Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are back with another graphic novel. This is not a genre-bending story like Pulp. Rather, Cruel Summer is a crime story. I hesitate to say “noir” because that term is so overused for any sort of crime fiction. It also begs for comparison to another long-running modern crime comic, Sin City, which took the noir influence and turned it into a stylized caricature.

In Cruel Summer (Image Comics), Brubaker and Phillips go in a different direction. This is a grounded story that follows a group of crooks and hustlers, not larger-than-life figures as in Sin City. These are people who struggle with rent, addiction, and kids.

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It’s a Cruel, Cruel Summer

The four characters the larger plot is built around are each introduced in their own chapters, which sets them up like four cars headed toward one another. Each is out of control in their own way, and none of them sees the others until it’s all too late.

Dan Farraday is a private detective looking for his client’s mistress who ripped him off and ran away. Ricky is the 15-year-old son of Teeg Lawless, a criminal successful mostly at being a violent loser. Ricky is balancing playing D&D with spending part of the summer in juvie. Finally, Jane is the mistress who ties men up in knots. Farraday, naturally, becomes obsessed with her.

Copyright 2020 Basement Gang, Inc.

Now You’re Gone…

There are no good guys or bad guys here. The characters are all people in bad situations who make decisions that only make things worse. Ricky has grown up around criminals but is still just a kid. Teeg is trying to be a better person. Jane, as much of a grifter as she seems to be, also really seems to have found something in Teeg. Even Dan Farraday is trying to save someone, making up for people he couldn’t save before.

Criminal Origins

Cruel Summer was originally published as issues of the long-running Criminal series, but the new hardcover release is completely self-contained. Begun in 2005 as part of Marvel’s Icon imprint, Criminal features arcs that are all self-contained but feature characters, events, and settings that appear in each series.

Set in the fictional Center City, all of the stories do work together to make a richer story. Nevertheless, on their own, they are still complete and completely satisfying. (Imagine the TV series Fargo in comic form.)

Things I Can’t Understand

The one complaint I have with the collected versions of most of the Brubaker and Phillips books is that they don’t collect the essays at the end of each issue (which remain a special treat for those of us who still buy single issues). The essays are typically written by other authors and scholars – with an illustration by Phillips – about the genre or other work from that genre.

They add a new, deeper layer to enjoy or another item (or two) for your TBR pile. I hope they collect all of them in a prose collection someday. If not, it’s absolutely worth trolling the bargain bins at your local comic shop for single issues of Fatale or Criminal… or almost any of the Brubaker/Phillips series, just for the end material.

Cruel Summer by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, is out this week (August 12, 2020) from Image Comics and priced $34.99 in hardcover.