30 Days of The Fade Out: Dramatis Personae.

Yesterday we mentioned the evolving "Cast of Characters" page that introduced each chapter in The Fade Out and featured six to nine black-and-white portraits of major characters:  we speculate that the story's mysterious killer appears early and prominently in this list.

As we work our way from our broad overview of this limited series to a closer look at its plot and each of its central characters, we think it might be worthwhile to analyze and summarize this list of players in this drama.

We've counted how many times each character is featured on the list, and we've also noted when each character first appears on the list.  We're including these numbers in parentheses below, and we sorted the characters according to these numbers.  The more often a character is featured -- and in the case of ties, the earlier they're introduced -- the higher they appear in this summary.

And in this summary, we're briefly showing how the description for each character changes as the story has unfolded.

Cast of Characters, as of issue #11

Charlie Parish (10 appearances since issue #1): Screenwriter, part-time reprobate; stumbled into a murder and cover-up; blocked writer fronting for a blacklisted friend; in over his head, hiding dark secrets, and on a mission -- he's only absent from issue #3

Gil Mason (9 since #1): One-time writer, full-time drunk; blacklisted; Charlie's best friend, who knows Charlie's secret; is on a mission and headed for trouble; riding co-pilot on Charlie's mission

Dottie Quinn (9 since #1): Publicity girl; PR for Victory Street Pictures

Valeria Sommers (7 since #1): Up-and-coming starlet; dead actress Maya Silver is replacing; murdered

Maya Silver (7 since #3): Actress waiting for her big break, then making her big debut; Valeria's replacement in reshoots; up-and-coming movie starlet in an secret affair with Charlie

Earl Rath (6 since #1): Movie star, womanizer; dashing leading man; always a charmer; without a worry in the world; Hollywood heartthrob and he knows it

Phil Brodsky (6 since #1): Studio's head of security

Mr. Victor Thursby (5 since #2): Co-founder of Victory Street Pictures

Franz Schmitt (4 since #2): German expatriate director

Melba Mason (3 since #2): Gil's amazing wife, not built for the long-suffering routine; has no idea what Gil and Charlie are up to

Tyler Graves (3 since #4): Hollywood heartthrob in need of more publicity, secretly gay

Jack "Flapjack" Jones (2 since #2): One-time child star from the "Krazy Kids" series

Armando Lopez (2 since #3): Big band trumpet player

Al Kamp (2 since #5): Co-founder of Victory Street Pictures

Drake Miller (2 since #10): A big question mark; FBI front man

Tom Greavey (1 since #3): Middle-aged Talent Agent

Stevie Turner (1 since #4): Photographer to the stars

Lincoln Kessler (1 since #7): Drunken writer with an attitude

Rebecca Franklin (1 since #9): Charlie's ex-wife

From what we've learned, we wouldn't be surprised if Drake Miller is involved in the murder, the cover-up, or both -- but going by the numbers listed here and how late he was introduced, readers would have a reason to feel somewhat cheated if he was the main culprit.  If it's important that the killer is prominent from the beginning, then Dottie the PR girl(!) is actually a much more likely suspect.

And, again, we don't imagine that the killer was entirely omitted from this introductory page, so this should rule out all the celebrity cameos.

Beyond that, we're reminded of Ed Brubaker's promise that the story would be a sprawling drama with a very large cast.  The series took its time with minor characters like Tyler Graves and Armando Lopez, and it let us see the corruption in the movie industry and the resulting tragedies in their lives, even as their own stories appear to be incidental to the murder of Valeria Sommers.

30 Days of The Fade Out: Whodunit? Separating Suspects.

As we get closer to the conclusion of The Fade Out, we might reveal more about where we think the story's central mystery may or may not be heading, but first, some preliminary thoughts:

In his foreward to the massive 2011 anthology titled The Best American Noir of the Century -- which I recommend -- co-editor Otto Penzler distinguishes between noir and the private detective story, in which the protagonist usually fits Raymond Chandler's evocation of "a knight, a man who could walk mean streets but not himself be mean."

Film blurred the distinctions between the two types of stories by employing a similar visual style for both, but the two genres display "opposing life-views of a moral, even heroic, often romantic detective, and the lost characters in noir who are caught in the inescapable prisons of their own construction, forever trapped by their isolation from their own souls, as well as from society and the moral restrictions that permit it to be regarded as civilized."

Another source of confusion is the fact that noir often centers on a mystery -- a whodunit, often the sort of murder mystery that would drive a detective story.  That's sometimes the case with the noir comics created by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips:  once again we are reminded of Batman: Gotham Noir, but there's also the two Criminal stories that focus on Tracy Lawless.

(On the other hand, "Coward" and "Bad Night" have mysteries surrounding the plot in which the central characters find themselves, but they're not traditional murder mysteries, and "The Last of the Innocent" has an entirely different structure:  by the end of the "teaser" comic and the end of the first issue, we know that Riley Richards plans to murder his wife.  What remains is finding out how he plans to do it, whether he gets away with it, and what happens to his soul in the process, and beyond the callbacks to Archie comics and other works, this unusual take on the crime story is another reason the story stands out.)

Whether the reader is invited to try to solve the crime alongside the protagonist -- or even attempt to beat him to the punch -- there are certainly rules and expectations for a satisfying mystery story.  To begin with, the solution must make sense in hindsight, not violating what is established in the story, and the culprit should be introduced early, not on the page before the story's resolution.

Who murdered Valeria Sommers?  And who covered it up?

In a complex story, the answers to these two questions might not be identical, and those responsible for later murders and other crimes might not be the murderers either:  they might have eliminated the killer for payback of their own, to cover their own tracks from some related crime, or for some other nefarious reasons.

In addition to the events and incidents that would be presented in a novel or film, we have additional information that allows us to categorize the characters in The Fade Out:  we have the covers to each issue in the limited series, and we have the evolving "Cast of Characters" page toward the front of each issue.

I'd separate the characters into the following groups.

• Main characters:  each of these appeared in most of the "Cast of Characters" lists and probably appeared on at least one cover.
• Supporting characters:  each of these appeared at least once in the "Cast of Characters," but not much more than that and certainly not on the cover.
• Minor characters:  none of these appeared in the "Cast" lists or on the cover, and they probably appeared only in an issue or two of the comic itself.

We also have cameos by real-life celebrities, actors and the occasional writer:  going by the categorization above, they're all minor characters in this story.

Personally, I think that the mystery story is more satisfying when the killer is more prominent is in its telling,   So I hope -- and may come to suspect -- that the killer is one of the "main characters" as defined above, and I further hope that he's introduced relatively early, certainly by the end of the four-issue "Act One."

If the killer is a minor character, wholly absent from the covers and the "Cast of Characters" list and, worse, introduced in the back half of the story, I'll be a little annoyed with the mystery's solution even if the main character's story is resolved with an appropriately dark ending.

And if the killer is one of these real-life cameos, I'll be even more annoyed, as I think it's better that their presence adds flavor to the story, rather than the story smears their reputations even in an entirely fictional narrative.  In the alternate timeline of Watchmen, it was implied that its universe's Nixon was responsible for the assassination of its Kennedy:  never mind the flaws and even the corruption of its entirely fictional characters, that move pulled me out of the story and struck me as unseemly.

We'll review both the covers and the "Cast" lists in the days ahead, but until then...

Consider the series' twelve covers, and read those first four issues that constitute "Act One."  Look closely at those first four lists of the "Cast of Characters."

I strongly suspect that there's a killer there -- at least one.

30 Days of The Fade Out: Noir in Tinsel Town -- and in Gotham.

Prior to their move to Image Comics and the release of Fatale and The Fade Out, we constructed our best take on a comprehensive list of the collaborations between Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.  We focused on those "major collaborations" that just featured the pair, but we also included Phillips' work inking Michael Lark's pencils for Brubaker's Scene of the Crime and his cover artwork for Gotham Central, which Brubaker co-created and co-wrote.

That list was partially prompted by a 2011 reprint of the pair's earliest major work, the prestige-format comic originally published in 2001, Batman: Gotham Noir.

I have been struck by the common elements between this Elseworlds story for DC Comics and The Fade Out, their latest creator-owned work published through Image.

• Both are set in the late 1940s, beginning in October, 1949, in Gotham and in the fall of 1948 in Hollywood.
• Both stories star an alcoholic and a character suffering from the trauma experienced during World War II -- combined as a single detective Jim Gordon in Gotham Noir, paired as the screenwriters Charlie and Gil in The Fade Out.
• Both feature a doomed love interest, damaged by the wealthy and extravagant elites who run the town.
• Though The Fade Out hasn't ended yet, neither story presumably has a happy ending:  the hero can't find justice and simultaneously save himself.
• And both stories play on our prior knowledge of the world in which their set, with new takes on the Batman and his supporting cast, and with cameo appearances by real-life Hollywood stars and writers.

By no means does that suggest that either work is disposable.  They're both excellent, as each have their own stories to tell, and the pleasure is in the telling of that tale and not just the invocation of noir archetypes.

The differences are just as intriguing as the similarities:  one is an arguably too-short story told in a single extra-long issue, the other is a sprawling drama, and careful readers can see the creators' maturing over the last 15 years while retaining their distinctive styles.

On top of all the other reasons to check out the book, I believe Batman: Gotham Noir is the first cover art by Phillips to resemble an old-school publication, complete with simulated wear and tear.  We would see the same approach for variant covers for the first issue of Incognito: Bad Influences, the first issue of The Fade Out, and the Criminal Special Edition one-shot.

If only because the original release has that weathered look, I prefer it to the 2011 reprint and its cleaned-up cover: on the other hand, the reprint includes a second Batman tale written by Brubaker, with art by Scott McDaniel.  If DC were smart, they would collect a good bit of their hard-to-find material by Brubaker, by Phillips, and by the duo -- and Gotham Noir could provide the perfect cover.

Since it shares a lot of common ground with The Fade Out, which concludes at year's end, there might be no better time for fans to track down a copy of Batman: Gotham Noir.

30 Days of The Fade Out: Telling Stories in Storytelling.

The latest extended forecast from ComicList predicts that we'll see the twelfth and final issue of The Fade Out on Wednesday, December 30th.  We're starting our "30 Days" review of the series today, so if that forecast holds true, we'll conclude by reviewing the entire series on New Year's Eve.

In the meantime, each day we'll do our very best to write on The Fade Out, covering all sorts of aspects of this mini-series by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, a straight-up noir story set during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The first thing that strikes me about the series is an aspect that is evoked by the somewhat iconic cover to its first issue and its manual typewriter.

Some searching through Google makes me believe that the typewriter shown is a Royal Standard typewriter, similar to the one found on an Etsy page for a sale for a model which evidently dates to the 1930's.  Notice especially the distinctive shape of the "window" at the top of the typewriter, where one can see where the keys would strike the page.

(I wonder if one of the other images for this particular page served as a reference for Sean Phillips.)

UPDATE, 12/3:  On Twitter, Sean confirms that the typewriter is a Royal, which he bought at a local antique market.

There's something romantic about the manual typewriter, which bridges the gap from laborious typesetting (and handwritten manuscripts) to the electronic typewriter and its progeny, the word processor.  The rhythmic clicking of the key striking the page and the occasional carriage return, the entirely portable device that requires only paper and an ink ribbon:  it calls to mind Ernest Hemingway, and it makes sense that it would be the only prized possession of the idealistic bohemian writer in the movie Moulin Rouge.

The object is well chosen to introduce readers to the series:  the central character is a screenwriter, and the setting is Hollywood where an entire new industry had so recently emerged, where each blockbuster spectacle on film has its origins in the ideas that a writer typed out in his office or in his bedroom.

But, at the broadest level, the image evokes writing and storytelling, and it's a theme that recurs quite often in stories themselves.  There's Shakespeare's "play within a play" in the comedy of A Midsummer Night's Dream and the tragedy of Hamlet.  In the movies, you have Hollywood in (the much happier tale) Singing in the Rain and the bedtime-story framing device of The Princess Bride, and C-3PO recounted the Rebels' adventures to the Ewoks long after he had told Luke Skywalker that he wasn't very good at telling stories.

And we don't have to look far to find the theme in other Brubaker-Phillips comics.

• In their first serialized collaboration, Sleeper for DC's Wildstorm imprint, super-powered villains would pass the time by telling each other their "origin stories" as if they were characters in a comic book.
• From Criminal, Jacob in "Bad Night" was the creator of the Frank Kafka, P.I. comic strip, and in "The Last of the Innocent," Riley Richards' nostalgia was partially triggered by his rereading the old EC-style comics that he had so enjoyed in his "innocent" youth.
• And in Fatale, an ancient book -- the evil bishop's bible -- becomes the major MacGuffin, and a few of the men who encounter Josephine end up creating haunting pieces of art, from Alfred Ravenscroft's pulp story "To the Unseen Eyes," to "The Losing Side of Eternity" by the reporter Hank Raines, to the stunning songs created by the grunge band Amsterdam.

UPDATE, 12/3:  A friendly commenter Spence also reminds us of this year's Criminal Special Edition, with Zangar the barbarian and his comic within the comic -- a glaring omission, as it's been my favorite single issue of the year.  Thanks, Spence!

The aphorism is that writers should write what they know, and obviously that always includes the act of writing itself, but there are other good reasons for the subject to appear in the noir comics of Brubaker and Phillips.

Beyond being used for exposition, writing expresses the psychological need for human connection, magnifying the sense of longing and loss for those who read it -- as with Riley in "The Last of the Innocent" -- or allowing the central character to grapple with his anxiety and alienation through self-expression, as the insomniac Jacob did with both the wish-fulfillment evident in his take-charge character of Frank Kafka and the pessimism and even dread of the endless maze that Kafka is forced to navigate half-blind.

It's crucial to note that, in The Fade Out, the main character Charlie has had writer's block since his return from the Second World War.  He's a writer who doesn't write -- and a man whose memory is damaged by blackouts and who wants to hide behind a disguise that resembles 1933's The Invisible Man.

Charlie is a broken man who almost doesn't exist and who wishes he didn't, a man who longs to express himself and finds himself almost entirely unable to do so, either in his craft or in his personal relationships.

We discovered in issue #11 that Charlie made a rare connection with Val, but she was soon lost to him, the victim of both a murder and a subsequent cover-up.   It's no wonder that that loss drives him for the entire story.

The Fade Out #11 In Stores This Week -- and Volume 3 in February.

The penultimate chapter of The Fade Out is upon us, and we see that Comic Book Resources just posted a three-page preview of the issue, where "All the threads of the mystery come together, as Charlie and Gil barrel headfirst towards trouble!"

Two weeks back, Elizabeth Breitweiser's husband -- and comic artist -- Mitch Breitweiser tweeted that they already got their comp copies, and he writes, "It's the best comic you'll read all year, no doubt."  The issue will reach retail stores tomorrow.

In the meantime, we've been keeping an eye out for news on the next project by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, and we saw that, last week, Image Comics released its February solicitations.  There's nothing new yet, but we did notice the third and final trade paperback collection for The Fade Out -- once again, the price is discounted compared to the monthly issues, and this time the cover features a green logo over the cover art for issue #9

The Fade Out Act Three is scheduled to arrive on February 3rd.

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.

Recommended Reading

We have a couple interesting links this week, highlighted in bold.

As we reported last week, Velvet #12 is in stores today. Comic Book Resources just posted a four-page preview for part two of "The Man Who Stole the World," the third arc in Ed Brubaker, Steve Epting, and Elizabeth Breitweiser's retro spy thriller.

We've earlier reported on Sean Phillips' continued work with the Criterion Collection, and through Twitter, Sean pointed out a brief piece in American Illustration - American Photography, profiling the Criterion Collection's art director Eric Skillman.  He mentions his "incredibly fruitful collaborations" with Phillips and other artists, and the profile (and the re-tweeted Tweet) highlights Phillips' moody cover for On The Waterfront.

Through its own Twitter account, the Criterion Collection also recently highlighted a story by The Paris Review.  Criterion's art directors walk through the process of creating the cover art and packaging for the series, in a story prompted by last year's release of the coffee-table book Criterion Designs, released for the company's thirtieth anniversary.  Phillips isn't singled out here, but the piece is definitely worth reading for those who appreciate the work behind the company's high-quality home-video releases of acclaimed films.

And, I noticed last week the release of a magazine-sized variant for another Image Comics debut, The Witch written by Greg Rucka, who co-created Gotham Central with Ed Brubaker.  With its extra-large size, unique cover art, and loads of bonus content for the premium price, the variant very much resembles the magazine-sized variants for The Fade Out #1 and the Criminal Special Edition.

The incident in the issue is a fairly self-contained introduction to what is obviously a much larger story, and I thought it was a good read that would probably be appealing to quite a few fans of Fatale and Gotham Central, especially fans of the character of Renee Montoya from the latter.

(Still, it doesn't hold a candle to the Criminal one-shot's magazine variant, which remains the single best comic book I've read in ages.  I wouldn't be surprised if it's nominated for multiple Eisners next year, including Best Single Issue and Best Publication Design.)

I haven't seen any comparisons online to the Brubaker/Phillips magazine variants, but writer Greg Rucka and artist Nicola Scott are featured in an interview at the Image Comics website, and Rucka is an another interview at Comics Bulletin.