“The Fade Out” #1 is a new crime noire comic that has been created by the team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. The story is set in 1940’s Hollywood, and centres around the horrific recent events in the life of screenwriter Charlie Parish. After awakening from a night of drinking and partying, Parish finds himself in the bathtub of an unfamiliar apartment. As he struggles to remember the events of the evening prior, Charlie is terrified when he discovers the body of a murdered Hollywood starlet in the next room. Instead of calling the police, Charlie abandons the crime scene in a panic, not wanting to be linked to this grizzly crime.
Brubaker’s story had me hooked from the very beginning, which surprised me as as first time comic book reader who has never really given them a chance. The story’s plot quickly generated excitement within, as we the reader are instantly introduced to the seedier side of twentieth century Hollywood via Charlie Parish. Brubaker cleverly utilizes his main character’s unclear memory to reveal important aspects of the story. The reader is learning with Charlie simultaneously as he tries to recount the events that took place the night before.
On the seventh page of the comic, there is an excellent example of how Brubaker uses Charlie’s recollection of events as a means of storytelling. In the final two panels of the page, Charlie begins to try and piece together what happened the night before while sitting on a bed in the dark apartment. The black background within the panel helps to draw the reader’s eyes to the two tan coloured speech bubbles containing important information. In the second speech bubble, the narrator states, “WHAT DID HE REMEMBER FROM LAST NIGHT?”, placing an emphasis on the word remember by bolding it. This has been done to signal the reader that the upcoming panel will be a flashback to the night before. The prominence of “REMEMBER”, coupled with the image of Charlie sitting on bed while lighting a fresh cigarette, tells the reader that several panels of flashbacks are most likely upcoming. The cigarette will burn for at least a few minutes, giving the reader a time frame for how long he will try and remember what has happened. In the next series of panels, Charlie’s memories begin to flood back to him, and reveal what took place before he awoke in the apartment. This is an example of a comic using both word and image to convey information to its reader.
In these three panels, Charlie is attempting to remember the women he spent the night with following the party they had both attended. Here, Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips, make the reader feel as though they are inside the main character’s head as he slowly pieces together the young women’s face. The author treats each panel as though they are pieces of a puzzle. They are separated by the gutters of the page, but when pieced together by the reader, they form one large image of the women’s face. The reader feels as Charlie does at this moment in the story, as both sides have formed an image of her appearance in their minds. The way each panel is drawn also adds to the effect they have on the reader upon first glance. The images within the first and third panels are wispy, and appear as though they are being produced by the smoke coming off of the women’s cigarette in the middle panel. The images created within the smoke are first of her lips, and then her body and face. Using only three panels, the artist has given readers a mysterious visual representation of the women Charlie is trying to remember with amazing amounts of subtle detail within. Here, the panels are interdependent, both separated and linked at the same time as they help to drive the narrative forward.
In the seventeenth page of “The Fade Out”, the reader is seemingly inserted into Charlie’s dream as he has fallen asleep on his office couch. Artist Sean Phillips creates a sense of fear through his artwork, making the reader feel as though they too are trapped in his nightmare. Word and image work together in the top panel to alert readers that Charlie is asleep. The “Zzzz...Zzzz” inside the speech bubble, as well as his body position and facial expression combine to convey this information. In the next four panels, Charlie encounters a pair of faceless men while dreaming, images which causes the reader to feel slightly unsettled. In the final panel, an extreme close up of their empty faces is used, a convention which is often utilized in horror movies. This helps add to the frightening sight of the men’s flesh tearing apart in the area of their faces where their mouths should be. The detail of the drawings successfully add to the creepiness of these particular panels, combining with what appears to be a red, blood spattered background to produce a nightmarish vibe. Here, a “rhetorical” page design was used, one where visual aspects are helping tell the narrative of the story.
I truly enjoyed the first installment of “The Fade Out”, a crime noire comic which had me on the edge of my seat from the first to last page. As a first time comic reader, I enjoyed Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ new take on a genre that has been examined countless times in both literature and film. Their ability to combine excellent dialogue with stunning visual images allows the reader to totally immerse themselves in the dirtier side of 1940’s Hollywood. I cannot wait to read the next installment in the series, as I have countless questions that need answering, and a need to see more of Phillips stunning artwork. I will surely keep you updated as I plunge deeper into this dark and gritty murder/mystery.
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