Fatale Volume 3 TP: West of Hell
As this Eisner-nominated series about an immortal—or is she?—femme continues, the narrative does even more time traveling, leaving behind a film-noir feel and edging closer to pure horror. The four stories here focus on the antiheroine’s search for self-knowledge as we follow her and her predecessors through Dust Bowl Texas, medieval France, the Wild West, and WWII Europe. Tantalizing hints about the forces that spawned her and the unseen, Lovecraftian world that surrounds her are planted throughout the pages like so much delicious nerd bait. (Parsing various quotes and influences will prove irresistible to many readers.) Taken individually, these tales are terrifically told, with the dialogue and drawings working in perfect tandem, as befits Brubaker and Phillips’ productive partnership. For all her power over men, though, Jo (or Mathilda, or Bonnie) often finds herself in need of a Y-chromosome-­assisted rescue. One wonders about the dramatic possibilities should she, in a longer narrative, take fuller control over her destiny. Series fans will be eager to find out where and when she goes next. --Keir Graff