Capsule Review: Fatale #16 (Image)

Write: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Sean Phillips
Colours: Elizabeth Breitweiser

It’s the nineties and Jo has amnesia and has shacked up with a dysfunctional grunge band. Lance, our main protagonist, is robbing banks to fund the making of a video he hopes will help get them back on track. The singer is based, a little too obviously, on Syd Barrett as he starts to lose his mind and talent. There are others, a guitarist who suffers from nightmares, a practicing doctor and the singer’s girlfriend. I think that is what their roles are. The guitarist is a definite as it is shown in this issue, but the other two just are not memorable enough for me to care what relationship they have to the story. Meanwhile a serial killer with a predilection for necrophilia is hunting for Jo, having previously believed that he’d killed her and that her fresh corpse was waiting for him back in his lair.

Jo seems a little more manipulative than we’ve previously seen, and that makes her character somewhat unpleasant and difficult to empathise with. Sean Phillips turns in another excellent issue of art, his tone retaining and emphasising the dread atmosphere, beautifully supported by the palette of Elizabeth Breitweiser. His portrayal of Jo is perfect, keeping her alluring and sensual without showing too much. This is no titillating pornographic comic. Still there is one misstep when the scene switches to Darcy, the singer’s girlfriend, and we see her on the toilet, knickers around her knees. I’m no prude but I’m not sure what purpose this panel serves. Is it just to try to be edgy (which it isn’t)? There are any number of images that could be used so why this one? We’ve not seen anyone else on the loo; it isn’t a slice of life story where the protagonist wants to bare all; there has been no horror or threat focused on the loo (or if there has been I’ve missed it);  Darcy isn’t even a particular focus of the story thus far. It just seems a little gratuitous and lets the whole thing down somewhat.

As accomplished as it is, I have some reservations about Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Fatale at the moment. Originally this was meant to be a twelve issue series, before Ed Brubaker extended it to an ongoing series. Unfortunately it is starting to seem a little stretched, and I’m unsure as to how much life this particular concept has in it. We’re only on chapter two, so things may change, but up to now this seems like, yet again, Jo is going to mesmerise the men around her, and the men will meet a sticky end and likely will never be the same again. I’ve loved this series, but the story needs a resolution unless there is some major development. Otherwise we could be another sixteen issues down the line and reading about some men falling for Jo and coming to a sticky end again, and again, and again….That failure to live up to its original promise would be the real horror.

Fatale (Image)

Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artists: Sean Phillips

There has been a bit of an internet buzz about some mainstream comics since DC launched their New 52 last year, stealing some of Marvel's thunder, for which they only have the rather insipid and frat boy Avengers vs X-Men as an answer (and we're talking comics here, not films so the Avengers movie doesn't count in this context). However not everything notable about the DC relaunch has been for the better. There have been some well executed comics, particularly Action Comics, Animal Man and All Star Western, but there has also been a good deal of concern about sexist attitudes coming through in their depiction of certain female characters. Let us not forget that they have also let Rob Liefeld write one of the regular series who, although he may be a nice enough person who can deliver flashy, if poorly executed artwork, has never learned even the rudiments of how to write, and possibly never thought that it is a skill that you have to learn.

Ironically amongst all this, the comic that has been arguably the runaway success story is from the company Liefeld help set up in direct competition with Marvel and DC. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips seem to have been on a determined mission to show the world that literate, articulate crime stories the equal of books by Hammett, Chandler, Ellroy and Rankin, can be told within the comics medium. In Fatale they have added Lovecraftian horror to these stories to great effect.

When it comes to detective fiction, comics have one great advantage over both films and novels in that it is easy to refer back to earlier parts of the text to understand something brought to light later on, or to clarify something a character said, or to understand some subtle relationship one character may have to another. This means that ultimately, in the hands of skilled creators, these comic stories can be denser and more complex than anything delivered in other media. Four chapters into the story of Fatale and the creators have constructed just that, a piece that takes full advantage of the comics medium, which rewards reading together with the other issues close to hand.

From interviews with Brubaker we know that the story will eventually return to closer to present day, but at the moment it is depicting events from the 1950s, classic noir territory. Corrupt cops, morally dubious protagonists and the titular femme fatale are all present, but this is far from noir by numbers as Brubaker and Phillips weave genuine horror into the proceedings. So well grounded is the reader in the grim world we know from detective fiction that the horrific elements, when they do rear their heads, are much more shocking as we are suddenly reminded that this is a horror comic. There are plenty of developments to keep our interest piqued as the lengths men will go to for Josephine, the fatale of the title, are revealed, and there are hints that it never ends well for any of them, echoed at the end by something uttered to our main lead for this section, the journalist Hank Raines whose life has fallen to pieces since meeting her. In addition we also get more insight to the corrupt cop, Walt Booker, which lends a degree of sympathy to him. That's the thing with this book, the human characters seem neither good nor evil but human, with all the contradictions of character that entails.

This is a wonderful book, and Sean Phillips art just oozes atmosphere. Alan Moore once said in an interview about V For Vendetta that it wasn't "Alan Moore's V For Vendetta" but his and artist David Lloyd's, as the book was very much a collaboration. That is very much the case here, and one cannot imagine Fatale being the comic it is without one or the other of the creators. They work together so well that it has the feel of a comic made by one writer/artist, with writing and art merging so well that it is futile to try to separate the two. As with their comic Criminal, there are articles included in the individual issues which will not be collected in the trade paperbacks, as a reward to readers for supporting the series, and these make these comics well worth buying in the floppy format. Where else would you find informative and interesting articles on the inspirations for Chandler's Phillip Marlowe, Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. The only real problem is Ed Brubaker recommends so many good books, you may well fill your reading list from now until Christmas.

Criminal: The Last of the Innocent (Marvel Icon)

Writer: Ed Brubaker

Artist: Sean Philips

Marvel Comics launched their Icon imprint back in 2004. The most famous and successful and famous Icon comic is probably Kick-Ass by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., which just goes to show that the world loves to have its prejudices about comics being second-rate, immature entertainment for emotionally stunted boys (albeit boys in their thirties and forties) reinforced. However the most consistent in terms of release and quality is Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, which is now released in story arcs averaging around four issues before going on hiatus until the next arc is ready, and the two creators have released other projects.

Ed Brubaker had been around for some considerable time as an “alternative” comic creator. I first read him in Dark Horse Presents in the late nineties on a strip called The Fall, which failed to grip me but this was more to do with the fact that I didn't have all of the issues of DHP that contained the strip, and it wasn't until Gotham Central from DC Comics, a police procedural that just happened to be set in the Gotham City of Batman, that I really started to take notice. His run on Captain America for Marvel helped reinvigorate the title, but to my mind Criminal is where he really demonstrates his chops.

As a twenty-something in the early nineties I latched onto Sean Phillips art in the relaunch of the Judge Dredd Megazine in which was the John Smith and Sean Phillips strip, Devlin Waugh. At the time I felt that this art was like nothing else I'd seen in comics, and he certainly stood out as somebody who could clearly tell a story whilst at the same time providing some innovative visuals. On reading Criminal all these years later, it is clear that he is the perfect artist for the title. He and Brubaker seem to have developed a definite chemistry. This is very much a comic by two co-creators rather than one dominating the other.

I was a latecomer to Criminal. Page 45 (the comic shop in Nottingham) featured the collection of the first story arc, Coward, as their Comic Book of the Month, and I've not looked back since. 

The title itself consists of self contained story arcs set at different times in Central City. Each arc can be read on its own with no reference to any of the others and provides a complete and satisfying story. However for regular readers there is also the connections that can be made between the different characters. It is not unusual for the people we have met in a previous story to turn up in a minor role, or mentioned, or in the background of some other story. Sometimes we get to see these people later on from a different point of view, or we have seen them earlier and so the mere mention of them has a ring of frisson about it.

The latest story arc is set in 1982 and concerns a man called Riley Richards going back to his home town of Brookview for a few days to see his terminally ill father. Richards is far from innocent, having a fondness for strippers and gambling, and being in debt to Sebastian Hyde, the kingpin of organised crime in Central City. However his trip back to the small town of his childhood is also a trip back to innocence as he stays in his old bedroom that has not been changed since he left, and meets up with his old childhood sweetheart and his best friend. This glimpse of how simple life used to be gives Riley the wherewithal to get rid of his debt and to be with his childhood sweetheart. All he needs to do is murder his wife, who just happens to be from a wealthy family and whose father made him sign a pre-nuptial agreement. What follows is the very opposite of innocent as he murders his adulterous wife and frames her lover, who happens to be another childhood acquaintance. Oh and he kills his childhood best friend too.

As usual with this title, and noir in general, none of the characters are what you could term wholesome. The title would seem to refer to the one person totally untainted by anything, Riley's childhood girlfriend Lizzie Gordon. You find yourself pulling for Riley and wanting him to win through, but the sucker punch in him killing his best friend is quite a blow. It shows just how far gone Riley is, and brings to mind the quote from Macbeth after he has murdered his friend, the noble Banquo:

“...I am in blood

Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o'er.”

• Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4

Sean Phillips compliments the story perfectly, utilising the dark style consistent with the rest of the series, with a more innocent style reminiscent of Archie for the flashbacks to more innocent times. This is effective as used throughout, but the real payoff comes in the last panel, where we see Riley and Lizzie together, drawn in the innocent style, against a backdrop of a seedy city scene drawn in the more familiar dark, sinister style; an omen of the changes that are about to come crashing into the innocent Lizzie Gorden's life we wonder?

Criminal is a wonderful comic and this latest arc has been it's strongest yet. The plot may not have exactly been original, but it was executed with sufficient panache and style to feel fresh, and Sean Phillips excelled his usual high standards, pulling out all the stops to maximise the emotional resonance of the tale.