TITLE: Fatale #1
AUTHOR: Ed Brubaker
PENCILLER: Sean Phillips
PUBLISHER: Image Comics
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASED: January 4, 2012

By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

True story: When the cashier at my local comic shop saw Fatale at the top of my stack, he looked at his boss and said, “This guy’s got good taste.”

Yes, the comic book industry’s quintessential crime noir team is back, this time at Image with a book called Fatale. But what they’re giving us this time around is a story that seems to have a foot in more than one genre. The mystery/crime noir element is there of course, but we’ve also got some horror involved, and perhaps even a trace of science fiction.

We open the story with one of our main characters, Nicolas Lash, at the funeral for his godfather Dominic Raines. Raines was a successful crime novelist, if not a good one. When he notices some strange symbols on the tombstone, he is approached by a woman named Jo, who says the same symbols were on her grandmother’s tombstone. Later that night, Lash finds an old manuscript at Raines’ home, but is then startled by attackers. Jo jumps in to save the day, but a subsequent car crash leaves him in a hospital bed without his left leg. Lash starts reading the manuscript. It’s about a woman named Josephine, who’s sleeping with a dirty cop named Walt Booker. A reporter named Hank is trying to break the story on Booker. But as he investigates a gruesome murder, Booker may be getting himself mixed up with a bizarre cult that could spell grave things for all of them…

Though we only see him in one shot during this issue, the appearance of a bizarre squid man (shown in the teaser at left) is rather conspicuous. Apparently he’s some kind of Nazi gangster squid man. So when Fatale is over, I’m sure he’d make a great bad guy for Spongebob. This, combined with the gruesome murder scene we see depicted in this issue, obviously indicates that Brubaker and Phillips are starting to blur the lines between genres a bit. That’s a healthy move, considering how often they’ve worked together on these kinds of stories. It’s a nice slice of something a little different.

Also curious are the characters Jo and Josephine. Same person? Grandmother and granddaughter? Freaky time travel thing? I’m leaning toward option one, but you never know.

With a tone that’s very reminiscent of a 1940′s black and white film, with elements from something you see in today’s CGI-ridden era, Fatale looks like it’ll be every bit as masterful as Brubaker and Phillips’ work on Criminal and Incognito. Which is to say, it’ll be among the best stuff being published today.

Front page image from warrenellis.com. Teaser from surebeatsworking.blogspot.com.