The Fade Out #3

The Cover:

The cover continues with the white lettered title contained in the hallmark signature red ink blot trailing down to bleed off the cover closely resembling blood. The cover background remains white with the image of the new character Maya Silver applying lipstick.

 

I think that Maya looks similar to 1940’s actress Veronica Lake. Maya is the new actress who takes over for Valeria Sommers.

Cast of Characters:

Some new faces have appeared in the cast of characters, building the ever growing number of people to the story. New characters include: Tom Greavey (Maya’s talent agent), Armando Lopez (Maya’s husband) and of course Maya herself. Maya’s headshot if the only picture that stands out from the rest of the cast of characters, it appears as if to have been drawn by a different artist. She looks more like a present day cartoon image of Barbie then the other cast characters. I find it amusing that Earl Rath’s caption beneath his headshot is always updated. This time it reads “always a charmer.”

 

Story and Theory:

The story begins with a flash back of Mr. Thursby, the founder of Victory Street Pictures. Thursby ditches his car in the Susana Mountains, strips off his clothes and wanders off to leave his life behind him. It was amusing that the fifth panel has a caption box that reads “…leaving everything behind.” and the image shows Thursby with his back to the reader, completely naked. This was a nice use of a pun tied into the image.

 

 

A turn of the page shows where Thursby has wandered off too; he’s joined the society of The Divine Order of the Great Eleven. Considering how consistent the first two comics were with what Hollywood would have looked like in the 1940’s and tying actual historical events into the comic story, I had to research the society to see if it really existed. According to an article from The Los Angeles Times, there was a cult group called The Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven. May Otis Blackburn and her daughter Ruth Rizzio started the cult after angels appeared before May Blackburn. The angels told May to close herself and her daughter off from the world for three years so they could write a book called “Great Six Seal,” and in reward for writing this book, they would be told by the angels the location of the world’s gold and oil deposits. The mother and daughter used this prophetic foretelling in combination with sex, religion and animal sacrifices to obtain money from their followers. I’m including a picture of May and her daughter Ruth. If you are interested in knowing more about The Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven, I have included the link to the newspaper article from The Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/23/local/me-40217

 

Personally I enjoy literature that spends the time on researching historical aspects of the time period related to the story. For me these details make for a more engaging and interesting read. So far I’ve learned two things that I did not know that took place in history at this time, which enticed me to do the research to verify if these events actually took place or not. I enjoying being challenged and educated in this fashion by literature.

 

The panel below suggests an unsympathetic narrator, as the caption box refers to Valeria Sommers as “the other girl - the dead girl.” This adds so much suspense to the comic. Did Valeria first get the part, so that they could start filming the movie, but someone who wants the movie to flop murders Valeria in an attempt to sabotage the film? Did Maya’s jealous husband murder Valeria? Did Maya murder Valeria? Did Earl Rath murder Valeria? Suspicions could be made all over about who murdered Valeria because the plot only continues to thicken and as more people become involved it becomes more apparent that some people know more than they are saying because they may have played a part in the murder, whether they are aware of it or not. The caption box and speech balloons provide a temporal dimension of time and space. The time it takes to read the panel is the same amount of time it takes for the interaction to take place between characters. Comic readers have learned to read the caption box first because the caption box is not a diegetic component of the comic world. The caption box is between the reader and narrator only.

 

I find the below two panels psychologically fascinating. First being true to a comic noir, the majority of the panels are always dark, with low lighting and lots of shadows. The shadows and darkness add to the uncertainty of events, as a reader you do not know what will happen next, you only know that this story will not develop in an organized time sequenced manner. There will be flash backs, brief bits of information, and multiple stories taking place within the same story so as to build the story for the climactic finish when all is revealed.

Maya is in Valeria’s old dressing room, standing before Valeria’s wardrobe closet, to get dressed for filming. The caption box reads “and then she thinks it’s grim luck, more than good…” that she and Valeria share the same clothing sizes. The word grim is bolded, perhaps foreboding of dangers for Maya. Valeria and Maya sharing the same clothing size is also an example of synecdoche as the fact that they are the same size is grim luck, because the reality is that Valeria died and though the rest of the world thinks her death was a suicide, the reader knows it was murder. This panel is also a hermeneutic image because as stated above it is providing a visual metaphor. The reader can see Maya in an American knee up shot. With her back to the reader the darkness and low light from the window silhouettes Maya’s body. This metaphorically plays off Valeria and Maya being the same body size. The caption box also makes the image a psychological hermeneutic image because the caption box provides insight to Maya’s personality and thoughts.

 

In this panel Maya is thinking to herself “I guess it’s down to us then…” as indicated by the thought bubble. Maya is speaking in the plural sense, as if to suggest herself and someone else. Could this be a hint to Maya having a duel personality? Maya’s thought balloon also represents a non-sensory diegetic image because it illustrates an aspect of Maya’s psychological state. The panel occupies a small space in two ways. First, the panel represents the interior of the closet, which is a physical confined space, so the artist uses a narrower lens to focus only on a portion of Maya and the closet. This gives the reader the feeling of being a fly on the wall in a sense in the closet, being witness to Maya and her interior dialogue.

What would be a comic noir without some hissing between two divas? The below page was not only humorous but also provided character insight between Valeria and Maya. In the second panel it is evident that Maya is bitter and condescending. The conversation turns catty and ends with Valeria winning the upper hand in the brief cat fight. Maya’s facial expressions are exaggerated to a degree to really illustrate her personality; a good example of this is the raised eyebrow in the second panel. The raised eye brow is continued in the sixth panel where this time the image depicts Maya doubting Valeria being truly nice or concerning and thinking of Valeria almost as a joke, as if to suggest no one in Hollywoodland could be that nice and be real. This entire page is an example of hermeneutic images and encompassing all three types: psychological, visual metaphor and intertextual references. The whole page is an intertextual reference because any woman can admit to witnessing or being a part of this type of female cattiness. The images are also psychological because they represent Valeria’s and Maya’s personalities and points of view on each other. Lastly, the images are visual metaphors because they prompt reminders to Maya’s history and the challenges she’s faced in trying to become an actress, so that the reader can have a deeper insight as to why Maya may act the way she does and how it reflects in the story with other characters.

There is definitely a dark side to Maya as the below page illustrates. She takes pleasure in thinking of Brodsky hurting her husband. She acknowledges that her pleasure in his pain makes her an awful person and she acknowledges it. Maya’s awareness is present but she’s still able to put it out of her mind and sleep. Obviously Maya has a past and has done things that she is not proud of but feels it was necessary to get to where she wants to be. This page is another example of hermeneutic images which are very psychological and visual metaphors. It’s a cue to the reader for sure that the reader will learn more about Maya yet, that this issue has only scratched the surface to who she is and what she is about.