I have very good memories of my adventures with Joe Hill’s scripts. Such Locke and Key, i.e. a combination of themes known from the works of my father (Stephen King) with the creatively treated motif of mysterious keys, is one of the most interesting comic horror films I have had contact with. I also enjoyed reading Basketful of Heads, the first of the titles created under the new DC imprint: Hill House Comics. Hence my interest in Plunge, another story in this series , where Hill enlisted the help of cartoonist Stuart Immonen. Unfortunately, this time a work was created in which it is in vain to look for any originality, and the known elements have been treated neglectively.
Rokoko
The structure of Plunge resembles a typical horror / action movie from the eighties / nineties. In 1983, the research and drilling vessel “Derleth”, equipped with the most modern technology, disappeared without a trace near the Arctic Circle. Until a mysterious emergency signal from a lost ship is detected several decades later. To uncover the secret, the oil company Rococo sends its representative David Lacome and the rescue team of the Carpenter brothers (one would like to say to Hill: “I see what you did there”). It turns out that the ghost ship has returned with the crew, who not only behaves suspiciously, but also hasn’t aged a day for forty years. And this is just the beginning of the mysteries waiting for millennia at the bottom of the ocean.
There are no waves
Among the additions at the end of the volume is Hill’s e-mail to Immonen, where the writer sets out his idea for Plunge story . They say the following: “this story will not win us awards for artistry and refinement. But it can get us readers, which is even better. ” In my case, the last sentence turned out to be wrong. Hill wanted to pay tribute to Carpenter and other cult horror filmmakers of the past, but went a step too far with no creative element. This is all the more strange that in the aforementioned e-mail an outline of the original Tonihe had a more interesting idea to use themes from Lovecraft’s mythology, which, however, was ultimately not used. In the final version, Cthulhu’s mythology looks pale. I appreciate the introduction of polychaetes, because there are not enough of them in pop culture (I hope that they will someday match the popularity of even such tardigrades), although it is not clear whether they are aliens or only aliens using them. Additionally, tentacles must appear at some point. Boredom.
There are also some mathematical tricks used in the comic, but their execution also cools down the enthusiasm. The survivors of Derletha have knowledge inaccessible to humanity. It is even said that they managed to write down the Pi number to the very end, although now we know its value to … 22.5 trillion decimal places. Just to record such an excruciatingly long sequence would require an enormous amount of free space. If it would lead to any conclusion, if mathematics brought some plot solution … Nothing of that, the magic of numbers was treated only as an effective (?) Gimmick. The series of random numbers also appear on the covers, and an additional flavor is the replacement of letters in the authors’ names with mathematical symbols. Ultimately, it doesn’t serve any particular purpose either. What was cool (pun intended ) on paper, it turned out to be just a wasted potential for something more interesting. Even high school maths could be more formidable than what Hill presented.
But it was there already
Lacome (looking, check out, paint like Paul Giamatti – I’ve always enjoyed such treatments) is the most corporate of the corporate assholes – a creature devoid of any morality, for whom only profit counts. Captain Carpenter (harder to blink at the reader) is a tough guy, willing to sacrifice everything for the good of his crew. Of all the human heroes, Russell fares best, gifted by the ghostly crew of Derleth with a mind-reading Walkman. Among the others, there is also a “token” woman in the form of a brave biologist, a silent giant or a barked-out smart – however, they fall out very one-dimensional and do not go beyond the pattern typical for the species. There are a few more people to the crew, but their role is limited to being cannon fodder, because it’s a horror game, so someone has to bend brutally – only a reader unfamiliar with these characters does not care very much. I would like to commend Hill for this, that the survivors of the ship from years ago are not typical zombies and are endowed with intelligence. There is also a twist associated with them (the only one in the story), the discovery of which I leave to the reader.
This is not a new wave
I appreciate Stuart Immonen for his drawings in the great Nextwave: Agents of HATE (Egmont, will you ever publish it in Polish?), Which was full of crazy and wildly creative ideas. There, however, was the scenario that was ailing here. Hence, the graphic layer in Toni does not stand out with anything special. Just a typical American drawing school, not very well suited to the horror tones. I can say the same about Dave Stewart’s colors – competent but free from darkness and anxiety. The comic book does not bring the cooling mentioned in the introduction; although most of the action takes place in the Arctic Circle, the frost is not properly presented.
Shoal
Everything was interesting on paper – transferring Cthulhu’s mythology to the present day, numerous references to Carpenter (including the best horror film of all time – Something . I do not invite you to discuss it), or finally weaving mathematics into it all. However, Hill combined it all half-heartedly, so that instead of an interesting mix, a comic was created without idea and without panache. A thing to read and forget immediately. You’d better spend your time reading Lovecraft, watching Carpenter’s movies, or just doing sudoku.
