[Brubaker] he blends industry lore, Comic-Con atmosphere and his own gritty view of human nature in a compelling, concise summertime thriller ... Because Brubaker knows his material so well, Bad Weekend is full of Easter eggs for sharp-eyed readers with some knowledge of the world of Comic-Con and comic art ... 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 ... 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.

With this Eisner Award–winning volume, expanding stories first serialized in the Criminal series, the incomparable team of Brubaker and Phillips once again prove themselves among the best creators of crime fiction in any genre.

... a welcome and beautiful edition to a sleazy, sordid bibliography ... a noir story with a human core. Crane and Jacob simultaneously conform to certain crime fiction archetypes (the alcoholic and the goon with the good heart) while also remaining unique creations ... shows off the talents of all three men who created it. Brubaker’s writing is as crisp and direct as it always is ... Phillip’s gritty pencils give real flesh and blood to Brubaker’s words, and illustrator and colorist Jacob Phillips mixes bright pinks, subdued blues and reds, and tons of black ... a near-perfect addition to the Criminal canon. It is a bleak tale with familiar faces, but not so in-depth that it could turn off first-time readers. Bad Weekend is crime comics at their finest, so why not waste a boozy weekend with this graphic novel.

Listen: are there any other comic teams working today with as smooth a symbiosis as Brubaker and Phillips? Just as old married couples are said to resemble one another, Brubaker’s prose has become clearer and more striking, to match Phillips’s art. The character work, both in writing and in art, is impeccable ... doesn’t have the heft and the haunting rage of some of Phillips and Brubaker’s other work, but it is perfectly clever and fun all the way through. It’s maybe the closest thing to an Elmore Leonard novel I’ve read in comics form — and that’s a pretty goddamn high compliment. Maybe Hal Crane can’t find anything to love about comics anymore, but — thanks to Brubaker and Phillips — I sure can.

The entire comic is about the weekend for one of those guys, darkened a little...but considering some of the things that we know about the comics industry just in the past year, none of it is really that dark at all. Or any entertainment industry, let alone a fucking vile drainage ditch like comic books. This thing actually could have been Black Kiss level gross and no one would have batted an eye ... The stakes are low. It’s not seething hatred against an industry that chews up and spits out a certain kind of talent, of the kind of men who are dinosaurs in their attitudes but professionals up until the point their hands don’t work anymore; people who draw until they die, people that don’t retire ... This is excellent. It’s a great comic, full of great detail on the writing and illustration fronts. It feels lived in. Sean Phillips clearly loves this kind of artwork, despite his artistic tradition being more of a meat and potatoes style of representation. He’s not Bernie Wrightson-ing his backgrounds, just more interested in gesture and rich inks. I feel Eddie Campbell a lot in his work...The color work here, by Jason Phillips, gets particularly nuanced in the final sections in the bar and banquet hall. It’s emotional and bleeds into the figures in way not too dissimilar to film approaches ... I wish it had been meaner or more in depth or the crime element seem less perfunctory. It’s lived in in a way that only people who have sat with this kind of man and seen their life play out in their every little gesture and grumble at a dinner table or a bar after dealing with the fucking public all day. This is The Player version of this story, it’s a shame to say. There’s a version of this that can’t be published and it’s like a phantom image--and I want the whole thing.

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 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.