The Wake

3.5

Came to The Wake to introduce myself to Snyder's work, as I thought a shorter horror volume would be a good entry point. But Sean Murphy's art is what really blew me away. Couldn't quite get on board with the ending, but overall it was a solid way to spend a couple of smaller reading sessions.

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.

I am a sucker for underwater horror, so I was hoping this would be right up my street. Not to be, I'm afraid. I didn't like the scratchy art at all, and a promising storyline falls apart at the end into a mess of cliched characters, over exposition, confused page layouts and a load of terrible sub-Von Daniken guff.

Really disappointing.