The Wake #6 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (story), Sean Murphy (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors)

The Story: As it turns out, both the global warming deniers and paranoids were wrong.

The Review: So here we are, a long four months after the last issue of The Wake.  If it makes you feel any better, time has been even less kind to the title itself, as a whopping two hundred years have passed since we saw Lee Archer and her doomed crew sinking to the bottom of the sea while tidal Armageddon was happening overhead.  Needless to say, things look pretty grim for humanity at present, though the existence of Leeward shows that not all is lost.

While the world hasn’t completely gone under, it has definitely shrunken, and grows smaller all the time at a rate of about five or ten miles a year.  Though the U.S., at least, manages to keep its head above water, it’s had to make serious social and political adjustments.  The fifty states are no more (indeed, some coastal states have vanished altogether), replaced by thirteen territories, a conceptual blend of America’s original thirteen colonies and its unsettled, territorial days.  Though some semblance of governance exists, it’s much like the walls and reefs along the new coastline: a ruthless but fragile barrier against the despair about to overwhelm the country.

Although the particulars of the new American society have yet to be developed, Snyder gives us a fairly clear picture of life under the Mers (as the creatures are now universally referred to) thanks to Leeward’s map.  Maintenance of the coastal barriers and the harvesting of algae* are the primary occupations of the nation.  People are being driven to find new homes (the Tree People of the Midwest), new religion (giant statues of the Mers rise up in the Southwest), even new genetic diversity (there are references to “Outliers…the men who mate with the Mers”).  Fresh water has become the new gold standard, both commodity and currency, and one’s class is determined by one’s ability to both accumulate and ration it (members of the elite wear collars that allow them to survive on but a drop a week—or so it is rumored).

Obviously, humans are an adaptable species, but then so are the Mers.  Their continued evolution renders all of mankind’s coping mechanisms as merely temporary reprieves, a stark reminder that all are doomed if nothing changes.  This notion isn’t lost on Vivienne,** governess of the Northwest Territory and the largest body of fresh water in the country, but her fierce pride and determination to maintain the status quo makes her averse to risk.  She’s content to keep things as they are on the assumption American ingenuity will eventually solve the Mer problem, proving that even in their dire situation, humans still overestimate their survival abilities.

Leeward is not so resigned.  From the first page, she displays a desire to tackle the Mers head-on in their own turf (so to speak), fearlessly going into the water, calling forth a whole school of the creatures, and slaying them for profit.  In short, Snyder does everything necessary to make her a perfect heroine for the second half of his story.  That doesn’t mean he forgets his first heroine, however; the last page gives us the perfect cliffhanger as Lee’s voice echoes over Leeward’s listening device, assuring us, “I’m alive down here, and I can tell you how to save the world.”

Murphy’s art comes pretty close to perfection in its ability to be simultaneously clean yet detailed, capable of moments of dramatic subtlety as well as violent action.  This issue is further proof that he is a storyteller extraordinaire, able to deliver a narrative entirely independent from yet complementary to Snyder’s.  While Leeward and Pub discuss in captions the past, present, and potential future, Murphy shows us details of Leeward’s life in the submerging United States.  Hollingsworth’s colors are flat, but bright, pale, and dark enough at need, setting the mood of each scene exactly right every time.

Conclusion: An engrossing world, a kickass protagonist, and the highest stakes possible, written in Snyder’s flowing narrative and rendered by Murphy’s sharp, elegant art.

Grade: A

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: * Figures it would take a global disaster to drive people to societal veganism.