Writer: Rich Douek / Penciller & Colour Artist: Alex Cormack / Letterer: Justin Birch / Colour Assistant: Mark Mullaney / Designer: Valeria Lopez / Editor: Bobby Curnow / IDW Comics
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#1 18th November 2020, #2 23rd December 2020)
The Pitch: In the aftermath of the Great War, the North Atlantic is ripe for plunder by independent salvage crews. When a former naval officer hires the SS Vagabond, he leads the ship to a sunken U-boat and a fortune in gold. Tensions mount as the crew prepares to double-cross each other, but the darkness of the ocean floor holds deeper terrors than any of them have bargained for!
We often wish there were parts of ourselves we could take and bury at sea. Memories. Things that happen to us. Things we did and regret. I'd go one further and say that there are some things that need to be discarded and buried in order for us to get out of bed every morning. The past can incapacitate you. Like an anchor, it can root you in a place and time. Leave you at the mercy of the tides. Threaten to drown you. Sometimes those things, those experiences stick with you no matter how much you try to pack them away. And the ocean is the best place for them, a place where they can drift away from you and haunt someone else.
Sea of Sorrows has much in common with the stunning Road of Bones, created by the same team. It's a historical tale, this time set just after the Great War. It features people chasing a dream (here, it's German gold, in Bones it was freedom). And like Bones, it features an otherworldly, mythical terror. Something that could be a manifestation of the mental states of the characters or could indeed be something from the depths of the ocean and not the depths of the minds... that might be real or a mass hallucination, preying on the folkloric myths seafaring folk are prone to. It's one of the best things about Douek and Cormack's work. The monsters could be men or... they could just be monsters. There's nothing to say that the blood isn't being spilt by the men themselves, another thing that Douek and Cormack do so well.
DOUEK AND CORMACK’S CHARACTERS ARE WORN AWAY BY THEIR SINS
Douek's writing makes outcasts of the characters, even within their own world. They suffer from 'shell-shock', (the book's title, Sea of Sorrows, lends itself to a cry for help – S.O.S.), they're driven by poverty, greed, booze... And they're worn away by their sins. Cormack lets that weariness play out on their faces and bodies. Their teeth are like tombstones, their faces lined. They are reliably salty, with that saltiness spilling easily over into anger. Paranoia begins to reign as people lose their lives. Cormack hides everyone in shadow and in those shadows are the people they really are, the lengths they'll go to so that things go their way. The colour palette stays limited, at times almost appearing monochromatic. Cormack and Mullaney create a sombre, brooding 'dark light' tone in the images, with a splash of copper. It's like Gordon Willis in illustrated form. Justin Birch's letters essay the specific voices and language of the seafarers perfectly. You can hear the songs they sing, the sound carried on the ocean air. The book is wrapped in a gorgeous, dark design by Valeria Lopez. What you get most out of these two issues is fear and the escalation of horror. The terror as a realisation dawns on the characters that they are going to have to face the things they buried. Take the plunge and drown with them.
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