Bad Weekend

Set at a 1997 comics convention, Bad Weekend follows Jacob Kurtz as he's roped into minding Hal Crane, the legendary but bitter artist he once assisted, during the weekend Hal receives a lifetime achievement award. Hal — cheated out of the money and recognition his cartoon work should have earned him, and still grieving his own late mentor — proves impossible to control, dragging Jacob into one reckless situation after another.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips use the convention setting to dig into the comics industry's history of exploiting its own artists, framing Hal's bitterness as earned rather than merely pathetic.