Mike Isenberg recommends The Wake #8
Sean Murphy is absolutely one of my favorite working artists right now. Ever since discovering Punk Rock Jesus a year or two ago, I’ve been completely infatuated with everything he’s drawn. There’s something about his style that brings me back to the excitement I felt as a teenager, reading gritty science-fiction manga in the school cafeteria. Whether he’s drawing frenetic action sequences, intimate character moments, or big spectacle set-pieces, the man can really throw ink onto a page.
His collaboration with Scott Snyder on The Wake has continued to showcase Murphy’s talents brilliantly, while telling a tense and exciting story.
There’s a fairly engrossing mystery at play in The Wake. The first five issues (collected in The Wake: Part One) tell a modern-day deep-water monster story, in the style of The Abyss, interspersed with scenes of a flooded post-apocalyptic future, and an ancient past filled with anachronistic technology. Starting with issue #6 the story jumps 200 years forward into that post-apocalyptic future. Every issue that’s come out since has hinted at the connections between the stories; trying to guess how that mystery will unfold is hugely entertaining.
The world Snyder and Murphy have created here is fascinating, filled with a diverse and memorable cast of characters, and is beautifully rendered. If you think you’d be interested in a sci-fi/horror adventure story filled with incredible twists, brilliant action, and gorgeous artwork, you should absolutely pick up The Wake.
For fans of: female leads, horror, post-apocalyptic, adventure
Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science. He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.
