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.