5 out of 5

I normally start these things with a recap of my history with Brubaker.  I’ll (try to) skip that this time, but I will add some retrospect onto it: I’ve been criticizing – or rather citing as the reason I did not enjoy – Brubes other series for focusing on genre over character / story.  And so I’ve been reading Fade Out cautiously, expecting it to turn that corner at any point, and half pleased, half puzzled when it hadn’t.  …Up through its excellent and heavy conclusion.  This is an excellent noir tale, constructed to meet my personal appreciations of the style.  In this last arc to his tale, Brubes has mentioned a couple of times in the back matter that he and artist Sean Phillips were purposefully experimenting with a longer-form tale, one that required all of its issues to properly gestate and be appreciated, and that he was happy people were interested in being along for the ride.  I considered that, and considered how it affected Ed’s writing as I knew it.  Indeed, stretching back even to Scene of the Crime, I can see how writing more for a beat-by-beat basis became that Concept Over Content sensibility I didn’t appreciate.  While SotC was way before the Brubaker that became the kill-’em-all Criminal writer, certainly there are roots there, and it’s interesting to look at them from a historical standpoint now, and perhaps see a writer constructing a mystery when he wanted to focus on character, making the mystery fizzle out and the characters feel unfulfilled.  And extrapolate that to a writer learning to allow that character focus to come more to the fore, but still toying with keeping things punchy for readability.

The Fade Out is written in the style I wanted from Scene of the Crime with the viciousness of Ed’s later genre experiments.  It’s perfect.  Its characters are flawed but balanced between good and evil: not every intention is spat on with noir-ish glee to cast us all as sex-hounds and money-grubbers.  Staples of the genre, but the split comes from writers who revel in that almost fully and those who allow for the confusing morals which steer many of us toward the light whilst being tempted – and giving into those temptations – on occasion after occasion.  A little of both is best.  That mixed with a compelling story and a hard-hitting emotional backbone that works with the story is better than the best.  That’s where issue 12 of The Fade Out brings us.

There are many moments here, expertly illustrated by Phillips and colored by Ellie Breitweiser, that take advantage of the comic medium to shift us through a rainbow of feelings, Ed using that slow boil he wanted to give his words the space they need to not feel canned as they sometimes do.  We’re raised and lowered, cheering for our leads, dreading the outcome.  Hints and misdirection in the words and art.  This series has seen the first great step forwards in Phillips’ art in years, becoming more formal while maintaining his loose and heavy inking style which makes him so well suited to this genre.  He also lets his linework subtly go back and forth between clean and not-so-clean as it befits the tale, as does Ellie with her genius blotch coloring style, for which I have no words to effectively describe its impossible balance between seeming sloppiness and precision.  In other words: everything is in fruition.

It… does make me want to go back and reread Criminal and etcetera, to maybe see if my take on them has changed.  But even if it hasn’t, I love that a writer intended to approach something differently and it showed, and it paid off.  That this has been my favorite story of his career is, of course, totally subjective, but I do hope its success encourages him to try to the long-form style some more.

I realize I haven’t said much about the story iteself, but it’s not like you should be jumping into the narrative at issue 9.  Just know that all of the pacing pays off and the threads are successfully resolved without cheapening any aspect of the story.  If anything, like the best noir tales, the way things do (or don’t) come together underlines that gut-punch of the utterly muddy nature of humanity by which the genre is generally defined.