The Wake

The first time Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy teamed up, the results were decidedly very silly.  “American Vampire:  Survival of the Fittest” was an over-the-top “NAZI VAMPIRES!” story that didn’t really mesh very well with the tone of the regular series.  Murphy drew the hell out of it, though, and proved that he’s one of the very few artists out there who can elevate the material they’re working on.  He’s teamed up again with Snyder for “The Wake” and I was more optimistic about this particular project.  A present-day story about deep-sea horror lurking at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean?  I’m game.  The results of the creators collaboration this time, however, are even more of a mixed bag.

Here’s the the thing about “The Wake:”  It’s a ten-issue miniseries featuring two stories told in five issues each.  The first, set in the present day, focuses on Dr. Lee Archer, a marine biologist and current social outcast, who is recruited by the Department of Homeland Security to analyze a mysterious signal they picked up at a secret base they’ve got running at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.  It belongs to a vicious humanoid aquatic creature and the DHS wants to know where it came from and if it has any friends.  Long story short, it does and they go on to cause havoc that sets the stage for the second story set two hundred years later after much of the world has been flooded.  The protagonist of this story is Leeward, a scavenger who has always wanted to know more about how the world got this way.  She gets a big clue after getting her hands on a listening device that allows her to hear the last transmission of Dr. Archer.

The thing about these stories is that one of them is a nice-looking piece of horror schlock and the other is a nice-looking adventure set in a very interesting world.  Both still have a fair amount of silliness to them, but the fact is that “The Wake’s” second half is much stronger than its first.  To the point where I wish that Snyder had spent the entirety of this miniseries focusing on the future rather than the present.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Deep Blue Sea,” then you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the first story plays out.  The main difference here is that where that particular movie had a good amount of self-awareness regarding its status as “‘Jurassic Park’ with sharks” Snyder and Murphy play it pretty straight here.  We’re introduced to Dr. Archer and the rest of the mostly disposable cast, see the creature that will be responsible for their deaths, watch as the base is flooded because of ONE MAN, and then bear witness as things get steadily worse for everyone from then on out.  Snyder puts it all together competently with the escalating tension and rising stakes handled particularly well here.  That doesn’t change the fact that everything here plays out in a very familiar manner with no real twists or surprises to the story.  Had Samuel L. Jackson been present here, we would’ve seen him finish his inspirational speech rather than be delightfully shocked to see him be eaten by a shark halfway through it.

With one exception, the characters themselves aren’t particularly memorable here either.  Dr. Archer is given the most development of the cast in this section of the book and yet she spends most of her time here either delivering exposition on the story or reacting to the chaos around her.  At least her exposition isn’t as obvious as Dr. Marin’s, whose main role seems to be as a mouthpiece for Snyder to expound on the various bits of mythology and cultural anthropology he’s read over the years.  Cruz, the DHS representative, gets points for being a basically decent government employee which is a refreshing change from the treacherous kind we ALWAYS see in these kinds of stories.  There are a few more who are present to fill genre roles, but none of these characters are as distinctive as Meeker, the gleefully amoral deep-sea hunter who was brought onto this project due to his expertise in killing all kinds of deep sea life.  Yes, his profession marks him as the villainous type, except that his skillset makes him utterly indispensable to the cast and he doesn’t let them forget it.  Had they been more memorable this would’ve been an awful trait to have.  As it is, he’s my favorite character in the book.

Had “The Wake” carried on like this for its entire length, I’ve no doubt that it would’ve been an utterly interminable experience.  In the end, the book’s first half exists mostly to set up its second with the creatures causing an ecological disaster that leaves the geopolitical landscape of the world forever changed.  It also makes for a much more interesting reading experience since Snyder creates a more interesting world here where much of it has been given over to people trying to carve a new existence out of the remains of the old.  On one hand, you’ve got Leeward who makes a living catching and killing the creatures for the poison in their eye ducts and trading it for supplies at the outpost where she lives.  Then you’ve got the ARM, remnants of the U.S. Government, who have given themselves over to dictatorship and still have most of the water and weapons around.  We’re also told of other tribal groups that have sprung up in the wake of the chaos that add further character to this world.

Oh yeah, and there’s a bunch of pirates that Leeward winds up joining that have made a ship out of something that is… probably a spoiler to talk about, but very cool in the context of this series.  It’s Leeward’s journey with them to find the source of Dr. Archer’s signal that provides the dramatic thrust of the second half, and that’s all well and good.  Things would’ve been more interesting if the ARM weren’t portrayed to be such out-and-out villains, but that’s not the biggest issue with this part of “The Wake.”

Snyder’s habit of having his cast go on about bits of culture and science that he’s picked up and/or researched continues unabated here.  If things like the cowardice of eagles, how sea air causes your hands to swell, and the origins of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” are of interest to you, then there’s plenty more where they came from here.  I found these tidbits to be more annoying than insightful since it never felt like I was hearing the characters speak when they were offering this information — just Snyder.

Then you get to the final issue and everything is almost, but not quite spelled out for the reader.  Yes, it’s yet another case of “bludgeoning with exposition” with the revelations about the creatures, humanity’s origins in the world, and the role of tears in human biology coming off as more silly than dramatically satisfying.  It also feels pretty rushed as well, with so much information being crammed into the final few pages that it doesn’t lead to an entirely satisfying finish.  In fact, there’s so much left unexplored from “The Wake’s” second half that the fact that it took five issues of rote undersea horror shenanigans to set things up comes off as even more disappointing.  Ideally, the series would’ve been better served with all that stuff being crammed into a double-sized one-shot to set things up and get readers excited and then devote the following ten-issue miniseries to exploring Leeward’s world.  As it is, the second half of “The Wake” suffers for not having enough room to develop everything it has to offer.

However, both halves would’ve been a lot less interesting without Murphy on board to illustrate them.  He creates a believable environment with the undersea oil rig of the story’s first half and keeps the action visually interesting when things start to go to hell within it.  The artist also provides a memorable look for the creatures and makes the random bits of fantasy work within this grounded environment.  The most memorable bit being Meeker’s hallucination that he’s about to dine on a baby whale and his irritation at the realization that it’s only a dream.

What Murphy does in the book’s first half is nothing compared to what he delivers in the second.  Here, the artist is tasked with creating the look for a whole new world and he pretty much nails it.  It’s a world that has been cobbled together from the remains of the old and you can see that in just about every panel from Leeward’s home, ARM’s headquarters, and the pirates’ “ship.”  Also, even if the finale is rushed, Murphy still renders the information it provides in memorable fashion.  I may not have been able to take any of what was being said seriously, but I’ll be damned it it wasn’t cool to look at!

The cover to “The Wake” proclaims that it won the 2014 Eisner award for “Best Limited Series.”  Looking at the other nominees, I have to say that it was a pretty weak year for miniseries (though I have yet to read Jeff Lemire’s “Trillium,” so it may have been robbed here).  This series certainly had plenty of ambition and style, but the execution left a lot to be desired here.  So much potential was wasted by the decision to give half of this miniseries’ length over to a rehash of familiar horror cliches.  There was so much in the second half that was practically begging for further exploration that’ll likely never happen now unless Snyder and Murphy have plans for a sequel.  The ending doesn’t indicate that such a thing is in the offing, but doesn’t rule it out either.  I’m not optimistic that we’ll get one, so “The Wake” will ultimately go down in my book as one more “interesting failure.”