The Fade Out, Act One

Now this is more like it.

Judging by the reviews and word-of-mouth online, I was one of the only people who didn’t think that “Fatale” was another stunning addition to the existing canon of works from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.  It was a solidly constructed supernatural tale, but the stories it told never grabbed me in the way that their work on “Sleeper,” “Criminal,” and “Incognito” did.  Having a mythology that felt liked rehashed Lovecraft didn’t help either.  With “The Fade Out,” the two have decided to make a full-on noir story inspired by the films that defined the genre.  Far from being any kind of rip-off, this first volume shows the creators to be back at the top of their collaborative game.

Things begin in Hollywood circa 1948.  The blacklist is still going strong and the studio system is on the verge of being dismantled.  Parties at the homes of the town’s biggest stars are almost as big as the behind-the-scenes efforts to keep what goes on there out of the pages.  This is the world that screenwriter Charlie Parish lives in and experiences the worst side of when he wakes up after one of Earl Rath’s extravaganzas in the same room as the corpse of the leading lady, Valeria Sommers, from the film he was currently working on.  It’s clear to Charlie that she was murdered, but the night before is only coming back to him in bits and pieces at the moment.  Though Valeria’s death is fixed up to look like a suicide by persons unknown at the studio, Charlie knows part of the truth about what really happened and is determined to find out the rest.

A murdered blonde starlet.  A down-on-his-luck screenwriter.  Seedy goings-on in Hollywood.  The only way “The Fade Out” could be more noir is if its creators were aiming for self-parody.  Yet the series operates at a slow burn as Charlie finds out more information on Valeria’s death.  We do too, but not by much.  Brubaker unspools enough clues and hints to not only make this a tantalizing mystery, but to increase its scope and show that it’s part of a conspiracy with a bigger impact than the death of one woman.  What’s here leaves me eager to know more about what’s going on.

There’s also an interesting cast running about this narrative as well.  Charlie is our protagonist and while his desire to find out what happened to Valeria may earn our sympathy, he’s still a morally compromised individual.  He’s only able to work as a screenwriter through a devil’s bargain with a friend who he involves in this case through less-than-honorable means.  This friend, Gil, is also a drunk with what appear to be delusions of grandeur in regards to seeing the guilty party in this crime brought to justice.  We also get to see the rise of the new blonde starlet, Maya, who is brought on to replace Valeria and the things she’s had to do and give up along the way to get where she is.  Even minor characters like Brodsky, the shady head of studio security, or Jack “Flapjack” Jones, a former child star and African American with a thing for white ladies, have some worthwhile intrigue about them that has me curious to see what role they’ll have in the story as it goes on.

Brubaker also elevates the story above “Fatale” by ditching the decades (centuries, really) spanning uber-story and focusing solely on the details of this specific period.  In retrospect, the writer did a pretty good job of defining each of the eras for the extended stories in that title.  As “The Fade Out” takes place in one period (so far) he’s able to ground things in ways that dovetail back into the main plot.  Granted, these details may be somewhat confusing to anyone who isn’t familiar with the old Hollywood studio system and the blacklist that resulted from the Red Scare.  Brubaker does explain things well enough in the context of the story, to the point where you’ll understand why the idea of Ronald Reagan informing on other guild members is kind of a big deal.  That’s only part of the fun, as I think that “The Road to Berlin” would’ve been a fine addition to the Hope/Crosby canon.

All of this effort to evoke a specific era would’ve fallen flat if the art didn’t sell it on the page.  Since Sean Phillips is the artist involved here, that’s not a problem.  Always at home in stories where the action thrives in the shadows, he brings the period to life in all of its sleaze and style.  From extravagant parties in the hills, to chaos on the film set, and drunken meetings in alleyways, Phillips makes it feel like all of these things are part of the same world.  The artist also employs some effective uses of stencils and photoreferencing to evoke the hazy mists of Charlie’s memory over the course of this volume.  It’s more fantastic work from one of the best artists in the business.

Even if parts of the story may be a little too “inside baseball” for some, this first volume has been a welcome return to form (kind of a running theme this week…) for Brubaker and Phillips.  It’s a very engaging noir story that plays to the creators’ strengths and sets up a compelling mystery from the start.  That this first volume only collects four issues may seem a bit on the light side for a trade paperback.  Don’t let that put you off as there’s enough story here to leave you satisfied by the time you’re done with it.