Really! Sure there’s a plot here but Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Elizabeth Breitweiser have gone further and somehow brought the past to life.

The Fade Out is a stone cold masterpiece.īefore the first chapter was down I knew this was going to be epic, and, WOW, it is one helluva ride! It’s a corny thing to say but it’s true, and that’s The Fade Out is like a portal into the past. She’d been strangled and left on the floor, just feet away from a passed out Charlie! Besides a police investigation, the death of the leading lady means expensive reshoots for the studio and rewriting for Charlie.īut then later he sees the police report on Valeria: “suicide” with the death photo showing her hanging from a door - there’s corruption afoot! Rape, murder, alcoholism, drug abuse, hell, abuse of all kinds - this is show business, where behind the glitz and glamour lurk dark secrets, mysteries, and danger. Charlie Parish is a screenwriter for Victory Street Pictures, one of the largest studios in Los Angeles, who, after a wild party, wakes up near the corpse of his latest film’s starlet, Valeria Sommers. Hollywoodland, 1948, the tail end of the Golden Era of Film.

The Fade Out, Act One by Ed Brubaker