The Wake #6

Part Six (of 10)
written by Scott Snyder
art by Sean Murphy

Two hundred years after Dr. Lee Archer's oppressive descent into the oceanic abyss to investigate the discovery of a fearsome sea creature with a sophisticated, plaintive song, Snyder and Murphy's The Wake surfaces into the sun-bleached, salvaged world of prickly loner Leeward, a mer-creature head poacher eking a living along the Great American Barrier Reef.  It's a world of yellow so pale and faded that the white titles are barely legible.  Never has eye strain been so instrumental in world-building. 

Part dystopian climate horror—indebted significantly to lesser predecessor Waterworld—and part sci-fi western, The Wake may have changed its tone but its sense of mythology has remained intact.  Legends of mermaids have given way to rumors of signal from the ocean, a message to save the world.  And Leeward has spent her life listening for it.

While Leeward thrived, however criminally, in relative anonymity, alone in her wrecked-seaplane home, her acquisition of an "ear," a high-quality radio receiver illegally salvaged from an abandoned station, attracts some unwanted and dangerous attention.  With all major coastal cities—including the old capitol—now submerged by the rising sea levels, a new government and territories have risen out of the former United States.  Its administration under Governess Vivienne is somewhat ruthless if outwardly sensible.  The military action against the mer-creatures is becoming increasingly costly and difficult as their strength and size increase.  As they continue to melt the ice caps and coastlines continue to creep inland, fresh water becomes increasingly difficult to find.  More mysteriously, the government and its enforcement agency, the Arm, have made it illegal to listen for foreign signals, a decision that rings with conspiracy.

Though it's difficult to know what to make of it just yet, Archer and her team have visual reflexes in Leeward and her 23rd-century world.  If her lean, powerful physique and sharp-edged facial structure weren't enough to frame Leeward as a futuristic double for the cetologist, the echo in her name and her need to use eye-drops despite a scarcity of water certainly does.  Likewise, the Governess's General with his handsome yet crooked nose and gruff, taciturn demeanor is a ringer for DHS agent Astor Cruz; skinny, awkward, Ichabod Crane-ish Deed might easily be Professor Marin; and the Arm agent—"fully whole, or full of holes" (The Wake #6: 19)—come to arrest Leeward snarls like the belligerent hunter Meeks.  It's as though two hundred years removed, they're all still fighting for their survival.

[April 2014]