6] The program will lead to a new original graphic novel written by Brubaker and Philips, named The Knives, which is due for release on 9 September 2025.
With his partner Ivan, Tommy Patterson ran the city's most proficient crew of pickpockets and taught the trade to his eight-year-old son, Leo.
When Tommy was arrested and imprisoned for the murder of Teeg Lawless, Ivan took care of Leo and explained to him how following certain rules can keep a criminal "out in the world", out of both prison and the morgue.
While his fifteen-year-old brother Ricky was sent to a juvenile work camp, Tracy Lawless was given the option of going to prison or enlisting in the armed forces.
Since then, Leo has kept a low profile as a pickpocket while he struggles to take care of Ivan, Tommy's old friend and partner-in-crime, who suffers from both Alzheimer's disease and an addiction to heroin.
Leo has a strict set of rules he adheres to, and a reputation for being brilliant at planning scores, but also as a coward who runs from conflict and always manages to escape a bad situation.
They try to recruit Leo for an armored-car heist, telling him a police evidence van will be carrying $5 million in diamonds to the courthouse.
Leo, however, doesn't anticipate that Jeff and his partners will pull guns and start shooting in the middle of the job, killing Donnie and wounding Greta.
Leo, having made a back-up plan, manages to escape with Greta and the score, which they discover isn't diamonds but a briefcase full of uncut heroin.
He returns alone to the city and meets with "Genuine Jen" Waters, and old friend now Internal Affairs officer, who theorizes that Jeff hoped Leo would escape, but without the drugs, drawing the attention of the police while he paid his debt to "Roy-L".
Leo breaks into Seymour's apartment, looking for leverage against him, but finds a message on his answering machine: Jeff ordering him to join them in going after Greta.
Leo throws an open bag of heroin in Seymour's face and coldly executes him, saying that what he's really afraid of is his own capacity for violence.
After leaving her with Gnarly, a bartender and old friend of his father, he tricks Jeff into leading him to "Roy-L" and kills him and his men in a gun battle.
Severely wounded and too weak to escape the arriving police, Leo realizes that dying is a lot harder than killing and quips, "just my luck".
[10] (Issues #6-10, May 07 - Nov 07) After an incident that began in a bar in Baghdad's Green Zone, Tracy Lawless served eighteen months in a military prison, isolated from contact with the outside world.
Tracy finds the crew—Gray, Nelson, Davey, and Ricky's lover Mallory—meeting frequently at the Undertow in obvious anticipation of an upcoming heist.
Tracy quietly introduces himself to certain criminals as Sam West, a "wheelman" looking for a score, and, after killing the crew's driver Davey, he approaches Gray and Mallory and tells them that he's "a guy who can drive".
[13] The second centers of Tracy Lawless's father Teegar, a newly return Vietnam war veteran and his involvement in a heist pulled under false pretenses.
(5 issue miniseries, Oct 2009 - Mar 2010) After a wave of murders that target various high-profile, supposedly untouchable crime figures, Tracy Lawless is assigned to find the killers and stop them before a citywide gang war erupts, while an Army CID agent arrives at Center City to capture the deserting Sgt.
[17] (5 page short story appearing in Liberty Comics #1) Tracy shakes down a reporter who has written an exposé on Sebastian Hyde's corporate dealings.
(One-shot special, April 2016) A young Tracy Lawless helps his father with criminal activities while travelling cross country.
[19] (Image Comics, 2018) The first original graphic novel from Brubaker and Phillips features a character who is revealed to be part of the Criminal universe.
[22] In February 2023, Amazon Studios began development on a TV series based on Criminal, with Brubaker serving as showrunner, writer, and executive producer.