Bad Weekend

JUST IN TIME FOR CONVENTION SEASON-the ultimate comic con crime tale!

Comics won't just break your heart.

Comics will just kill you.

Hal Crane should know, he's been around since practically the beginning. Stuck at an out-of-town convention, waiting to receive a lifetime achievement award, Hal's weekend takes us on a dark ride through the secret history of a medium that's always been haunted by crooks, swindlers, and desperate dreamers.

BAD WEEKEND-the story some are already calling the comic of the year from its serialization in CRIMINAL #2 and 3-has been expanded, with several new scenes added and remastered into a hardcover graphic novel, in the same format as BRUBAKER and PHILLIPS' (KILL OR BE KILLED, FATALE, CRIMINAL) bestselling MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES. This gorgeous package is a must-have, an evergreen graphic novel every true comics fan will want to own.

Collects CRIMINAL #2-3 with expanded content

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY -- The lauded crime comics team of Brubaker and Phillips (My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies) take a meta approach with a hard-boiled mystery set at a comics convention. Cartoonist Hal Crane, "a collection of bad habits and worse moods," is traveling to an event clearly based on the San Diego Comic-Con to receive a lifetime achievement award, and his former art assistant Jacob, now a detective, is hired to escort him. The two are quickly embroiled in a mystery involving stolen art, murder, and decades of industry feuds. Set in 1997, when the comics speculation boom of the '90s was going bust and comic books were at a sales peak but a creative nadir, the period's perfect for a tale rife with creative frustration, seedy backroom deals, and betrayal. It helps that the creators know the behind-the-scenes workings of the comic convention inside and out, which lends verisimilitude, as does the semifictional comics history they tell, a blend of reality, gossip (did an inker really get work by procuring sex workers for his editors?), and pure imagination. Phillips's art looks heavily photo-referenced, but poses and layouts that would be stiff in a lesser artist's hands fly by as realistic, while still loose and lively, in his practiced lines. Brubaker proves again that, as in the words of legendary creator Jack Kirby, "Comics will break your heart," as he digs under the colorful surface of his setting and touches on injustices within the industry.

FORBES -- Bad Weekend paints an acid-etched portrait of fandom, comics professionals and Comic-Con itself - one that rings true to anyone with connections to the industry and culture. As comics and comic art have grown in prominence, and the latter has become a very big-money business indeed, it's important to keep it real when it comes to the shady dealings and complicated legacies that form the roots of the industry. It's also entertaining as hell. After more than a dozen years of the award-winning comics-noir series, Brubaker and Phillips know how to blend their art and storytelling styles into a polished page-turner. Bad Weekend from Image Comics will be available in comics shops on Wednesday, July 10 and available in bookstores on Tuesday, July 16. and makes a fine summer read for anyone who's heading to Comic-Con next week, or wishes they were.

LIBRARY JOURNAL (STARRED) -- Aging cartoonist Hal Crane is renowned for his body of work and infamous for his bad behavior, so when he's selected to receive a lifetime achievement award at a large comics convention, the organizers hire Jacob, Crane's estranged former assistant, to keep him out of trouble. The task proves impossible, as Crane quickly embarks upon a ruthless quest to reclaim original artwork he's convinced was stolen from him. As he observes his former mentor encountering shady art dealers, indulging old grudges, enduring disrespectful fans, and enlisting the assistance of career criminals, Jacob can't help but wonder how an artist who once possessed such passion and vision managed to sink so low. Is the comic book industries' history of forcing creators into unfair work-for-hire contracts and then discarding them once sales decline to blame, or were Crane's own demons his undoing? More important, can Crane be redeemed, or will helping him drag Jacob down into the same mire of resentment and rage?
VERDICT With this Eisner Award-winning volume, expanding stories first serialized in the "Criminal" series, the incomparable team of Brubaker and Phillips (My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies; The Fade Out) once again prove themselves among the best creators of crime fiction in any genre.

Ed Brubaker is one of the most acclaimed writers in comics, winning five best writer Eisner and Harvey Awards in the last ten years. His bestselling work with Sean Phillips on Criminal, Incognito, Fatale, and The Fade Out has been translated around the world to great acclaim, and Marvel's movies featuring his co-creation, The Winter Soldier, have all been international blockbusters. Ed lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their crazy dog, where he works in comics, film, and television, most recently on HBO's new hit series Westworld.

Drawing comics professionally since the age of fifteen, Eisner Award winning Sean Phillips has worked for all the major publishers. Since drawing Sleeper, Hellblazer, Batman, X-Men, Marvel Zombies, and Stephen King's The Dark Tower, Sean has concentrated on creator-owned books including Criminal, Kill Or Be Killed, Incognito, Fatale and The Fade Out.

He is currently drawing a new volume of the long-running Criminal series written by his long-time collaborator Ed Brubaker and coloured by his son Jacob Phillips.

He lives in the Lake District in the UK.

Jacob Phillips is a comic artist and colorist residing in Manchester, UK. He has been drawing his whole life, self publishing first comic. 'Roboy' at the age of 11 and selling it at Brighton Comic Con. Skip forward 16 years and today he is the artist on That Texas Blood with writer Chris Condon and Newburn with Chip Zdarsky as well as coloring projects such as Reckless, Criminal and Madi.

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