The Fade Out #7

The Fade Out continues its moody Hollywood noir with issue seven, and Sean Phillips's cover sets the tone perfectly — a bespectacled man in a dark suit and a blonde woman in red draw close for a kiss, their intimate moment shadowed by an ominous crimson splash bleeding down the white background. Ed Brubaker and Phillips make the tension between passion and dread feel utterly inseparable, which is exactly the promise this image delivers. If "The Sound of Waves" keeps pace with the series so far, this is noir storytelling at its most seductive.