Five In One, Or: No One Here Gets Out Alive: Fatale #11 Review

Most of the time, there’s only really two reasons that I can give people to pick up Fatale, written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips, on an issue-by-issue basis rather than the trades. The first is that, even though up until now the stories in Fatale have been hugely decompressed, and arguably best read in one sitting as in a trade paperback reprint, buying individuals comics helps keep titles going and give you the chance to actually get a trade. But the second is the backmatter: essays by Jess Nevens- the guy who does the annotations for Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volumes – about the pulp horror stories, authors and magazines that form the influence of Fatale.

Yeah, well, forget all that shit, because neither one of them is true about Fatale #11. There is no backmatter in this issue, due to the vagaries of the holiday publishing schedule, and this issue isn’t really part of a long arc. Oh sure, the story features Josephine, the haunted femme fatale who makes men do anything she wants for some as-yet unknown reasons (although that rack probably helps, am I right, fellas? Hello? Is this thing on?), and we get to see Alfred Ravenscroft, the H. P. Lovecraft-inspired author of Elder Gods-style tales who has been a presence throughout the book until now, but for the most part, this issue is a one-and-done about how those two characters meet for the first time. And while it helps to know who these characters in order to fully enjoy the story, for once, it’s not utterly necessary. If you’ve been missing Fatale, this issue is a reasonable place to jump in for short money and get to know Josephine, her power and how she effects people, and some of the underpinnings of the greater story at large.

So if you’ve had any interest in checking out Fatale but haven’t gotten in on the ground floor, this is as good a place to give it a shot as any… but does that mean it’s any good?

The story opens with a cop: Officer Nelson, a uniformed officer who, several days before, came across Josephine at the scene of what appears to be an open and shut double murder. So being a good cop with a ready perp, he does the normal thing and breaks Josephine out, killing a cop to get her out. That’s what happens when you take up with a girl who has the supernatural effect on the male limbic system of ten caps of Viagra. Let’s just say that if you’ve found yourself in the company of Josephine for more than four hours, you should call your doctor immediately. Anyway, after leaving Nelson at a bar to start to understand which head he’s been thinking with for the past few days, Josephine goes to meet Ravenscroft, who wrote a story that gave her the first understanding of what she was and what she might be capable of. Ravenscroft tells her how he because inspired to write the stories, and, being a good host, introduces Josephine to his mother. Which isn’t really a good idea for anyone, because Mom ain’t right in the head. Or the legs. Or the spine. Mom just ain’t right.

On one hand, there’s a certain anticlimactic feeling to Fatale #11; we finally get the meeting between Josephine and Ravenscroft, and it turns out that the meeting is only a few pages long, and that the inspiration for his writing is pretty much what you’d expect from a Lovecraftian story: he was on an expedition to learn something Man Was Not Meant To Know, he got to know it, it drive him batshit crazy, and then he wrote about it. So for what should be a milestone meeting between the main character who has been driving the action for all eleven issues, and the writer who has been a motivational force for many characters including Josephine, it feels a bit slight.

However, you need to balance that feeling with the reality that, as a one-off issue that can be used as an entry point into the series, Brubaker really hits a home run here. In just 24 pages, Brubaker demonstrates every element that makes Fatale what it is. Do we get a clear explanation of Josephine and her power? Yup. Do we see that she is willing to do whatever is necessary to survive and get what she needs? Uh-huh. Do we learn that the issue as a whole is a mix of hard crime stories and horror? You bet. Brubaker has, in a very short story, simultaneously advanced the greater story of Fatale and given readers a solid, self-contained story that confirms that this book is full of crime and monsters and self-doubt and people who are used up and left by the wayside by forces beyond their understanding, for reasons they might never know. It’s Fatale as a whole in a single issue, and damned effective on that basis.

Sean Phillips’s art is as it always is. He works in a mix of fine and medium lines in a somewhat sparse and minimalistic style. Many panels have minimal if any backgrounds – shadows, sketched brick walls, wide open skies – with his foreground figures running a gamut from medium, almost sketched figures and faces to more detailed, expressive faces – young Ravenscroft in restraints, screaming, is shown in great detail, and is hauntingly dead behind the eyes. The one disappointment is Phillips’s depiction of Ravenscroft’s mother’s ghost – sure, she’s clearly been turned into a monster because of what she’s seen, but this is a Lovecraftian story. She’s fucked up, and clearly fucked up in a Lovecraftian way, with tentacles and whatnot… but she should be gloriously screwed up. Lovecraftian monsters should be so simply wrong that they beggar belief. They should be so horrific that simply viewing them should be to court madness… and Mrs. Ravenscroft just kinda looks like someone eased a green octopus into a housecoat. This really isn’t Phillips’s fault – it’s kind of impossible to draw anything that would drive someone nuts (unless it’s a confusing double-paged spread), but still, I wanted something a little more horrible from the ghost. It’s not enough, in any way, to put you off the story, and make no mistake: if you like Phillips’s stuff from other stories, you’re going to like it here.

Fatale #11 isn’t a perfect book. If you’re been following the story since the first issue, this meeting between two of the big influences of the story so far might seem a little sudden and slight, given the huge shadow Ravenscroft cast over particularly the first several issues. However, as a single, self-contained issue, it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t act as a perfect microcosm of the series as a whole. From the crime and the sexual overtones and the loss of control and personal sanity to forces bigger than the small, flawed people trapped in their circumstances, you can see it all here. If you know someone who hasn’t read Fatale, chuck them this issue before we start getting the longer arcs that you’ll have to wait for the trade for.

However, remember: after reading this issue, see a doctor if your erection persists for more than four hours… a psychiatric doctor. This is a horror comic, so if it gives you a boner, I would like you to be medicated under the observation of professionals.