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The Fade Out, Act One (book review) Ed Brubaker (Writer), Sean Phillips (Artist, Letterer)

(The Fade Out #1)


130719 first review: second reading. rather than review each act of ‘fade out’ separately, this will cover them all. i do not know how i gave this less than five before, as it does capture several interests: film noir, crime pulp, 40s into 50s america, dream and nightmare... some years (decades...) past, i worked video rental place, I took film studies at u, i watched a lot of films, i knew some history of hollywood and the era just after ww2 when studios are broken up, blacklist on writers, dream machine smothers anything like art...


and then i stop. i no longer watch near as much, mostly i think because movies are social experience and my tastes are somewhat different or avant-garde or basically not what others want to watch.. my hearing is injured, i need subtitles, i no longer want to live in that past as i now have my own past, i no longer have someone in particular to watch with etc... so this book is sentimental favorite as well as, now, being more educated about graphic works, i can see it is beautifully constructed...


three acts. noir character (s) and plot (s). patsy, femmes, money, corruption... great use of cinematic techniques: close-up, pan, tracking, zoom, cuts, mise-en scene of shadows, high perspectives, venetian blinds... very concise, we see only what we need to follow the story. and this is always no more than our viewpoint, who has that typical noir defect of passing out drunk and forgetting important things... but this is individual-authored and not industrial production so you get more than movies... more like chandler... heartbreak order of the day, that is no less than ‘chinatown’ in graphic format...

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