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.