Comics
[5 Skull Comic Review] “The Fade Out” # 3 Transcends The Medium
Reading “The Fade Out”#3 is like sitting in your Studebaker drinking scotch from a flask, listening to jazz, and waiting for your wife’s lover to leave work so you can stab him in the parking lot. And I mean that in the sexiest way possible. C.S. Lewis used the word Sehnsucht to describe a nostalgia for something we never experienced. Woody Allen talks about golden age thinking in his film “Midnight in Paris”. When I read “The Fade Out” I long to live between the pages, to rub elbows with the Hollywoodland elite, to get caught up and swept away their world, and to embrace the seedy dark truth of it all beneath the surface. “The Fade Out” transcends the medium for me. I’ll try my best to talk about it in more certain terms
WRITTEN BY: Ed Brubaker
ART BY: Sean Phillips
PUBLISHER: Image
PRICE: $3.50
RELEASE: November 12, 2014
Reviewed By Eric Switzer
The scope of this series gets wider in this issue as new characters are introduced and their darkness is exposed. Characters in Brubaker/Phillips books can be described by their weaknesses. Their defining characteristics are the things their flaws, which more often than not turn out to be fatal ones. Maya is hired to replace Val in the film and has had to do some pretty shocking things to get where she is now, as evidence by her reaction to Thursby using a secret door to invade her dressing room. I wouldn’t be the first to call Brubaker a feminist, so in the golden age of film industry misogyny, I think there is a lot here to unpack thematically, but I’ll save that for a future essay.
Discovering who Val was through the different perspective of each character is not unlike unravelling Laura Palmer. It feels like Brubaker is making us slowly fall in love with a dead girl, and if she turns out to really be like Laura, the rug will be pulled out from under us in the most earth shattering of ways. Brubaker has that capacity.
“Fatale” gave Sean Phillips and opportunity to color outside the panels, and I think he is taking some of that expression and energy to the pages of “The Fade Out”. I am in love with his imaginative panels. The mark of a great artist is in how their art enhances or expands the themes, narrative, and characters. Phillips work is beyond comparison.
My only issue with this series is the inconsistent release schedule. Quality takes time obviously, but too much time and it necessary to start the series over every time an issue comes out. Not that I’m complaining, I’m pretty sure I have designated “The Fade Out” as my desert island book already.
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Eric Switzer 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.
Comics
‘You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive’ – IDW Dark’s Next Horror Comic Will Make You Question Reality
Five friends. Four houses. One perfect life. Bloody Disgusting is excited to exclusively announce You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive, a brand new horror comic from IDW Dark.
From Eisner-Nominated writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, and rising horror artist Heather Vaughan, You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive is described as a “paranoia-laced, socially-conscious, horror mystery that will leave you questioning reality, and reveal that this crafted world is more of a nightmare than the idealistic dream they were expecting.”
Phoebe Joplin has never questioned the world her parents built: a secluded community where she and her friends were raised to be smarter, stronger, and better than anyone else. No distractions. No dangers. No secrets. Until the night of their graduation.
When one of them dies under impossible circumstances, Phee starts to pull at the edges of her perfect life—and what she finds is something far more terrifying than she ever imagined.
Because this place isn’t a sanctuary. It’s a cage. And no one who discovers the truth ever leaves it alive.
Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing (Batman – One Bad Day: Clayface, Star Trek: The Last Starship) co-write the upcoming IDW Dark horror comic, featuring art by Heather Vaughan.
Jackson Lanzing said in a statement to Bloody Disgusting, “You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive is in many ways a spiritual successor to our last creator-owned horror, The Principles of Necromancy – a dive into the promise and consequence of playing god with the blood of innocents. But the Hivemind book this reminds me of most is Clayface: One Bad Day. This is a deeply human story with intensely raw emotions – five best friends and their five mysterious parents, tearing one another apart for the promise of some impossible glory that’s waiting just beyond their darkest actions. We’re thrilled to be bringing this story to life with our long-time partner in crime, editor Heather Antos, at IDW Dark – and we’re particularly excited to give our Clayface fans a new, brutal and emotional horror made just for them.”
Adds Collin Kelly, “We’re deconstructing a feeling that seems universal these days; our elders have a death grip on their power, without any intention of giving it up to the generations that come next. YNLTPA is about growing up with the limitless potential of the future… and realizing how much it’s a lie we’ve been fed to keep us under the yoke of the past. Bringing this brutal experience to life is our artist and co-creator, Heather Vaughan, who brings an incredible amount of humanity to our cast. But it’s in our youthful leads that Heather’s art really shines – you are going to fall in love with these young people, even as they go through the worst experience of their lives. What we’ve all crafted together is going to be tragic, painful, but above all else, sincere – with a future so uncertain, there’s only one thing we can trust: you’ll never leave this place alive.”
“Some horror stories are about monsters in the dark. YNLTPA is about realizing the monsters raised you,” previews Senior Group Editor Heather Antos. “Working with Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly on this series has been a dream in the darkest possible way. They’ve built a story that’s layered, brutal, and deeply emotional, and every issue gives artist Heather Vaughan opportunities to push the art into places that feel both haunting and deeply personal. Some horror comics will keep you up at night…this is one that will stick with you for years to come.”
The first issue of You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive goes on sale October 14, 2026! Make sure to pre-order at your local comic shop by September to guarantee a copy.
Exclusively check out the various covers for Issue #1 down below.
IDW Publishing’s horror imprint IDW DARK features comics like A Quiet Place: Storm Warning, Smile: For the Camera, The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees, The Twilight Zone, Event Horizon: Dark Descent & Event Horizon: Inferno, and more.
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