The unthinkable has happened: career scumbag Teeg Lawless has fallen in love for the first time in his rotten life! Together with his new girlfriend Jane, Teeg plans a big payday: ripping off a WWE-type event. But standing in the way of their tropical paradise retirement fantasy (besides actually pulling off the heist) is Teeg’s youngest son Ricky who’s feeling upset at losing his dad’s attention, and Dan Farraday, a PI on Jane’s trail, hired by Jane’s latest ex, whom she robbed. Will things go right or wrong for Teeg and Jane? Find out in… Cruel Summer!
This is the longest Criminal book Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have done to date at nine issues long. And I think that might be part of the problem of why I didn’t love this one more because, with all that extra space, Brubaker gets a bit loose with his storytelling when I’d have preferred a more tightly focused narrative, which he’s absolutely capable of and has delivered many times before in the past.
For example, the opening chapter establishes a dilemma: Ricky’s stolen a diamond necklace off a senile old wrestler (and I liked how it circled back around to wrestling with the final heist taking place during a wrestling event) to get Teeg out on bail - but the old guy was connected. For the indisgression, Teeg has to find $25k sharpish or Ricky’s dead.
Great - I’m in! Except Brubaker never addresses this storyline again. Or he does - maybe? Because how Teeg meets Jane is working jobs with an old buddy of his and he could’ve been doing this because he needed to make the $25k but Brubaker never specifically says this. You could argue that it’s subtle storytelling but I’d have preferred Brubaker to have more clearly addressed this to connect the two pieces more strongly.
And, if that is the case, that’s a helluva long-winded way of putting Teeg and Jane together. And long-winded is how I’d describe a lot of the book. Like, there’s an entire issue about Ricky and his pal Leo Patterson burgling an arcade (my, this book lives up to the title “Criminal” doesn’t it? SO much constant theft!), which is mildly entertaining in itself so I can see why it got included, but the point seems to be to establish Leo liking the feel of holding a gun - which comes into play later on. Really, an entire issue for that (and to start that junkie subplot I guess but that’s basically a deadend)?
And kudos to Brubaker for making sure every character’s backstory is explained thoroughly - even Leo, who I’d only expected as being a minor supporting player at best - which I’d normally say is a positive, but here felt like too much. I’m not sure what the point of Ricky and Jane sharing a secret - that subplot about the junkie from Ricky’s stint in juvie - was as it seemed to do nothing for either character. That episode was also kinda interesting but, again, pointless.
Then there’s the new private investigator character, Dan Farraday. His storyline starts off well but where he ends up is baffling. He meets Jane once and, despite being a competent professional, he decides to risk everything because he’s suddenly fallen in love with her and is convinced that she wants to be rescued by him? It just felt contrived, particularly as Brubaker’s reasoning seems to be that Dan was in ‘Nam and therefore he seen some shit that fucked with his head and Jane awakened something in him that reminded him of that time… eh. Very tenuous.
I can’t really fault Brubaker for the writing which is always very skilful and convincing. Phillips’ art is good too though, like I’ve noticed before, some of the characters’ proportions were a bit off here and there - a hand, a head, both a tad oversized for some reason. And I like his son Jacob’s colours the least out of all the colourists who’ve worked with these two before - the colour palette isn’t very striking.
I liked the old senile wrestler’s backstory of working as a heel in postwar Tokyo and pretty much everything with Ricky. Unlike Teeg, Ricky is actually likeable and sympathetic - a lonely kid who’s had the worst possible childhood, trying to deal with psychological trauma with no real tools at his disposal, and, tragically, failing constantly. The character moments scattered throughout were subtly revealing - Jane half-asleep and sobbing in the closet, hinting at a nightmarish past, Ricky’s occasional flashbacks to juvie, explaining his chaotic and self-destructive behaviour. Really impressive writing.
I also enjoyed the little moments of fan-service sprinkled throughout like Jacob, the cartoonist we saw in Bad Weekend, as the teenage Dungeon Master in Ricky and Leo’s game of D&D, and Tracy, Ricky’s older brother, the star of the second Criminal book, as he’s about to get shipped out after choosing the army over jail.
Maybe if Teeg was more likeable then the final act would have more meaning to me but I didn’t really care about his fate. Nor did I find most of what he got up to all that interesting unfortunately. The heist itself was compelling though, overall, I found the narrative as a whole not that gripping and overlong for what it was: not that special.
While I appreciated the detail, skill and effort that went into Cruel Summer, I felt that it was too much and, like eating a huge meal of rich, well-made, high quality food, it left me feeling sick and tired afterwards. If it had been shorter, less rambling and more direct, I’d have liked it more - as it is, it’s by no means a bad comic but I didn’t love it like I’d hoped to either.
No comments:
Post a Comment