Browse: Home / Blackouts, Lies, and the Dark of Old Hollywood: THE FADE OUT #1

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login

The-SoluteLogo

A Film Site By Lovers of Film

Menu

Skip to content
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Long Reviews
  • News
  • Articles and Opinions
  • Other Media
  • Sometimes the Narrative Is Pure
  • The Solute Book Club: FURNACE (An Introduction)
  • TV on the Internet: PAUL T. GOLDMAN
  • Year of the Month: DRY SUMMER (SUSUZ YAZ)
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray

Blackouts, Lies, and the Dark of Old Hollywood: THE FADE OUT #1

Posted By Anthony Pizzo on October 17, 2014 in Other Media | 3 Responses

“There were no planes up in those skies, just stars you normally couldn’t see. That’s just how it was here… Something in the air made it easier to believe lies.”

-Charlie Parish

Unless you’re a comic book aficionado, the name Ed Brubaker may not ring a bell. However, if you saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier, you’ve seen an adaptation of his work. What the film doesn’t convey is Brubaker’s bone-deep love of noir, which has permeated his work ever since he broke into comics. Whether he’s working with the properties of The Big Two or his creator-owned stuff, Brubaker’s stories are drenched in the tropes and trappings of the genre. Now, Ed Brubaker has just entered into a contract with Image Comics, where for five years they’ll let him do whatever the hell he wants, and the first comic under that contract is The Fade Out, a straight noir set in late ’40s Hollywood, exploring the dark underside of the film industry.

Comics are a visual medium, and I would be remiss to talk about The Fade Out without touching on its artist, Sean Phillips. Now, Phillips and Brubaker have been a powerhouse team for a long time now, working together on several highly acclaimed series, usually with one word titles. (Criminal, Incognito, Sleeper, and Fatale) Phillips’ people are very solid, fleshy in a way comic book characters usually aren’t. His women in particular look like they come from live reference, like people who actually eat food. There’s a lot of detail, but he isn’t afraid to let a background express the feeling rather than a place, oftentimes drawing light as bulbs of energy eminatting from their source. (And on that note, colorist Elizabeth Brewster brings a loose, almost watercolor feeling to the pages.)

Darkness is an important component of the first issue. The first thing we see is our protagonist, screenwriter Charlie Parish, waking up in a bathtub after getting blackout drunk, the word association reminding him of the mandatory city-wide blackouts during the war. As the aforementioned Charlie Parrish quote implies, darkness doesn’t just conceal, it makes certain things easier to see. The film industry is built on light, and when those lights go out it’s possible to glimpse some of the things they were overpowering.

Lies are another paramount facet of The Fade Out. They range from the minor (a publicity girl, Dotty Quinn, has to make adjustments to various stars’ biographies depending on whatever picture they’re promoting, or the secretly debauched parties at star Earl Roth’s mansion) to the major. When Charlie wakes up in a Hollywood bungalow after a hard night of partying, he discovers that an up-and-coming starlet, Valeria Sommers, has been murdered; strangled to death. Charlie quickly wipes the place clean of his fingerprints, of any trace that anyone was there, and later, in an discussion with the studio’s head of security, Phil Brodsky, discovers that someone has gone a step further and staged Valeria’s death as a suicide. At the same time Charlie is involved in some subterfuge of his own: he’s secretly working with the blacklisted writer Gil Mason, who was sold out to the House of Un-American Activities on suspicion of being a communist. The two still have fights in public every now and then, just to keep up appearanes. Performance, on or off the screen, is another lie, and as Charlie tells us in that quote at the top, there’s something about Los Angeles that makes lies very easy to believe, and tell.

One art sequence of particular note comes after Charlie realizes the studio is trying to cover up Valeria’s murder. Charlie is walking off the lot, but the backgrounds are black and white “film stills,” which kind of correspond with his thoughts. An image of two men sword fighting accompanies the caption “He knew exactly what they were doing,” illustrating the truth struggling with the lie. A gangster firing a tommy gun out the side of a car accompanies some thoughts on on studios had been covering up rape and murder since the roaring twenties. Finally, as he muses on his part in aiding their cover up, the still behind him depicts a lone cowboy riding through a Southern California desert. Yet as he starts to think about her the cowboy is turning his horse around (in a very nice visual queue to a flashback). Yet the cowboy in the still was moving toward the camera, so is his turn simple a sudden pause or is he going to run away from whatever lies ahead?

We’ll see where things go in Issue #2.

Posted in Other Media | Tagged Classic Hollywood, Comic Book, Comics, Criminal, Ed Brubaker, Elizabeth Brewster, Fatale, Image Comics, Incognito, murder mystery, noir, Old Hollywood, Sean Phillips, Sleeper, The Fade Out

About the Author

comicgenious2000@yahoo.com'

Anthony Pizzo

Anthony Pizzo was born, and has filled the years that followed with books, film, television, and Internet. He went to college at Florida State University and majored in film at the College of Motion Picture, Television, & Recording Arts, where he made several short films with titles like “This Is A Fill Up” and “Morgue: a love story with guts.”

He is a writer, editor, and cartoonist, writing and drawing the webcomic “Safety Goggles,” about a group of future mad scientists going to college that can be found at http://www.anthonypizzo.com/html/safetygoggles.html

Related Posts

Year of the Month: BATMAN RETURNS→

Flashback Comics Rack: Highlights of September 1988→

Flashback Comics Rack: Highlights of August 1988→

Flashback Comics Rack: Highlights of July 1988→

  • Comments
  • Popular
  • Most Recent
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleWonderful piece, Sam. It's made…
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleFellow heretic here. I've never…
  • n***********@gmail.com'
    Ruck Cohlchez on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEI wouldn't have called it…
  • j***********@gmail.com'
    Son of Griff on LIFE ITSELFGlad to hear back from…
  • n*********@gmail.com'
    Jake Gittes on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEThis is the single most…
  • “The End” of SAVAGES

    33250 views / Posted November 10, 2014
  • What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE

    27267 views / Posted March 19, 2015
  • The Untalented Mr. Ripley: The Craft of Standup Comedy and the Non-Comedy of TOM MYERS

    24588 views / Posted June 26, 2018
  • Scenic Routes: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

    19943 views / Posted November 20, 2014
  • Yvonne, or: CASABLANCA In One Character and Three Scenes

    10914 views / Posted August 21, 2014
  • Don't they look comfy?

    Sometimes the Narrative Is Pure

    February 1, 2023 / Gillianren
  • The Solute Book Club: FURNACE (An Introduction)

    February 1, 2023 / CM Crockford
  • TV on the Internet: PAUL T. GOLDMAN

    February 1, 2023 / Ruck Cohlchez
  • Year of the Month: DRY SUMMER (SUSUZ YAZ)

    January 31, 2023 / Sam "Burgundy Suit" Scott
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray

    January 31, 2023 / Greta Taylor

Last Tweets

  • Sometimes the Narrative Is Pure - https://t.co/EMnSPhPe3P, 13 hours ago
  • The Solute Book Club: FURNACE (An Introduction) - https://t.co/nM1pl98Pee, 19 hours ago
  • TV on the Internet: PAUL T. GOLDMAN - https://t.co/6p35fILNOI, 19 hours ago

©2014 - 2016 The-Solute | Hosted, Developed and Maintained by Bellingham WP LogoBellinghamWP.com.

Menu

  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login
Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!