3 crampons out of 5

Fatale is somewhere in the between for Brubaker’s Sean Phillips combo “noir” work.  It’s in line with the shift in his writing style that was present in the most recent Criminal series (“Last of the Innocent”) and the (both of these references are as of this writing) 2 Incognito series.  Those two series didn’t appeal to me so much, and some of their flaws are here.  Thankfully, the story here ends up being interesting enough to warrant a read.

From Sleeper to Criminal, Brubaker built for himself a nice little world of noir-tinged comics, backed by Phillips rough, shadow-hewn art.  It’s rightfully won him a good following, and Fatale is, apparently, the most successful of his series in this trend, going into several printings per issue.  Ed has also cut himself out a nice piece of the big boys comic world, working in the Batman world for a long time before his Captain America run launched him to mass attention and assumedly caused Marvel to toss him on to 100 other books, though mostly loosely related to the Stars and Stripes hero.  As has been the case with other writers making the switch from background to foreground – Morrison was big news for a while, but when DC included him in the main ring for 52 his name was suddenly every every where – and Greg Rucka, and whoever else you can think of – there’s a notable change in all of their writing once they are required to switch to big boy league mentality.  For Brubaker, instead of the slow burn of many of his books, which allowed him to stick with one character, one main plot, and develop it at length, he got in to Cliffhanger mode, and Give The People What They Want mode.  In his noir books, the characters got bigger and badder and the amount of swear words increased to let us know that they were ‘adult’ comics.  The writing also became more explanatory, relying on narration as opposed to action and sparse dialogue for building characters.  In other words, they’re easier reads.

Fatale begins with some of these trends.  It starts out promisingly, a prologue with Nicolas Lash attending the funeral of writer Dominic Raines.  When Lash is willed the Raines estate and he discovers an unpublished manuscript, suddenly guys are shooting at him, a sassy dame shows up and says she’s here to help, and there’s a car crash.  We then flash back a chunk of years to, presumably, get more info on why these things might be happening.  From the get-go it washed away some of my doubts from “Innocent” and “Incognito,” as the lead actually seems like an okay guy, unlike the other series’ protagonists, who are sorta jerks.  This is an acceptable tack to take for noir, of course, the unlikeable lead, but it’s tough to pull off, and due to Brubaker’s change in style that gives us more up front, we don’t have to get to know these guys, so you’re just reading it because you’re reading it and not necessarily because you’re invested in the character.  At least, that’s how it was for me.  Once we get to “Fatale”‘s flashbacks, some of this problem creaks in.  Brubaker is attempting to establish a mystery, and he does so just by withholding information.  We jump between characters, not really sure how they tie in to what’s what except that we recognize some names and faces from our prologue.  Magic and cults are mixed in to the story and, again, we’re not really sure why… until the next issue when Brubaker lets loose with one other detail that sort of justifies it.  Again, these are tricks that can work for some stories, but here it is questionable, as the only reason to withhold the detail is to extend the story and not because the character has a clear reason for not telling us about something in their own narrated thoughts.

But the series does redeem itself.  Once we do have enough pieces, the characters become interesting, and instead of cheap piece-by-piece reveals, we can sit back and start to wonder about the core questions of what’s going on.  Phillips art is put to great use, a little more steady-handed than seen previously, and it wraps up in a chilling last page, back with our present day Nicolas Lash, that gives an indication of what Brubaker has been building toward with the horror-tinge of the series.  The path feels a little forced to get to this at times, but is overall worth the patience.