Sex, Drugs and Cthulhu – review of the comic “Fatale: Prayer for Rain” vol. 4

Femme fatale in noir titles is usually treated as an object as a background to the character’s development / fall. What if we took a fatal woman and made her the main character of the story? Screenwriter Ed Brubaker came up with this simple, and yet quite unique idea, spicing up everything with lovecraftian themes.

The main character of the Fatale series is Josephine, who, despite her death at the age of 22, is revived by a mysterious ritual and gains the power to influence men. Whoever succumbs to the heroine’s charm once, will never be able to free himself from her and will fulfill her every demand – often with disastrous (hehe) results. Additionally, Jo stopped aging and gained immortality. However, everything comes at a price: the culprit of all the commotion wants to get the woman and sacrifice her to the dark gods.

Bleach

The hallmark of all Brubaker comics I had the pleasure of meeting were the numerous flashbacks and time leaps. It is no different in the Fatale cycle. The first volume gave a specific format of the story that can be found in each of the scenes. On the one hand, he introduced a contemporary clamp to weave the events of the past in parallel. Thus, in the first part, the plot focuses on the 1950s. The second describes the heroine’s fate during the Second World War. In the third, the writer went even further in the past and presented episodes from the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century. Finally, the fourth volume takes the plot to the nineties of the twentieth century. Devoid of memory, Josephine is taken into the care of Lance and his colleagues from the Amsterdam band. Grunge musicians once gained fame, but all attempts to record new material fail. Lance decides to rob banks to earn money for a video, and Tom, the songwriter, plunges into drug trips. Jo becomes a muse for artists, but also their undoing.

Nevermind

Grunge music, extremely important in the nineties (thanks to Nirvana, Alice in Chains or Pearl Jam, among others) appears surprisingly rarely in pop culture. Therefore, applause for the writer for the decision to weave it into the plot. Although I clap rather softly, because I have the impression that the subject could have been bitten harder. Burnout, quarrels between members, drugs – all of these themes appear in a random biopic about rock musicians, regardless of the genre they represent. Brubaker devotes many pages to this thread, although at the same time it has very little impact on the progress of the plot as a whole. I had similar accusations while reading the previous parts – the stories presented in them were usually good, but they did not have a special impact on the main plot and did not lead to the development of the heroine. Each time we watch Jo, fleeing the cult, hypnotizes other men, which usually ends tragically for them. And this is where the problem arises, because Josephine rarely plays the first fiddle, often falling into the scheme of a lady in trouble – as if she is immortal and has powerful powers, yet she needs men to defend herself. Moreover, if the reader is to sympathizefemme fatale , there is not enough room for her remorse about how much tragedy she causes on the men and their families succumbing to her charm. If Brubkaer had decided at least in one particular direction – making Jo a villain or the other way around – he would show her horror at not having control over the powers. None of this, the heroine behaves as the plot dictates. It is a pity that the screenwriter did not decide on a more in-depth psychological trait.

Incestides

The graphic layer from Phillips fits into the atmosphere of history. The illustrator likes to use black, which creates the mood of darkness. Rainy and gloomy Seattle also looks great, fitting in with the atmosphere of grunge music. Worse, many frames show the artist’s sloppiness in drawing characters. Josephine can undergo several facial reconstruction operations on one page. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen such comic-looking Lovecraftian beasts, which was hardly what Phillips intended.

In utero

Brubaker has created quite an interesting detective story with a grunge atmosphere. The problem is that it does not perform well in the context of the whole. There is no new idea for the heroine here, and the very influence of Josephine on the members of the band “Amsterdam” is also very indirect – and so they were already on a self-destructive path, so her charm only accelerated the inevitable. Volume Four Fatale is a decent position, although the writer definitely can do more.