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[Punchy]

Sorry about last week, the week between Christmas and New Years is always a dead week for me. But we're back on the horse now, and back with a bang! It's the new collabo from Brubaker and Phillips, Fatale! Exciting.



Fatale #1
as selected by BlueStreak


Guitarsmashley has next week's pick


Comics are to be scored on a scale from 1-10. 1 being suck, 10 being a damn good comic. Your review must be at least a paragraph to show you've put some effort in, but beyond that, there's no right or wrong, unless you disagree with me


Guitarsmashley
SilverPhoenix
Deadfett
Eli Katz
Ameobas
Punchy
Jude Terror
John Snow/Amlah6
Stephen Day
The President/Frag It
BubbaKanoosh
BlueStreak


Eventually, I will put together all of our reviews and we will have our very own article on the front page of The Outhouse! If you would like for your review to be included, please try to have it posted by the end of day on Tuesday.

[S.F. Jude Terror]

Damn you're killing me. I've just finished reading about 15 issues of Amazing Spiderman to catch up with the book from two weeks ago.

[guitarsmashley]

Punchy should be removed from the pick list for at least 6 months.

[Eli Katz]

Just picked this up. Looks gorgeous inside.

[guitarsmashley]

Just picked this up. Looks gorgeous inside.

Like an 18 year old girl.

[Stephen Day]

Damn, my LCS didn't have this.

[Eli Katz]

Read it. Enjoyable, promising, but not overwhelmingly awesome.

[Eli Katz]

Actually re-read it, and changed my mind. Better than I first thought.

[Eli Katz]

Alcoholic cops, headless victims, killers in black bowler hats. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips jam FATALE #1 with an array of pulp characters to produce an unforgettable opening issue that is part horror story, part police procedural.

The issue begins with a man named Nicholas, who finds an unpublished manuscript by a recently deceased pulp writer. Before he has a chance to flip through the pages, Nicolas is confronted by a mysterious group of black-garbed men. These men say little, but their cold, almost faceless looks communicate an unflinching willingness to commit violence. A dark-haired beauty named Jo appears out of nowhere, and saves Nicholas and the manuscript by gunning down the men in black.

But as they make their getaway in Jo’s sports car, a plane right out of NORTH BY NORTHWEST comes out of the sky and swoops in for an attack. The car is knocked off the road, and Nicolas and Jo are thrown like ragdolls from the exploding vehicle. Five days later Nicolas awakes in a hospitable bed, his right leg amputated. The manuscript lies by his bedside. He picks up the pages and begins to read. The rest of FATALE shifts from the story of Nicholas to the story inside the unpublished manuscript. More characters are introduced; a cult murder is investigated; and a woman named Josephine, whose looks and name are suspiciously similar to Jo’s, plays a central role in this novel.

FATALE, in other words, is a metafictional narrative -- a story within a story -- that flips between the first-person narration of Nicholas and the third-person narration of the unpublished novel. How exactly these two stories interconnect isn’t yet clear, but Brubaker includes enough overlapping details between the two to suggest that the events in the novel will have a direct impact on the rest of Nicolas’s story.

The strength of FATALE is the way it moves so quickly between these dueling plots, introducing characters and backstories in rapid-fire fashion and simultaneously producing a nightmarish atmosphere. This series promises to be the most complex work that Brubaker has written; it also promises to be the most bizarre. The violence -- from amputation to decapitation -- is gratuitously memorable. And all the characters are sick, mutilated, or psychopathic. FATALE is like a bad acid trip, accompanied by a drinking binge, and a three-day vomiting hangover. It’s ugly, over the top, and a hell of a lot of fun.

If there is one weakness in this issue, it’s the cliffhanger. At this point, we are not invested enough in the characters or the plot to really care if one guy pulls a gun on another. But admittedly, this is a minor weakness.

As for the art, Sean Phillips does a phenomenal job depicting this double world of surreal violence. And his double-page illustration that accompanies the article on H.P. Lovecraft is eye popping. It provides a perfect finish to a near-perfect opening issue.

STORY: 9.25
ART: 9.75
OVERALL: 9.5

[guitarsmashley]

not much to pick from for next week as far as review group books go so I'm picking the top quality book that is my secondly most anticipated book of next week.

[guitarsmashley]

it took around 6 tries but I finally read this book. Might have to try to read it again, it was not so good.

[Eli Katz]

it took around 6 tries but I finally read this book. Might have to try to read it again, it was not so good.

Huh?

[Amoebas]

Just back from my lcs - they didn't have this. The guy (who wasn't there on Wednesday) doesn't even remember seeing it.

[guitarsmashley]

Huh?

I did a lot of starting and stopping. Which is why the book felt more disjointed then it was.

[Eli Katz]

No reviews, no bickering, no Fourthy-Punchy-type battles.

Clearly, the RG is in decline.