Fatale # 5

Fatale 5: End of  Book 1: “Death Chases Me”

In film noir I once read that tender gestures don’t extend beyond lighting a cigarette. In this latest issue of Fatale, even this harsh kindness is traded for bullets.  But despite the soul grinding flinty despair, the mood and atmosphere of the comic conveys such a brutal beautiful nihilism that it becomes impossible to turn one’s back (never a good idea in a noir setting) and walk away. This comic  haunts readers.

I’d love to clearly explain the events of this issue, and the first part of the series, but Fatale has the straightforward clarity of Ezra Pound’s Cantos. Thankfully Brubaker, very kindly, offers a synopsis of what came previously, so please forgive me for utilizing  the creator’s version of issues 1-4:

"Hank Raines has been seduced into a dangerous affair by a woman named Josephine, who is not what she seems. Following the brutal murder of Hank’s wife, and the reveal of Jo’s strange effect on men, Hank goes in search of her…only to be caught by a deadly Satanic cult. Meanwhile, Walt Booker, a crooked cop and Jo’s former lover, has his own plans for Jo…”

Now, add a Lovecraftian pantheon into this modernist wasteland and you have one striking fatal comic book.

Two aspects extend beyond the horde of charms this comic delightfully delivers. It weaves an effective transporting atmosphere and it works well in serial format.

The sinister bristles on the brush of Sean Phillips works marvels at conjuring skylines, and figures and buildings where Yog-Sothoth would feel comfortable. Swaths of black impart a grim atmosphere to the work. On the opening page we see Booker walking to a coffee shop interspersed with two scenes of him carving magic sigils into his arm. The second and third row of panels function as stairs that allow descent into this fictional world. The features of Booker’s face as he carves into his arm are mostly black. There are hints at a nose, a check bone, and an ear, and a thin stretch of short blonde hair perched on his head. The rest of the face was rendered in solid blocks of black. In the panel showing Booker, after the arm carving and walking to the coffee shop, wearing a brown jacket over his white shirt and red tie, the folds on his jacket are rendered like crevices with Philips’s brush. The spotty finish and writhing lines that only a brush can create give an extra element of graininess fits with the mood of this work. If such a style appeared in a superhero comic, I imagine I would hate it, and it would seem out of place in a work about superior beings performing altruistic deeds, but in Fatale such inking not only fits the book, but is essential to the book.

And the colors! Dave Stewart (this chromatic wizard apparates everywhere!) renders a dull palate of colors that sinks the reader into a grim black and grey world. The purple sky, the dull matte paint on the automobiles, and even glass and chrome reflect shadowy suggestive shades of brighter tones long past. The results of these factors let the reader, in step with Booker, enter the story from their hopefully brighter and less Cthulhu-cult haunted world.

The frequency of the issue fits well with the noir plot string. When first viewing The Big Sleep, a professor challenged the audience to clearly explain the plot of the movie, all were baffled. The sudden jumps, the strange connections, the unexplained events all go towards stirring the idea of a random universe; Fatale seizes and molds these themes. While being taken down from a wall, Hank Raines is lead my the manacles by a cult member who tries to explain that Mr. Raines will be their next sacrifice, he speaks the sentiments of the readers:

“What—wha—what--?...Wh- Where…Where are we…?...I don’t…you said…1906? Who… Who are you…? What’re you talking about…? My…? …who are you? Stop! Stop! Let me go!”

If Gertrude Stein wrote detective horror fiction, the dialogue would read like the above.

And, the reader might echo the pleas of Rainer to have the horrors of the story cease and release them from the tale, but it doesn’t. The elements of the book blend too well together to allow a clear conscience to turn away, but simultaneously these elements allow for easy breaking points for each issue. With such sudden shifts in plot, and strange reveals of characters and their motivations and desires, an abundance of cutting and stopping points for each issue exists. While not having the circularity and jump-on-at-any-point feature of Ulysses or Bulletproof Coffin #4, the plot possesses shadows of randomness that allow multiple choices for which plot line the issue will pick up and focus on before moving to another element of the story he established. With each issue including multiple aspects of the story, the time span between each release matches the shifting in the issues. The result is a comic book that would make me happy to light cigarettes for Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips and Dave Stewart.