CRUSH DEPTH

In Andry and Daniel’s graphic novel, a primordial terror from the deep ocean attacks the survivors of a drowned planet desperate for human contact.

Aside from being shut up in a submarine for nearly a decade after the polar ice caps completely melted, the crewmembers of the Absolution are doing pretty well for themselves. Morale is good, there’s birthday cake, and the showers are co-ed and uninhibited. All of this belies the sense of dread that the authors and illustrator Sanchez quickly establish with in-your-face splash pages foretelling the havoc and utter mayhem that lurk at the heart of their undersea horror show. These cramped and oppressively claustrophobic shots are juxtaposed against a wide-angle view of the Absolution silently cruising through a green expanse of algae, the world the crew once knew above possibly erased out of existence. Crackerjack Science Officer Liana Pearson, capable Capt. Martin Wilder, and the rest of the crew are eager but also wary about investigating a sudden distress call from a British warship called the Vehemence reporting the discovery of “clean soil” above their heads. (“If there are other survivors out there, if we aren’t the only ones, isn’t that worth exploring?” asks the chief engineer.) Gruesome dead bodies bathed in an awful green hue float mutely across several wordless panels before an insert highlights the fingernails of one of the corpses scraping across the hull of the smaller vessel the Absolution has dispatched to investigate—the ensuing “Screee” sound effect couldn’t be more impactful. The Absolution’s crew manages to return safely, but they do not return alone: An undersea organism determined to consume them all has come with them. What follows, as the creators deftly parallel the confined with the expansive, the now with the later, and the orderly with chaotic, is a kind of Danse Macabre with elements of grotesque body horror. Interpersonal dynamics between Pearson and the captain, and between the captain and his problematic brother, effectively underscore the dramatic tension as the unwelcome visitor ramps ups its unstoppable campaign of carnage and conquest.

A thoroughly unnerving and highly atmospheric triumph.