Sean Phillips and Ed Brubaker's latest collaboration kickstarted this Autumn, following the climactic wrap up of Fatale, their noir-meets-Lovecraft crime/horror series. Things have presumably been brought a little more back down to Earth with The Fade Out, a murder mystery set in the Golden Age of Hollywood that recalls LA Confidential (and just the work of James Ellroy in general, although probably with a little less misanthropy). A thriller that takes place on the set of a 1948 noir film stuck in endless reshoots where everybody involved has their own demons, Brubaker and Phillips have done it again! But seriously, it's proper good. Each of the covers in the series so far have followed a similar layout, with an image drenched in a dripping technicolour watercolour puddle against a plain white background. For the first issue, though, the pair put out an alternate, large-print version that followed the format of a tabloid magazine of the era. It also boasted a matching magazine-style illustration, with the doomed couple Valeria Sommers and Earl Roth painted in eerie black-and-white photorealism. The cracked spine and frayed edges really make it.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
