Tuesday, January 05, 2016

30 Days of The Fade Out: The Sound of Waves.

The Fade Out #7 was released on June 24th, 2015, following a five-page preview.  The issue focuses on Charlie Parish spending time away from the studios of Victory Street Pictures -- and continuing to run from the murder and cover-up of Val Sommers.

The Movie. Production continues back on the studio lot, where Charlie and Maya exchange meaningful glances and plan for a weekend tryst.  Their getaway ends when Maya returns for a PR appearance alongside Tyler Graves, recovering from his car wreck and the subsequent plastic surgery.

The Murder. Taking Maya to Val's old hiding spot in Malibu, Charlie imagines a conversation with her ghost, apologizing for running from his complicity in the cover-up, and back in the city, he gets in a bar fight and has a strange encounter with Drake Miller:  getting picked up by Maya, he expects to find Miller's business card in his pocket, and instead he finds a cryptic, handwritten note signed "Tina."

...and, interestingly, Dottie tells the recovering Tyler that Brodsky has been "off on some secret job for the boss man [Thursby] all week," presumably looking into the anonymous note that Gil left him at the end of the last issue.

It's clear that a major theme for the story is man's primal need for relationships -- for visibility, for transparency, and for a genuine connection with at least one other person.  Charlie is at war with himself, with the desire to disappear made tangible in his daydream about wearing the bandaged disguise of his "own" film's protagonist, but the need to connect drawing him to one woman after another -- to Melba, to Val, presumably to Dottie during one of his drunken blackouts, and now to Maya.
"Charlie had always been a sucker for this part... the first days.
"The days when you let yourself believe the lies...
"Not just that there's someone who truly sees you...
"Truly understands you... to your soul...
"...but that you even want them to.
"That's the sweetest lie.  The one you tell yourself."
Charlie wants to be truly visible, but he wants to hide as well, and it seems he doubts that either option is really viable.

Labels: ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Newer Posts Older Posts