The Wake

Wanted some more of Sean Murphy's work after his impressive run on Batman: White Knight. I love his scratchy kinetic style and this earlier work did not disappoint.

But it's such a comic. Snyder leans into the tropes. The first half is a rag-tag group of experts (naturally) in their respective fields taken miles underwater to a secret sea base (of course) where they've captured (I'm sure that'll last) a menacing mer-man (Hadley from The Cabin in the Woods would be so pleased!) and you know all this will go absolutely pear shaped. I could have leaned into that, there's meat on those bones. It's essentially Aliens underwater and I would have happily enjoyed a man vs merman showdown.

But then the second half of the book comes on 200 years into the future and we've got another protagonist with a sonic dolphin (that at one point will out-surf an avalanche) and a whole wack ton of hand-waving mythology that's supposed to tie into the first part but frankly doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. It's like Matrix Reloaded and Prometheus where there's a ton of pot fuelled exposition that at first blush sounds great but in the light of day just falls apart. I mean individual story beats are great but taken as a whole it just didn't work for me. Convince me I'm wrong.