What's This Apocalypse Doing in My Shark Mayhem?

 

My expectations for the first volume of Carthago were too basic, is the problem. I went in expecting a story about someone messing around in the deep sea and running afoul of a Megalodon. Either there's an undersea base, or the giant prehistoric shark makes it to the surface, but either way, chaos ensues. Sure, there's stuff like Meg for that itch, but reading it in a prose novel, or watching Jason Statham try to react to CGI, doesn't work the same as a comic, where the artist can better shape the scale and response.

But the Megalodon's just the hook, really. One is encountered by a deep-sea drilling operation, and several ultimately make it to the surface, but that's not what the story's about. By the time that happens, everyone has basically moved on to other concerns. Writer Christopher Bec's got a lot more going than that. There's a whole world of prehistoric creatures existing in undersea chambers around the world, several of which may be connected to each other. The world starts to undergo a series of environmental catastrophes, at the same time evidence of an ancient, highly advanced civilization is discovered. A civilization that would have lived underwater.

Getting involved in all this is a company, called Carthago, which owned the deep-sea drilling operation and is run by a mysterious guy who wears a ski mask all the time. This means lots of scenes of men in suits talking in boardrooms about doing illegal shit to maintain their stock price. There's also a reclusive, wealthy, centenarian collector named Mr. Feiersinger (who is in a wheelchair after a yeti encounter). Who I feel like might have some level of precognition. He has a explorer/survivalist who works for him as a trouble shooter, a London Donovan, who he saved from dying at sea once. He then promptly informed Donovan he owed him and would work for him for the next forty years. The way he gives a precise number suggests the guy has some idea what's coming, but maybe not. There's a lot of other scientists mixed up in all of it as well, along with an environmental group that gets wiped out by mercenaries hired by Carthago.

Caught in the middle of all this is Kim Melville, who the back of the tpb calls and oceanographer, but I think she's a marine biologist, and her daughter, Lou. Lou is very at home in the water (the gills on her back probably help), and has a certain connection with animals. She also seems to have prophetic dreams or visions. Maybe Feiersinger got hold of a diary from someone else like Lou, and that's how he seems to know what's going on.

I mean, that's a lot of stuff, I can't say Bec isn't trying to give me my money's worth on plot. He sets a lot of threads in motion right from the start, and he tries to give everyone some time and some backstory. The problem is some of it feels like pointless tangents. Do we really need pages about why Mr. Snyder's face is horribly burned and he keeps it under the ski mask? Do I care that Feiersinger's younger brother tried to upstage him by catching his own Megalodon to show off to the world? Do we really need Donovan to take Kim and Lou to Uluru to speak with some shamans there about Lou's nature? No one could figure out the kid needs to be in water regularly? Gee, the kid with gills needs to be around water. Glad we traveled to the middle of the fucking Outback to establish that.

(Question: Is it still using the Magical Negro trope if the characters are Indigenous Australians, rather than African?)

This is a really talky book for one I went into with the hopes of giant shark mayhem. Bec tries to give Eric Henninot (who draws the first 115 pages), and Milan Jovanovic (who draws the remaining 165) a chance to spice up the setting, and the story rarely stays in one place for long. Bec jumps from one character or plot thread to another pretty regularly. But it often feels like the reader just bounces from one conversation to another, with maybe a two-page bit where someone's ship is randomly attacked by a giant shark. Gab gab gab in a boardroom, gab gab gab in a castle, gab gab gab on a ship, oops some people died, gab gab gab. I think Bec is trying to give a sense of the scale, that this is going to effect everyone and so everyone is involved, but a little more focus wouldn't hurt.

Henninot's style is more detailed than Jovanovic's, although both lean to the photo-realistic end of thing. Not just that Henninot's faces have a lot more lines on them. His version of Feiersinger's castle does a lot more to suggest just how rich this guy is. Special display cases with appropriate lighting. Feiersinger in his special motorized wheelchair, waiting for London on a raised platform lit from below like he's a pro wrestler. No pyro, through. Jovanovic's version has much lower ceilings, the prized items are displayed more conventionally on walls. Maybe it's because Bec is trying to shift Feiersinger to less of an antagonist to Kim and more of an ally. In that, he probably shouldn't have the old man abduct Lou to use to blackmail Kim into helping. Kind of creates an unfavorable impression.

Page layouts are straightforward regardless of the artist. Everything is square or rectangular. Lots of short, wide panels stretching across the page, with the occasional clump of three panels in a row. Both artists stick a lot in the middle distance. Even during conversations, there will be a few panels of just one character's face, but most of the time they hang back a bit to show someone else's reaction to what's being said, or just to give a sense of place. When the story calls for showing something impressive, they can pull back and give it a full-page splash. Again, trying to offer the sense of scale. That these people are deep underwater in a tiny little submersible, descending into a massive, unknown region.

The book also has five different colorists (although Yvan Villeneuve is only credited with one page), and that makes a bit of a difference. Jovanovic's art looks better under Delphine Rieu's work than Bertrand Denoulet's. Rieu (who also colors about half of Henninot's pages, the rest handled by Pierre Matterne) adds depth and a sense of detail by doing a lot more shading and gradation of colors, whereas Denoulet's colors tend to be very solid and sharply defined. It doesn't obscure Jovanovic's linework, but it doesn't enhance it, either. Some of the best panels of the Megalodon's are the ones Rieu colors, like those above, because they use the water to selectively obscure the shark.

I think Bec's trying to look at the human drive to understand, learn, explore, and what happens when that's corrupted is the best word I can use. Carthago is concerned with profits, and so is Feiersigner's younger brother. Feiersinger seems to want acclaim as the one who captured a Megalodon, or else made some other great discovery or achievement. He wants, as the mayor in Jaws put it, to get his name in the National Geographic. Feiersinger was apparently a friend of Werner von braun's, and is still bitter von Braun's worked helped the U.S. beat the Soviets (who he was helping) to the Moon. I think the idea is that in the rush to be the first, the actual importance of what's being achieved or discovered is lost, or disrespected. Damage is caused, and the effects of that ripple out. 

That's my guess, anyway. I leave you with this page of Yuri Gargarin taking a whiz before heading into space. The greatest human accomplishments are no match for biological necessity.