written by Scott Snyder
art by Sean Murphy
What an opening! The deep evolutionary history of Snyder's The Wake provides even in its briefest moments of Part One some of the series' best intrigue. Part Two ups even that ante. What looks to be the prize of a successful hunting expedition, a large mammoth littered with spears, is revealed instead to be the bait for even larger aquatic prey, a gigantic megalodon, which dramatically drags down a massive hunting party of web-fingered humanoids as they continue to attack with killer precision.
The Wake has taken little effort to disguise its monster: a mermaid. Yet, its mermaid is quite mysterious. Most importantly, it has been attempting communication with its sophisticated song for its full captivity, and Dr. Archer plans on listening. It also, seemingly, can get into human heads, cause hallucinations or dreams. It is simultaneously elegant and terrifying.The team assembled by DHS, though introduced in Part One, are better realized here, particularly Meeks: Leonard Meeker, a deep-ocean engineer and marine poacher. Dr. Archer, to her surprise, is assigned by Agent Cruz to lead the team in their investigations, much to the consternation of her former boss and NOAA yes-man Wainwright. Her expertise in whale song not withstanding, her former encounter with the creatures, suspected by Cruz and recalled with increasing frequency by Archer herself, seems to weigh heavily on both Archer and the direction of the story.
Once again, Sean Murphy and colorist Matt Hollingsworth deliver exceptionally fine artwork, capitalizing on The Wake's most explosive and epic moments—the megalodon launching out of the water comes to mind—and recreating the darkness and industrial shadows of the deep-sea drilling station. They, with Snyder, have concocted a brew of human epic—indebted to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey—and lyric horror—to Scott's Alien—with a mystery all its own.
[August 2013]
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