Monday, February 18, 2019

On the Coffee Table: The Fade Out

Title: The Fade Out, Act One
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Author: Sean Phillips
Image result for the fade out act one
via Wikipedia
Comic book noir.

Charlie, a struggling screenwriter, wakes up in an unfamiliar bath tub after a little-remembered evening of drunken carousing.  On the living room floor, he finds a beautiful starlet strangled to death.  As he works to piece things together, the dark, manipulative, misogynist world of late '40s Hollywood unfolds.  Every man's a womanizer.  The studio boss has a casting couch (maybe?) and secret passages.  The more we learn, the more twisted the tale becomes.

The Fade Out is just the sort of story my wife loves so it's no surprise she discovered it first.  Act One collects the first four of the twelve-issue run, originally published from 2014-2016.  So far, the protagonist narrator is one of the least interesting characters though that changes as we gradually learn more about him, including the fact he worked with Clark Gable on his war documentaries.  The artwork is dark and pulpy, a good fit for the genre.  Definitely an R rating: nudity, violence and language.

I'm certainly in for this one through to the end.  Gotta know what happened!

10 comments:

  1. ooooou this sounds like a good read.

    cheers, parsnip

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  2. Sounds like one my wife would enjoy.

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  3. There's a ton of Brubaker comics out there you'll probably enjoy reading after this.

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  4. That time period is like it is in B/W, but now it is becoming color as we understand how amazing it was.

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  5. Replies
    1. Aw shucks... not sure she always thinks so. But then, she's 15.

      We've certainly encouraged an interest in comic books, though she tends towards lighter fare herself. Archie. Peanuts. Definitely more her speed.

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