Creative Staff:
Story: Mark Sable
Art: Alberto Locatelli
Colors: Juancho!
Letterer: Rob Steen
What They Say:
The near future — humankind’s first starship crash lands in the most remote spot on earth, the underwater spacecraft graveyard known as Point Nemo. While diving in the deep to salvage this technological marvel, our heroes discover the wreck of a doomed 1980s Soviet Mars mission, a nuclear warhead…and an alien being that’s killing their crew one by one.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Mark Sable’s Miskatonic work was something that intrigued me but frustrated me as it progressed, but it left me wanting to see more of what they’d do. The shift in concept to this wasn’t exactly expected but it’s been an interesting work so far though I do continue to struggle with some of its execution. With this work, he’s paired with artist Albert Locatelli where they get to deal with something futuristic and problematic. I liked how Sable handles his characters but it takes a bit to introduce them and get them to a point where I feel like it comes together, so I expect it to take a couple of issues. Locatelli’s artwork is pretty solid from the outset here but the book suffers from jumping to places quickly and there not being a smooth way to transition it all because so many things are happening.
While things have been uncertain and mildly confusing so far, they take an extra leap here in that and it does make the book harder to connect with. There’s a host of issues going on with the Chinese and Americans getting closer to where Kiara and her group is in trying to get to the Daedalus and that’s making for tense moments topside. The weird part is that while they argue about things and Sam is kind of on the outs with every, Eka is down below being killed by some kind of Nazi spirit-alien thing made up of light blades and then takes on Eka’s form. Nobody seems to realize when they grab him later when they head below that he’s not acting at all like himself, or even human, and draw him into the whole thing while they get closer to finding what they need. Or rather, what Kiara needs in order to reshape the world in her vision once humanity leaves fully in their starships and she can lead the survivors.
Not surprisingly, as they head below the surface once again, Kiara shows Sam another ship that is hidden down here, this time a Soviet craft from the 1980s that never supposedly existed. This one is a bit different in that there is video footage of the astronauts and how they didn’t get to Mars but were thrust back to earth and ended up spending decades hidden below the surface in order tp keep the nuke they were forced to take to Mars out of their leaders’ hands. They spent decades living there and we see some of how that happened but it just opens up more questions as you try to understand what kind of multiversal graveyard this is and if it makes any sense at all. Nobody seems to be asking the right questions and why Kiara seems to know everything.
In Summary:
I’m really curious to see where all of this is going and that upon completion it makes a kind of cohesive sense. I liken a bit to Sable’s Miskatonic work in that it starts with some things you can connect with and throws the weird at you in a big way and you’re left trying to see how it all comes together. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on but I am liking the exploration of these variations on past history and how it could of gone as that scratches a particular itch. But there’s little in the way of character material to latch onto in order to help provide a narrative that draws you in for the big story.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: July 13th, 2022
MSRP: $4.99