Category Archives: Image

Brubaker and Phillips come up with a great conclusion. Not so much for the present day part–Brubaker’s cheap with the present day stuff–but the flashback story closes beautifully.

While there’s a lot of good action, the issue excels because of the characters. Brubaker provides deeper insight into his protagonists during the issue’s busyness. They’re little insights, very quiet, but Brubaker gives them significance without too much emphasis. If that description makes any sense at all. It’s neat.

There’s not much explaining. Not in the present or the past, which gives Fatale an otherworldly tone even though there’s nothing fantastic in this issue. Even with the seventies cult resolution, there’s nothing uncanny either. It’s a very grounded finish to the arc.

Except for the present day stuff. Brubaker rushes it because it’s a cute resolution for the modern protagonist–whose name I have, in fact, forgotten.

Still, great comic.

CREDITS

The Devil’s Business, Chapter Five; writer, Ed Brubaker; artist and letterer, Sean Phillips; colorist, Dave Stewart; publisher, Image Comics.

Hansel, the cult leader, again gets his own scene juxtaposed against the regular action. Once again, it doesn’t work. Everything else this issue works–except one flashback panel requiring the reader to remember minutiae from the arc’s first issue and a revelation scene–but the cult leader is a constant problem.

Brubaker can’t make him interesting. He’s scary, he’s disturbing, but he’s not interesting. He’s just a bad guy. There’s nothing else to him. If he were addicted to Big League Chew, Fatale would work much better.

Anyway, the issue’s successes. Miles and Jo have a nice chemistry to them as they navigate the issue. It’s occasionally domestic, sometimes nearly cute. Brubaker makes Jo extremely sympathetic. The guy a little too, but nowhere near as much. It’s a damsel in distress story, even if there are a lot of damsels and the distress isn’t clear.

It’s a good, fast read.

CREDITS

The Devil’s Business, Chapter Four; writer, Ed Brubaker; artist and letterer, Sean Phillips; colorist, Dave Stewart; publisher, Image Comics.

There’s not a lot of seventies L.A. scenery this issue; there are a couple good moments though, a couple great panels from Phillips. Instead, most of the issue is spent indoors, whether present or past.

Brubaker gives the modern protagonist–Lash, I think (Brubaker makes his name less important every issue)–a little story. There’s some mystery, of course. A flashback in the present tense set after the regular flashback. And then there’s a cliffhanger in the present.

There’s a cliffhanger in the past too, but Brubaker’s so successful in splitting the two, it’s hard to see the cliffhanger as consequential. All these events occurred forty years before the present action. There’s nothing anyone can do to change them.

It’s an excellent issue. Brubaker’s got a few plots running and he’s writing great characters for all of them. Well, except the evil cult leader’s tone-deaf interlude. It’s weak.

CREDITS

The Devil’s Business, Interlude and Chapter Three; writer, Ed Brubaker; artist and letterer, Sean Phillips; colorist, Dave Stewart; publisher, Image Comics.

There are so many new supporting characters this issue, I really hope Brubaker isn’t expecting me to remember them all. He opens the issue revealing a little of Jo’s new ground situation. She’s in the house, there are more secrets (physical indications abound), but probably none relevant to this storyline. It’s mood. Phillips’s great at mood.

Then the arc’s protagonist–Miles–heads out to see what kind of trouble he’s gotten himself into. Page after page of Phillips seventies L.A. The art more than makes up for what seems like Brubaker treading water. He’s trying to get the day out of the way so Miles and Jo can go to a cult ceremony.

At this cult ceremony, Brubaker reveals (to the characters, not the reader) some of the connections to the previous Fatale story arc.

Brubaker has a fair amount of artificiality to his plotting, but it’s a good comic.

CREDITS

The Devil’s Business, Chapter Two; writer, Ed Brubaker; artist and letterer, Sean Phillips; colorist, Dave Stewart; publisher, Image Comics.

Brubaker introduces a lot of little mysteries this issue. Some happen in the present, most happen in the past; the big one is how the past and present are connected.

The present day mystery isn’t particularly intriguing, not when compared to the ones in the flashback. It’s set in seventies Hollywood, with a b-actor the apparent protagonist. Brubaker does spend a little time from Jo’s point of view, but she’s such a sympathetic character here it’s hard to recognize her.

The protagonist stumbles into a few of the big mysteries and serendipitously ends up at Jo’s house in the hills. Brubaker makes it feel completely reasonable, never contrived.

Phillips excels at the time period. The art’s more interesting with just the mundane–the fantastic or horror elements are nothing compared to Phillips’s seventies street scenes.

It’s a good comic and gets one interested, even if there’s nothing particularly sensational.

CREDITS

The Devil’s Business, Prologue and Chapter One; writer, Ed Brubaker; artist and letterer, Sean Phillips; colorist, Dave Stewart; publisher, Image Comics.