On the Coffee Table: The Fade Out, Act Three

Title: The Fade Out, Act Three

Writer: Ed Brubaker

Artist: Sean Phillips

via Amazon

Act Three is the conclusion of Brubaker and Phillips's comic noir series, The Fade Out.  Issues 9-12 are collected here.  The murder mystery is resolved, sort of.  To say much more would be to say too much for anyone planning to read it.  The resolution is satisfyingly unsatisfying if that makes sense.  Secrets are revealed and suppressed, maintaining the illusions befitting the late 1940s Hollywood setting.  Charlie, the protagonist, remains just short of likable yet thoroughly sympathetic.  The broken hero - also entirely fitting.

Overall, the series is excellent - the art is beautiful and the writing both cagey and suspenseful.  I'm definitely eager for more from these creators.  My reflections on the two previous collections can be found here and here.

On the Coffee Table: The Fade Out, Act Two

Title: The Fade Out, Act Two
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Sean Phillips

via Amazon

The Brubaker/Phillips 1940s era film industry-based comic noir continues (see my thoughts on Act One here).  This is the second of three books, collecting issues 5-8 of the original series.  The murder mystery introduced in book one proceeds relatively slowly here in favor of much needed development for Charlie, our protagonist.  He falls in love with Maya, the blonde starlet who has risen to take the place of Valeria, the murder victim.  The portrayal of the naivety of new romance is quite convincing.  A blackmail subplot is emerging as well.

I'm waiting for the twist.  Charlie's suspicions have yet to move beyond the obvious and there has to be a twist at some point.  I'm looking forward to Act Three.

On the Coffee Table: The Fade Out

Title: The Fade Out, Act One
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Author: Sean Phillips

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!