Fatale: The Deluxe Volume 2 In Stores Today -- and the Train Keeps Moving!

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' comic-book collaborations continue to be re-released in deluxe editions -- oversized, hardcover volumes with loads of extra content -- and today sees the release of the second and final deluxe volume of Fatale, their centuries-spanning mashup of noir and Lovecraftian horror.  From Image Comics' Twitter feed, we see Flipgeeks has provided an extensive review of the collection, praising it in comparison to the first volume as "bigger, better, and mind-blowing due to its size and scope."

Brubaker confirms the reviewers' estimation -- it's better than the previous volume --  and has retweeted a few images of the content from Sean Phillips, especially for those readers who have been waiting (somewhat understandably) for the deluxe hardcovers and pestering Brubaker about it for the past year.

Aside from single-issue stories -- mostly for DC Comics, along with this year's Special Edition one-shot for Criminal -- the only work not yet collected in a deluxe edition is the twelve-issue series currently in progress, The Fade Out.

(About those random issues from DC, I think they would be smart to collect those in a deluxe hardcover along with Batman: Gotham Noir, the story Brubaker wrote for Batman: Black & White, the story Phillips drew for the same anthology, and other assorted rarities.)

As we approach the last two issues of The Fade Out, Sean Phillips has treated us with an advance look of the bonus artwork for issue #11, a painting of the great Robert Mitchum.

On Twitter, Phillips explains that it's for the concluding essay on drug use in Hollywood, provides a look at how the painting will appear on the printed page, and reminds us of his artwork from the early days of Criminal, accompanying an essay by Brubaker on a classic noir starring Mitchum:  a blast from the past, Out of the Past.

The Moving Finger writes and, having writ, moves on! -- and early last week, Sean Phillips tweeted that he has started on the twelfth and final issue of The Fade Out.

Started the final issue of The Fade Out... pic.twitter.com/TcAIrPwNjL

— Sean Phillips (@seanpphillips) November 3, 2015

Will this, their most successful series, be collected in a deluxe hardcover edition?  Undoubtedly:  we have no inside information, but we can be confident that we'll see a deluxe version of The Fade Out, presumably as a single volume.  Hopefully, Image Comics will also reprint the deluxe editions of Criminal and Incognito (and trades of the latter), and I wouldn't be surprised if The Fade Out is also collected in an omnibus trade paperback, since -- like Watchmen -- it tells a self-contained story in twelve issues.

How soon could we expect the deluxe version of The Fade Out?  Fatale #10 came out in November, 2012, and the first deluxe volume collecting the first ten issues was released in March, 2014, sixteen months later; the series wrapped up in July, 2014, and the concluding deluxe volume is out today, again sixteen months later.  With The Fade Out concluding in December, we should probably not expect a deluxe collection until April, 2017.

In the meantime, there's plenty to read.

Fans of Velvet -- and those who haven't picked up Brubaker's spy comic -- should check out a feature at Image Comics' website, focusing on the series' setting and tone:

"If you like your espionage tales to have a measured pace with surprising eruptions of violence, if you like your heroes competent and inexorably driven toward their goal, if you like stories that take full advantage of their setting in order to build up a level of tension and mood that can't be beaten: you like VELVET."

...and, of course, there's the complete story of Josephine, the mysterious and cursed center of Fatale, and there are loads of bonus features to read in the two deluxe editions collecting her story, both out now.