30 Days of The Fade Out: Year's End and the Story's End!

In the midst of our lengthy look at The Fade Out, we see a couple news items worth reporting.

First, as we approach the end of the year, we're sure to see Brubaker and Phillips' The Fade Out on more than one best-of list.  The first we have found is from The A.V. Club, published today.  Oliver Sava zeroes in on the duo's expertise in straight-up crime comics.

While Brubaker and Phillips can do outstanding things with a good gimmick (recent examples: crime noir Archie in Criminal: The Last Of The Innocents, crime noir Lovercraft [sic] in Fatale), they prove to be especially brilliant when they tackle the genre head-on without a high concept.

Sava also notices that the focused setting and limited scope make the title "a particularly immersive series" with a tightly plotted story.  We agree, and the brilliance of this limited series should be a consolation to those of us who will miss the book -- that, and the promise of another project on its way.

The end continues to draw near for The Fade Out, as earlier this morning, Sean Phillips sent out a simple tweet announcing that he's completed his work on the project.

The Fade Out is finished.

— Sean Phillips (@seanpphillips) December 10, 2015

He subsequently relayed to us here that we might want to extend our 30-day review, as the release date for issue #12 has been pushed back to January 6th, and I now see that ComicList confirms the date in the extended forecast it published at the beginning of the week.

(UPDATE, 12/11:  On Twitter, Sean explains that the issue has been delayed because it contains 34 pages of story -- we think the book deserves an extra-long finale -- and Ed Brubaker explains that work still remains, including the illustration for the bonus essay and Bettie Breitweiser's coloring.)

Personally, I would have liked to end the year with The Fade Out's finale, putting a cap on an incredible year for Brubaker and Phillips that began with the spectacular Criminal Special Edition and the new editions of that series' trade paperbacks.    But I'm sure it'll be worth the wait.

And will we write even more than we've planned until then, going 37 days or more?  Even with the holidays, we'll do our best.

In the meantime, we greatly appreciate Ed Brubaker's kind words for our post yesterday.

Don't miss this close reread of The Fade Out before the finale hits: https://t.co/0wAsbydQnF

— Ed Brubaker (@brubaker) December 10, 2015

A work as complex and satisfying as The Fade Out begs for a closer look, and we're happy to serve.