Pink Comic: Bad Weekend: a Criminal novella by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, 2019, 9781534314405.
A few weeks ago I drove my wife to work since she hates driving at night and driving in snow. I hung out for four hours and got some reading done. I don't think I fell asleep. While I was there I checked out the shelves, grabbed this graphic novel, and read it while I sat around all night.
Hal Crane is a famous comic artist and jerk. Crane's professional life has been a series of blow-ups and bad behaviors. One of his former art assistants, Jacob, has been asked/hired to squire Crane around a comics convention in 1997 and Jacob narrates the tale.
Hal Crane is getting a lifetime achievement award at the convention. Crane smokes a lot, pulls a gun on a art dealer, propositions convention women he assumes are prostitutes, helps create fraudulent original artwork for sale, skips out on the panels he is paid to appear on, and otherwise acts poorly. For years Crane's artwork has been widely loved and people tolerate his behavior because of this. Plus, as one characters says, " That's how he kept getting all those inking gigs... getting his editors laid."
Crane spends a decent amount of time trying to find a piece of artwork he lost or sold or something (we don't find out until the final panels). We learn about Crane's professional and personal mistakes and guilt. How his mentor died in a car wreck as Crane rode along. Crane's long estranged adult daughter who wants nothing to do with Crane.
I enjoyed the artwork. Pink is the predominant color - I'm sure there is a reason for that but I don't know what that reason it.
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