Review by Karl Verhoven

The Criminal stories by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips commonly feature basically decent people who make a mistake, fall for temptation or become caught up in events beyond their control. Cruel Summer begins with an exception.

The Hyde organisation and the Lawless family have featured in earlier stories, usually the ones causing the unfortunate circumstances for others. Teeg Lawless is the sort of guy people feel the need to append “PS – don’t steal anything” to notes if he’s staying over, and the short of these circumstances is that Teeg needs to find $25,000 in two weeks. Miraculously, he comes up with a plan.

The introductory chapter is a masterclass on how to set a plot in motion, Brubaker having Teeg stumble around reliving the past until something drops into place. And then Brubaker reveals what’s going to go wrong, so setting up the suspense for the remainder of Cruel Summer. That’s just one aspect, though, as Teeg’s path crosses with so many others, all of them distinctively brought to elegant life by Phillips. Teeg represents the cast members easily understood, but some are more complicated, like Teeg’s new girlfriend Jane and his son Ricky.

Brubaker’s toyed with an updated version of noir standby the femme fatale in earlier stories, but he and Phillips explored that idea in greater detail with bells and whistles in Fatale. Jane, though, has the qualities fitting the description, being beautiful, manipulative and self-centred. She’s only central to a couple of chapters, but prompts much of what happens, and the way Brubaker so casually drops in elements of her past is beautifully understated.

As Brubaker and Phillips come with quality guaranteed, there’s no point in oversell, but the late 1980s setting involves a few cameos for people who’ve had their own starring arc in Criminal. There are insights into who they become, but as interludes among the main events. Phillips gets to draw one glorious cinematic moment common to heist movies, and Brubaker supplies some excellent chapter-ending cliffhangers in what develops into a compulsive epic and the longest Criminal story to date. It’s great.

Cruel Summer was originally released under that title alone, but with the Criminal TV show about to drop it’s been rebranded for reissue.