Ed Brubaker is my favourite comic book author, and perhaps in contention for my favourite author across all mediums. Whenever I see his titles on the store shelf, I purchase them sight unseen. The last series he did, Fatale , with frequent collaborator, Sean Phillips, was a favourite. Blending in noir with mystery and horror was a joy to read. With Fade Out , he returns to the noir genre with a murder mystery. Gone are the fantastical and horror elements of Fatale. Instead, it’s a story about 1940s Hollywood centered around a murder of a hot leading actress. The story mostly follows a young script writer, named Charlie Parish, who wakes up one morning and discovers the body of the actress his hotel room after a night of partying. His memory is hazy and fragmented and he doesn’t remember how he got there. He covers up his tracks and it’s soon revealed that a bigger cover up may be going on; this one murder may be tied to the large...