While I was busy moving and trying to keep up with the regular list of titles on my pull list Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips released the first issue of The Fade Out. Wasting no time after wrapping up Fatale, the new noir series is set in post-WWII Hollywood during the Red Scare. With a second printing of the first issue timed with the release of issue #2 (which I have yet to get to) I can begin to see what I’ve missed.
The Fade Out #1 opens with a flawed protagonist, screenwriter Charlie Parish, who wakes up from a crazy Hollywood party to find his movie’s star dead in the other room and no answers for how he or she got there. Fearful of how it looks, Charlie removes any signs of his presence and the studio’s security chief goes even further to re-stage the crime scene to appear like a suicide.
Although it lacks the strong female lead of Velvet or Josephine, there’s much to recommend here as Brubaker and Phillips go all-in for a period crime story with all the trimmings (making use of research assistant Amy Condit) whose motives may take quite some time to unravel. Worth a look.
[Image, $3.50]
