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5 Skull Review: ‘Fatale’ #24

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The greatest horror-noir of all time comes to a close with “Fatale” #24.  Brubaker and Phillips deliver a melancholy resolution for Josephine while building upon the myth hitting just about everything we love about “Fatale”.  There is no major twist, there is nothing particularly gasp worthy or unexpected.  What we have is simply the most satisfying and appropriate end for one of the most unfortunate and endearing characters in comics.  I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

Fatale_24_cover

 

WRITTEN BY: ED BRUBAKER
ART BY: SEAN PHILLIPS
PUBLISHER: IMAGE
PRICE: $4.99
RELEASE: July 30, 2014

Reviewed By Epic Switzer

Who needs a cigarette?

This is the ending Josephine deserves.  I think partly what is so fascinating about this character is that she represents an unobtainable ideal both diegetically and for the reader.  It is almost as if her power extends off the page and corrupts your mind as you read “Fatale”.  Just like her “victims”, we love her, we lust after her, but we can never obtain her.  And if you haven’t gotten the whole picture yet, Brubaker and Phillips brilliantly give you one final hint as to what it is that she represents.  I hesitate to disclose my interpretation of final allegory, because I find it’s meaning to be deeply personal and relevant to me yet open to your own interpretation.  Upon reading this series again, I think there will be a great deal to discover and connect to this final installment.  And that, to me, is the mark of fantastic plotting and powerful themes.

“Fatale” has been such an incredibly influential book for me personally that I can’t help but swoon over how perfectly concluded this deeply rich story is here in issue 24.  If I have any complaint at all, I hate shudder to even suggest it, but part of me wishes we had just gotten one tiny step closer to the true cosmic horror that Josephine is meant to give rise to.

Nick’s brush with the eternal is merely suggested rather than depicted and is over as soon as it began.  This stays true to the style of true cosmic horror, because to actually see them would drive us insane, as it did Nick, but I fear the scene and its narration were almost to brief to satisfy my twisted taste.

Anyway having said that, I’m sorry and I take it all back.  This book is perfect.

At the end there is a preview for Ed and Sean’s next noir book called “The Fade Out” (drool) and a final, fantastic article by Jess Nevins about the noir trope of fallen heroes and their counterpart, the redeemed villain.  Each and every one of her essays has been a masterwork and if you haven’t been reading the single issues, you are missing out.  Go back and find them if you can.

I’m sort of still reeling from the fact that it is all over now.  I don’t know if anything can fill the void left behind by this book, but I also think that feeling is incredibly appropriate to the series.  There is nothing left now but to grieve and start again from the beginning.  To trap myself in a cycle, reliving each tragedy, each mistake, each heartbreak.  To live like Josephine, searching for meaning in a mad mad world.  To seek the truth, because I will not deny it.  I live in the shadow of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.  Bravo gentlemen, bravo.

Epic Switzer AKA Eric is an aspiring filmmaker and screenplay writer living in Los Angeles.  His work tends to focus on the lighter side of entropy, dystopic futures, and man’s innate struggle with his own mortality.  He can be found on twitter @epicswitzer or reached via email at ericswitzerfilm@gmail.com

 

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[Review] Graphic Novel ‘Tender’ Is Brilliant Feminist Body Horror That Will Make You Squirm & Scream

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Tender Beth Hetland Graphic Novel

Beth Hetland’s debut graphic novel, ‘Tender,’ is a modern tale of love, validation, and self-destruction by way of brutal body horror with a feminist edge.

“I’ve wanted this more than anything.”

Men so often dominate the body horror subgenre, which makes it so rare and insightful whenever women tackle this space. This makes Beth Hetland’s Tender such a refreshing change of pace. It’s earnest, honest, and impossibly exposed. Tender takes the body horror subgenre and brilliantly and subversively mixes it together with a narrative that’s steeped in the societal expectations that women face on a daily basis, whether it comes to empowerment, family, or sexuality. It single-handedly beats other 2023 and ‘24 feminine horror texts like American Horror Story: Delicate, Sick, Lisa Frankenstein, and Immaculate at their own game.

Hetland’s Tender is American Psycho meets Rosemary’s Baby meets Swallow. It’s also absolutely not for the faint of heart.

Right from the jump, Tender grabs hold of its audience and doesn’t let go. Carolanne’s quest for romantic fulfillment, validation, and a grander purpose is easy to empathize with and an effective framework for this woeful saga. Carolanne’s wounds cut so deep simply because they’re so incredibly commonplace. Everybody wants to feel wanted.

Tender is full of beautiful, gross, expressive artwork that makes the reader squirm in their seat and itch. Hetland’s drawings are simultaneously minimalist and comprehensively layered. They’re  reminiscent of Charles Burns’ Black Hole, in the best way possible. There’s consistently inspired and striking use of spot coloring that elevates Hetland’s story whenever it’s incorporated, invading Tender’s muted world.

Hetland employs effective, economical storytelling that makes clever use of panels and scene construction so that Tender can breeze through exposition and get to the story’s gooey, aching heart. There’s an excellent page that depicts Carolanne’s menial domestic tasks where the repetitive panels grow increasingly smaller to illustrate the formulaic rut that her life has become. It’s magical. Tender is full of creative devices like this that further let the reader into Carolanne’s mind without ever getting clunky or explicit on the matter. The graphic novel is bookended with a simple moment that shifts from sweet to suffocating.

Tender gives the audience a proper sense of who Carolanne is right away. Hetland adeptly defines her protagonist so that readers are immediately on her side, praying that she gets her “happily ever after,” and makes it out of this sick story alive…And then they’re rapidly wishing for the opposite and utterly aghast over this chameleon. There’s also some creative experimentation with non-linear storytelling that gets to the root of Carolanne and continually recontextualizes who she is and what she wants out of life so that the audience is kept on guard.

Tender casually transforms from a picture-perfect rom-com, right down to the visual style, into a haunting horror story. There’s such a natural quality to how Tender presents the melancholy manner in which a relationship — and life — can decay. Once the horror elements hit, they hit hard, like a jackhammer, and don’t relent. It’s hard not to wince and grimace through Tender’s terrifying images. They’re reminiscent of the nightmarish dadaist visuals from The Ring’s cursed videotape, distilled to blunt comic panels that the reader is forced to confront and digest, rather than something that simply flickers through their mind and is gone a moment later. Tender makes its audience marinate in its mania and incubates its horror as if it’s a gestating fetus in their womb.

Tender tells a powerful, emotional, disturbing story, but its secret weapon may be its sublime pacing. Hetland paces Tender in such an exceptional manner, so that it takes its time, sneaks up on the reader, and gets under their skin until they’re dreading where the story will go next. Tender pushes the audience right up to the edge so that they’re practically begging that Carolanne won’t do the things that she does, yet the other shoe always drops in the most devastating manner. Audiences will read Tender with clenched fists that make it a struggle to turn each page, although they won’t be able to stop. Tender isn’t a short story, at more than 160 pages, but readers will want to take their time and relish each page so that this macabre story lasts for as long as possible before it cascades to its tragic conclusion. 

Tender is an accomplished and uncomfortable debut graphic novel from Hetland that reveals a strong, unflinching voice that’s the perfect fit for horror. Tender indulges in heightened flights of fancy and toes the line with the supernatural. However, Tender is so successful at what it does because it’s so grounded in reality and presents a horror story that’s all too common in society. It’s a heartbreaking meditation on loneliness and codependency that’s one of 2024’s must-read horror graphic novels.

‘Tender,’ by Beth Hetland and published by Fantagraphics, is now available.

4 out of 5 skulls

Tender graphic novel review

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