Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, colours by Dave Stewart, Fatale Book 1: Death Chases Me (Image 2012)
—- colours by Dave Stewart, Book 2: The Devil’s Business (Image 2012)
—- colours by Elizabeth Breitweiser and Dave Stewart, Book 3: West of Hell (Image 2013)
—- colours by Elizabeth Breitweiser, Book 4: Pray for Rain (Image 2014)
—- colours by Elizabeth Breitweiser, Book 5: Curse the Demon (Image 2012)
I read the Book 1 of Fatale a while back, and was unimpressed. When my son recently offered to lend me all five volumes, I decided to give it another go. I reread Book 1 to refresh my memory, and am embarrassed to say that I had almost no memory of the first reading, and this time I enjoyed it a lot. My blog post from back then describes it pretty accurately:
It’s a detective yarn combined with a Lovecraftian horror story. The telling is satisfyingly complex, shifting back and forth between two time periods and only gradually revealing the nature of the dilemmas facing the the lead characters, but laying out enough hints that when things take a turn for the bizarre there’s a sense of continuity. The artwork is consistently dramatic and serves the story well. Sex scenes are relatively tactful. Gore is over the top without being too realistic and the worst atrocities remain unseen by the reader.
This time I read on.
As you’d guess from the covers, the Fatale of the title is preceded by a silent Femme. The central character, Jo (or sometimes Josephine, and in one context Jane) has irresistible power over men. Some she simply bends to her will, others she infatuates so that they not only desire her and forsake all others, but devote their lives to protecting her, killing or dying in the attempt.
But not all men. It turns out that her powers have something to do with a cult whose members dress in weird monkish robes and commit ritual mass murders. The leader of the cult, sometimes known as the Bishop, wants Jo for vile purposes of his own and hunts her implacably through the decades (or maybe centuries).
Did I say it was a detective yarn? Well, yes, that’s true of the first book. But Jo, or perhaps other women who have been cursed like her with fatal charm and at least partial immortality, has been around for a long time, so she also features in tales of mediaeval witch-hunt, a Nazi interlude, a Bonnie and Clyde yarn, and more.
The story-telling is strong, and the art is compelling, but by the end I’d decided that horror isn’t for me. When the Bishop lays out his world view in Book 5, articulating the story’s dark metaphysics (the ‘reality’ behind the world that most people think is real), I was revolted, as I was meant to be, but I also wondered if there was any real pleasure or gain to be had from immersing oneself in someone else’s confected nightmare, however well done.
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