{"id":2989,"date":"2016-01-10T15:40:32","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T15:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/?p=2989"},"modified":"2016-01-10T15:50:48","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T15:50:48","slug":"the-fade-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/the-fade-out\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fade-Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I don’t have books of the year, as I don’t read books by year. I read a handful of new books, especially poetry,\u00a0 as soon as they come out but, mostly, they pile up. I buy hardbacks that I know I’ll want to hold onto (eg the new Frantzen and Elvis Costello’s autobiography), but their high price doesn’t include the biggest expense involved in a thorough read: my time. As often I’ll wait for the paperback to come out or buy it on Kindle when I see a good deal. I don’t like reading to feel like a duty (except when it is<\/em> a duty because I’m marking it or reading for other professional reasons). And I like to be partially guided by serendipity. For instance, I was sorting out a huge pile of books in the front room the other day and came upon Tolkien’s Gown<\/em> by Rick Gekoski, which I’d started, then let get buried, which has now become my bedtime read.<\/p>\n

An exception to the above is comics (and, to continue the City of Literature theme, I see comics and song lyrics as being just as much part of our literature as plays and poems). There are writer\/artists whose every work I read as soon as it comes out eg Adrian Tomine, Seth, Alan Moore, the Hernandez Brothers and, lately, Ed Brubaker. I came across Brubaker when he took over from Bendis on his excellent Daredevil<\/em> run (Daredevil <\/em>is the only new superhero comic I ever read, unless you count Alias<\/em>, also by Bendis, currently on Netflix as the engaging Jessica Jones<\/em>). I spotted it in Nottingham’s Page 45<\/em> store and was intrigued by its ’40s film noir style and setting. I devoured the comics as they came out, then realised it was in three four-part arcs (the first two now in book form), and decided to save the last arc until it was complete. I survived the wait by reading all five volumes of its predecessor,\u00a0Fatale<\/em>, which I liked a lot but isn’t quite as fully achieved as\u00a0The Fade-Out<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Issue 12 came out this week and, yesterday, I reread issue 8 then had a slow read of the final four. It’s a satisfying, superbly structured, well-rounded story, with outstanding artwork by Sean Philips. Somebody’s bound to make a movie of it but there’s too much to fit in. The Boardwalk Empire<\/em> team could do it justice in a mini-series. It’s a completely grown-up comic, set in the aftermath of the horrors of the Second World War. It’s shot through with cynicism yet full of tender spots, with good insights into relationships and a firm sense of Hollywood history (there are some good short prose pieces about this at the back of every issue, too).<\/p>\n

The Fade-Out<\/em> is the best new comic I’ve read in ages and fully justified repeated visits to the store to see if the new issue’s out yet. I could have saved half my money and had one complete, satisfying binge had I waited for the inevitable fat paperback of the whole thing. But it’s more than habit that draws me to the serialised story. I love the shared experience, watching a series develop, reading the writer’s comments on the letters page (you never get those in the collections) as it evolves. Feeling part of it, rather than a passive consumer. The buggers do take up a lot of space though. Before I go to this book launch <\/a>(for a refugee charity anthology<\/a> that contains only my second poem of the century, if there are any Belbin collectors out there), I need to create some shelf space to put them in…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t have books of the year, as I don’t read books by year. I read a handful of new books, especially poetry,\u00a0 as soon as they come out but, mostly, they pile up. I buy hardbacks that I know I’ll want to hold onto (eg the new Frantzen and Elvis Costello’s autobiography), but their high price doesn’t include the biggest expense involved in a thorough read: my time. As often I’ll wait for the paperback to come out or buy it on Kindle when I see a good deal. I don’t like reading to feel like a duty (except when it is a duty because I’m marking it or reading for other professional reasons). And I like to be partially guided by serendipity. For…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2989"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3003,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions\/3003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}