Fatale #24 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: Doomed by a beautiful woman’s kiss…

The Review: I’m kind of surprised to see the end come so soon, but I suppose allowances can’t be made just because I caught on to the series late. [Speaking of late, these reviews are late because I’ve been traveling—post-Bar relief, you know. More on that later.] Anyway, I have a feeling Brubaker realized that he was quickly reaching that limit when trying to plumb anything more from Fatale would just bum us out.

As you can probably expect, things don’t end very well for anybody in this series. In fact, they don’t end well at all. The more accurate evaluation of the situation is that things don’t end as badly as they could have for a couple people. [Spoiler alert!] While Nick and Jo do manage to survive the tribulations of the issue, there are scars. For Jo, all the years of her unnaturally long life finally catch up to her; Nick is left catatonic in an asylum, with Jo his sole visitor (and not for much longer, by her estimation). For all that, Jo reflects that “she’s the lucky one, not Nick. Because she got to escape.”

Fatale #23 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: Nick and Jo engage in a little…what’s the opposite of sexual healing?

The Review: Even though I’m a self-confessed romantic, there’s one thing about modern-day romance that never fails to irritate me: when someone decides to set aside a perfectly functional, stable, loving relationship just because they’re not “feeling it.” And that doesn’t even compare to the outright dismay I feel when that same person decides they feel it a lot more with someone who practically lives in a city of red flags. Call me a downer, but that doesn’t sound much like love to me.

That’s pretty much the situation Nick finds himself in now with Jo. He claims that what he feels for her renders all past dalliances as pathetic imitations, that it’s enough to make all the pain she’s made him go through, even to the point of mutilation, worth it. I’m inclined to be skeptical, but once the two finally get it on, the experience is so mind-blowingly fantastic, so sublime and ethereal, that even I’m halfway convinced that they’re not just having sex, but making love.

Fatale #22 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: Even being evil can get pretty drab after a while.

The Review: As a relative latecomer to Fatale, I feel like I’ve dealt with my lack of background knowledge pretty well. The one character I still struggle with understanding is Sommerset, Jo’s scaly, blinded archnemisis. To date, I still have no idea what his deal is. Besides the basic questions of where he comes from and what he’s after, there are more specific curiosities. Why is he scaly? How was he blinded? What’s his exact problem with Jo? With Wikipedia pretty much useless when it comes to recent Image series, I was afraid I might just be left in the dark until the end.

Fortunately, it seems that I’ve only been operating in the same darkness as everyone else, as this issue provides a fairly complete summary of Sommerset’s life from his first resurrection to his present schemes. Just to make it clear what kind of man Jo’s dealing with here, Brubaker takes us to San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake, depicting it as the product of a hellish ritual to make Sommerset into the new bishop of hell on earth, with the ensuing casualties as his empowering sacrifices. Whatever forces he’s worshipping, they are very real and very powerful.

Fatale #21 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: It’s just as everyone feared—tattoos do make a guy cooler.

The Review: As intrigued as I’ve been by Jo’s invariably sordid encounters with various men, I’ve also been hoping to get a broader sense of what Fatale is really about. Again, immortal woman who drives men crazy is entertaining enough—certainly, it’s been viscerally horrifying enough. But I’m much more interested in the why’s and how’s of all this.* How immortal? Why men? Why crazy? And what for? Surely it can’t just be for the pointless torment of this poor woman and the men around her.

Fortunately, it seems like I’ll be getting my wish pretty soon, as Fraction reveals that Jo has been working on those very same questions herself. She is helped in this regard by Otto, a geriatric scholar who also happens to be the only man unaffected by Jo’s sway. This alone makes him an immediately arresting figure, especially once you take in all his body tattoos, placed on him as a child by his Native-American grandfather. That suggests a certain degree of foresight on someone’s part, doesn’t it, at least in regards to Jo?

Fatale #20 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: Jo demonstrates her own brand of vigilante justice by kissing a serial murderer.

The Review: Coming on this title as late as I did, I never got much of a chance to see Jo as she presently stands, which is to say, at her most competent.  Not that being vulnerable has made her any less dangerous; if the fates of Amsterdam are anything to go by, Jo can definitely bring the “fatal” in “fatale.”  But that’s only made me even more interested in seeing how Jo handles herself when she has all her physical and mental faculties in order.

Unsurprisingly, she’s much more calculating.  From the outset, Brubaker reveals that Jo would have been fine with Nick languishing in jail until she was ready to use him: “She wasn’t supposed to be out here yet at all.  But when she heard about Nicholas Lash’s escape from custody, her carefully laid plans went right out the window.”  She rescues Nick not really out of true affection, but simply because she needs him for some other purpose.

All-New X-Factor #2 – Review

By: Peter David (writer), Carmine Di Giandomenico (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist)

The Story: Pietro finds himself dodging bullets, returning insults, and surrounded by people who want him dead, including the ones he’s there to save. So, really, a pretty average day for him.

The Review: Now that we’ve established our team and the questionable multi-national funding them, it’s time for this all-new X-Factor to take on their first mission. In classic Peter David style, the issue pokes all kinds of holes in our preconceived notions of the genre.

One of the most interesting elements of this mission is our antagonist, one Dr. Terrance Hoffman. Though we’re still reading comics awash in a sea of Silver Age nostalgia, it feels like a long time since we’ve had a fair share of old-fashioned ‘mad scientists’. Well Hoffman certainly fits the bill. He lacks some staying power, but he’s a charming opponent with some fascinating theories on mutation that just might come back into play. I can’t help but notice that all his talk of energy conversion contrasts cleanly with Gambit’s abilities.

Speaking of Gambit, he remains our lead character, though David does a good job of spreading the love between his three protagonists. David’s lack of experience in writing Remy is a little more apparent, now that he’s not stealing things left and right. His accent seems to pop in and out, and at times he seems a little too normal. He’s not quite the everyman that Madrox was and, funny as it is to hear he and Pietro argue about Star Wars, I’m not sure that it reads as a convincing Gambit. Polaris, on the other hand, suits David’s style wonderfully. She’s competent without being perfect and relatable without being unfocused.

It will be clear to anyone reading this issue why David’s Quicksilver has a reputation for being a scene-stealer. Pietro’s exactly the sort of character that’s fun to read about because you’d hate him so in real life. The script has a great handle on Pietro’s powers and way of thinking. Unfortunately this story has serious ties to some of Quicksilver’s more questionable recent history. It’s explained pretty well within the issue, but nice as it is that David found a way to make something out of those stories, my opinion has generally been that the less Marvel references its crazy, inbred, decade-long X-Men event conga the better.

Fatale #19 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: Jo successfully completes her mission to Yoko a band.

The Review: Although the implosion of Amsterdam is really a small-time accomplishment for someone like Jo, it’s also given us a glimpse of all the kinds of things Jo can do to people, especially men, with her talents.  If nothing else, it’s been fascinating watching each of the Amsterdam men—Skip, Tom, Jon, and Lance—have a completely different experience with their memory-stricken guest, even though they all inevitably break down in the end.

Though they’re all ultimately doomed by their relationship with Jo, the nature of their decline varies according to their individual personalities, at least where Tom and Jon are concerned.  The songwriter’s already self-destructive genius eventually consumes him from within, while the guitarist’s tendency to follow the lead of his bandmates is amplified, allowing their actions to build to the point where he can’t avoid the splash damage.  For these two, Jo seems to intensify their inherent failings, but the effects she has on the others are more difficult to classify

Fatale #18 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: They don’t have skeletons in the closet, but do they have bodies in the basement.

The Review: I may be speaking from a position of ignorance here, but up to this point, I still don’t know if I find Jo particularly compelling as a protagonist or not.  Of course, this may just be bad timing on my part, having jumped aboard the title just when most of Jo’s personality was wiped by amnesia, but my ambivalence remains.  Not that it matters all that much.  The things that happen around her are thoroughly interesting, even if she herself remains an enigma.

For example, I still don’t know if I genuinely empathize with her or not.  All the time that she’s shedding tears, sending rivulets of mascara down her face like she had her makeup done by Alice Cooper, my instinct is to shrug.  She’s a tragic character, obviously, but looking at what happens to the people around her, I say she has very little complain about.  Of them all, she alone retains the ability to control her actions, and with that free will, she chooses to relinquish control and hide from the responsibility that entails.

Fatale #17 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: Let this be a lesson to all the boys—“no” means no.

The Review: Once you get to a certain age and gather around you a certain group of friends, specifically one made up of both young men and women, you’ll start having a lot of long, earnest discussions about the differences between men and women.  If you start on that tack, it won’t be long before you start talking about who suffers the break-up more.  In some ways, the debate is moot; we all know that though the symptoms vary, the pain is the same stabbing one we all get.

That said, it’s more common to see the brokenhearted woman in her sweats, curled up in a snuggie, watching TV and eating ice-cream,* but as this issue of Fatale demonstrates, the jilted man is quite a mess himself.  Granted, Brubaker portrays the many abandoned men of Jo’s life at a fairly extreme level of devastation, but their emotional craziness does hint at how deeply the guys can feel the loss of their girl.  What’s really well-done about all this is how convincingly Brubaker can paint so many shades of romantic madness.

Fatale #16 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: Jo proves that being a groupie and a muse are not mutually exclusive roles.

The Review: “Magical realism” was a term we threw around a lot back in my creative writing days.  It seemed a fancy concept back then, but now I think it was just people’s way of getting shoehorned into certain genres: fantasy, sci-fi, horror, occult, etc.  At any rate, the phrase is a useful way of describing the most convincing supernatural elements, the kind that feel as though they can exist, barely perceptible, in the real world.

The most impressive quality of Brubaker’s craft is the how, even though he’s made it clear that a very real mysticism is at work in this series, he grounds it so well in the ordinary world that you don’t always know when you’re seeing magic or simply the spectacle of human behavior and psychology gone wrong.  This is the wellspring of one of Fatale’s most compelling questions: whether Jo’s allure comes from her unusual nature, or whether it’s simply the byproduct of being a charming, sensitive, utterly beautiful woman.

Fatale #15 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: A windfall of (stolen) money and a beautiful (wounded) woman—lucky for him.

The Review: I was in a bad romance, once.  I won’t turn this into a confessional, but suffice to say, it was one of those things where the attraction was so strong that it overshadowed everything else—almost.  Even though all along I sort of knew she was wrong for me—wrong for anyone who wanted to live a peaceful life—that magnetism kept us in place for a long time, until our problems got to the point where even that couldn’t save the relationship.

So I get how romantic entanglements that seem doomed from the start can happen, and how you can get caught in that snare again and again, even against your wishes.  Granted, for the men in Jo’s life, this is more the byproduct of her supernatural powers than anything else, but that only makes their bewildered, desperate attachment to her more sympathetic.  They seem incapable of resisting her allure, even from a distance.

Fatale #14 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: It’s not a good idea to sneak into a Nazi camp armed with just a pretty face.

The Review: The one nice thing about striking a bunch of titles from your pull list is that it frees up some funds to try out new ones.  For me, I’d heard a great deal about Fatale, nearly all of it good, so after having recently Dropped Constantine, Demon Knights, and Katana, it seemed like a prime opportunity to pick up the series.  Besides, I’m a real sucker for the supernatural and classic pulp, and Fatale seems to promise both in great abundance.

My timing couldn’t have been better.  As it turns out, this issue is something of a transition chapter, a flashback to Josephine’s earlier days.  In many ways, it could have very well served as a debut issue, as it quickly introduces you to our lead, the series’ premise, and some of its most important mysteries.  On the same note, however, if you’re a long-time reader of Fatale, it’s entirely possible the developments in this issue will be redundant to you.

Fatale #11 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), and Dave Stewart (colors)

The Story:  Flashing back to the 1930s, Jo goes out to the desert to meet a dying pulp writer whose creepy tales are a little too close for comfort.

The Review: Expanding beyond its initial maxi-series format,  Brubaker and Phillips make the absolute most of the done-in-one, making it tell a complete, self-contained story that nonetheless manages to have nice links to the rest of the series.

Much has been made of Fatale‘s Lovecraftian flavours, but this single issue feels by far the most Lovecraftian of all in its story-telling.  Not only does it hint at those lurking, greater evils that lurk just beneath the surface, only ever hinted at, but the pace and atmosphere also mirrors Lovecraft.  Namely, there’s an overarching dread to the comic; you’re always aware that there’s something really, really horrible just out of sight.  There’s one absolutely magical moment in the comic where I was actually afraid to turn the page, distressed at what would be revealed.  That is horror comics at its absolute finest.  It’s the sort of reading that grabs you by the throat and squeezes.

Fatale #8 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (script), Sean Phillips (art), and Dave Stewart (colors)

The Story: Nick realizes that he met Jo a lot earlier than he thought, Suzy discovers Jo’s secret, and apparently Jo’s enemies are just as enduring and tenacious as she is.

The Review:  Fatale is a very unique Brubaker/Phillips joint.  It’s not only the generic question, with that heavy element of Lovecraftian horror (and boy, we get a heavy dose of that this month) but also the way the narration is structured.  With a lot more issues to work with, Fatale is in many ways a more leisurely read, one that takes its time and sets a very controlled pace.   What keeps this from being decompressed and boring, however, is that this pace allows Brubaker to insert a lot of moving parts, so much so that it can be difficult to keep track of everything if you’re reading the book monthly; it’s a book that really makes you think as it immerses you in its world.

As such, when you get an issue like this that starts making connections, it’s an extremely satisfying experience.  With this story-arc taking place in a different time period from arc prior, it’s really a lot of fun seeing Brubaker make strong connections and links between them.  There’s a strong sense that everything is related and nothing in the comic happens or is present “just cuz.”

Fatale #7 – Review

by Ed Brubaker (writer), Sean Phillips (art), and Dave Stewart (colors)

The Story: Josephine finds herself pulled into Miles’ and Suzy’s world of Hollywood cults and sacrifices, which may be more familiar than she thought.

The Review:  As much as I’ve been loving Fatale, two issues in, and I think this second arc is actually better than the first.  With only one time period to worry about, the series is more coherent and the plot elements easier to keep track of.

And speaking of time periods, Brubaker is knocking his creepy, occult 1970s Hollywood theme out of the park.  Hollywood has never felt seedier.  Brubaker’s use of hard to believe true stories of Hollywood cults and Sean Phillips’ art, which is portrays a world permanently stuck in a dusty, blazing hot sunset filled with desperate characters, Fatale is an immersive read that is truly evocative of the time period and location.  The best way I can describe it is that it feels as though the entire comic, its world and its characters, sweat.  The world is dark, shadowy, and seedy with horrors lurking just below the surface in a manner that is a mix of conspiracy thriller and Lovecraftian horror while characters seem to all have a vice over them, gradually crushing and closing in with every passing page.

Another aspect that, for me, has made this arc stronger is the Miles character.  Miles is very, very reminiscent of the very best characters of Brubaker and Phillips’ Criminal.  Once again, we have a bad guy finding himself doing good things.  The result is a character that is locked in a really compelling grey area, pursuing goals that completely contradict and run contrary to each other.  He’ll help out Jo, while secretly trying to profit from selling out Suzy.  The result is a character that’s in a kind of moral existential crisis – he’s a scoundrel and proudly defines himself as such, and yet he finds himself doing good things again and again, playing the hero and putting his neck out in doing so, doing things that run counter to the scoundrel he is.  So while he shoots up with heroin while plotting his betrayal of Suzy, he finds himself slinking around with Jo in graveyards filled with murderous cultists.  Miles’ narration in these situations is fantastic, as he finds himself unable to explain these contradictions.

Fatale #5 – Review

By: Ed Brubaker (writer), Sean Phillips (art), and Dave Stewart (colors)

The Story: Battles rage in secret tunnels under the city with cultists and Cthulian squid-men aplenty.

The Review:  One of the things that has made Fatale such an alluring series is the constant sense of horrible, unknown things lurking just beyond what we know or are aware of in the comic.  This month, in the final issue of the first storyarc, Brubaker lets us peek behind the curtain.  In other words, we actually get to see the cultist society in action, we get to see the secret tunnels that exist beneath the city, and we get to see Bishop’s true face.  Thus far, we’ve only really seen the surface levels with hints of Lovecraftian hoodoo below, but here, Brubaker lets us see what lurks beneath.  There’s a sense in which Brubaker is letting us see what he’s been hiding from us for the past few months, only ever letting us use our imaginations, and the result is immensely satisfying.

Moreover, this issue works so well because of the complete difference in pacing.  When the horrors beneath the surface of the city and the powers of Bishop were only ever hinted at, the series felled taut and controlled.  Now, however, that we’ve stepped behind, or rather below, the curtain, that control is completely lost.  Action and violence abound and what we get is 27-pages of non-stop thrills, twists, and excitement.  It’s an absolutely wild read completely juxtaposed to the past few issues.  The fascade of hints, dread, and control has been lifted and instead, Brubaker and Phillips immerse in a breathless frenzy of mayhem.

Previews – May 2012

Maybe we’ll start this as a new feature?  I’ll flip through Previews, tell you what I think is worthwhile and you can tell me I’m a moron.  Sound like fun?

DARK HORSE

– Axe Cop: President of the World #1 – At some point, this odd comic that is written by 8 year old Malachai Nicolle and illustrated by his brother, 31 year old Ethan, will lose it’s magic.  Someday Malachai will probably “grow up” too much or become too self-aware, but until that happens we should enjoy the ride.  Here’s a link to my review of last Spring’s Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth #1.

– Early issues where you can hop on before it’s too late.  Fatima: The Blood Spinners #2 by Gilbert Hernandez, Mind Mgmt #3 by Matt Kindt and The Massive #2 by Brian Wood.

– Eerie Comics #1 brings back the beloved old Warren Publishing title.  It’s really hard to go wrong with a horror anthology in black and white.  Of course, don’t miss the big brother: Creepy Comics #9.

Fatale #1 – Review

by Ed Brubaker (writing), Sean Phillips (art), and Dave Stewart (colors)

The Story: Mysterious assassins in bowler hats!  Exploding airplanes!  Cultists!  Nazis!

The Review: Breathe a sigh of relief:  Fatale is just as good as you were hoping it might be and only further substantiates the fact that the team of Brubaker and Phillips can do no wrong.

However, Fatale is a very different beast from Criminal, Incognito, or Sleeper.  While, by Brubaker’s own admission, all of these series were meant to be distillations of everything he and Phillips love about comics, nowhere does this feel truer than Fatale.  This is clearly a book where Brubaker and Phillips have thrown together all the stuff they enjoy and the result is a book that feels exciting.

This is particularly the case when it comes to the books genre.  At different points, it’s a noir/crime comic, a mystery, a horror, and a pulpy action/spy comic.  Really, in one issue, Brubaker touch upon so many different sorts of pulp fiction that it’s actually mind-boggling that this actually coheres.  But cohere it does, and what we get is one very unique and compelling kind of beast.  It’s a hybrid of all these genres with all of their various strengths.  The horror elements are gruesome, the action/spy stuff is exciting, and the crime/mystery elements tantalize.

And really, what all this leads to is a comic where you never know what to expect.  You’re never sure when and where the high-spots will come.  As such, Fatale is a book that keeps you riveted and keeps you reading.  On one page, you get a thrilling car chase reminiscent of the famous airplane sequence in North by Northwest, at other points you get that psychological, moody narration fans of Criminal will be familiar with, and then, flip the page, and you’ve got gruesome Satanic rituals and hints of the paranormal, and mysterious Nazi flashbacks.  Fatale is truly a book that is full of turbulence, constantly throwing you for a loop yet always keeping you anchored to its world and it’s developing story.  Not only do you not know what to expect, but Brubaker leaves us with so many fascinating questions.  In many ways, it’s a crime and noir comic where the presence of the paranormal makes anything possible.

Black Widow #6 – Review

By Duane Swierczynski (writer), Manuel Garcia (artist), Lorenzo Ruggiero (inker), Jim Charalmpidis (colorist)

You Know What I Like?: Digital comics. I do. I’m getting into them in a serious way and I’d like to put some thoughts together to share with you on the matter. You know why I like them though? About a month or two ago, Marvel offered the digital version of Black Widow #1 for free through their comic portal app. Having always been fond of the character, and still bitter over her lame appearance in Secret Avengers, I downloaded the comic and ended up loving it. I loved it so much, in fact, that I went to my local comic shop the next day and picked up the rest of the issues I was missing so that I could catch up with the story. The point I’m making here is that Marvel offered me a free issue of a comic and ended up not only earning a new customer on another of their comics, but they drove traffic into the direct market. This is smart. But I digress.

The Story: This issue marks the beginning of a new storyline and a new creative team. When journalist Nick Crane learns that the presence of a mysterious woman in black may have had something to do with his father’s suicide, he is determined to discover who she is and exact vengeance. The thing about that though is the Black Widow would also like to know more about this woman bearing her likeness because she’s been assassinating key political targets around the world and drawing some very unwarranted attention and retribution onto Natalia.

The Good: Simply put, this is one hell of a great book! Nevermind that, we need more comics like this featuring strong female characters. Black Widow is simply a great espionage story with enough action, intrigue, and occasional weirdness to keep me coming back for more. With the arrival of Swierczynski and Garcia this month, we have in place now a creative team that is well-suited to the gritty tone of this book (but if you’re reading this, Marjorie Liu, please know that I loved the shit out of your storyline and it’s the reason I’m still reading this comic!). I didn’t quite care for Swierczynski’s run on Immortal Iron Fist, but I appreciated his ambition enough to keep an eye on him as he moved around various Marvel comics. With his arrival on this comic, I feel pretty good that he’s more than capable of delivering to Widow the recognition she deserves. More than ever (and that’s saying something because, again, Liu did a damn fine job with the comic), Black Widow is portrayed as being a consummate professional and world-class operative. She’s a woman who has lived her whole life in the shadows and learned to move about easily in the darkness. Through narration captions she briefly lets us into her world to see slivers of her thoughts, plots, and machinations, but even then you can’t shake the feeling that there’s something she’s not telling you, even more secrets she feels compelled to keep. Normally, this kind of characterization would drive me insane but here it pulls me into the story and makes me want to know more about this woman whose made it her mission to not be known.