Image Comics releases a graphic novel that focuses on the worst kind of summer year where all the action is all nothing but another crime scene in Cruel Summer the graphic novel.
So here’s the thing, what happens if you take one of the Clint Eastwood movies and take one of the Image graphic novels that took place in New York, you’d get this comic while you’re counting 10 playing hide and seek and you’ll see that one of the criminals are hiding of the corner of the street. I can’t imagine more of what the worst summer season is like when the heatwave roams all over New York and everyone is sweating like a pig. But not, this comic is going to be more epic and dramatic than reading Kill or Be Killed graphic novel on Image. Speaking of, this whole comic is both written and illustrated by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, and they’re the same creators who made Kill or Be Killed and Bad Weekend which that comic turned out to be a legit graduate student Casey Jones inspired vigilante genre, the bad weekend is a fallen comic artist who is on crack genre, while this one is a Clint Eastwood inspired genre with some horrible experience during summer camp. I said it too much because these are one of the comics that actually makes it to have more experience to have some action.
The front cover shows the main character staring at you smoking with his cigarette, and apparently, the whole color of the character is all blue, all monochromic again. And this comic is colored by Jacob Phillips which would every comic created by the same team would be more realistic because every panel of the comic that you’ll see, uses pastel or some serious digital brushes and pencils on Clip Studio Paint. But in reality, whenever I see the progress of the comic, the artist can paint from ink to the panels, I’m not making up, believe me, I checked. So this comic is like any other comic which can be focused on corruption and crime, this comic though is just some people who became gangsters during the summer until the end. The comic starts when some kid named Ricky is stealing his grandfather’s necklace which is his prized possession and he knocked him out at the end, but to do what? To sell at a pawn shop just to release someone in prison who is Teeg Lawless, Ricky’s father who was always hungry and shocked to hear when he beat up his grandfather. Then the rest of the story focuses on Teeg who apparently acts like a detective and a crime lord, the other story focuses on a cop named Dan Farraday who doesn’t appreciate bullshit while he’s working on a case and being knocked out by Teeg with a wrench. There are some other characters that are actually connected to the Lawless family, however, this story turned out to be more of a sideshow of storytelling because Ricky had a complicated life, which is family issues I guess. This comic is more of a crime that is circling the whole town just to get people terrified, I noticed why this is called Cruel Summer which is when the worst is over in 2020, something actually backfired the whole society.
The storytelling is interesting, unlike the other comics made from them, this one has so much detail throughout the story, and its tragic moments whenever someone stabs you in the back, and it happened in 1988 when his dad is becoming a douche at the moment, and then marries another woman that made him pissed off. It’s kind of ironic, but it gets the idea of how the family is torn apart and it led to a downfall. I’ve never seen so much raw emotion and angst which is coming from the same whinny kid who plays D&D and releases his dad from prison. I talked about the art from Kill to be Killed review, but this time, it went to perform an art cinema which makes it more realistic. Also at the end of the story, you’ll see Sean’s art including the original serialization of Criminal, the selected essay illustrations which include Marilyn Monroe on it, and the process which the artist used ebony and charcoal during work in progress for the comic. Cruel Summer is just another comic to experience terror and fear for the readers and makes it more emotionally ill over the family.
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