I enthused about the first issue of the Marineman comic in Reviews about a year ago. During 2011 the brainchild of British diver Ian Churchill has made quite an impact, earning
an Eisner Award nomination in the USA for best new comic series of 2010 (Eisner Awards are a very big deal in the comic-book world, apparently) and attracting fans such as Jonathan Ross (“I love Mawine Man!”)
A “trade paperback” pulling together the first six issues plus extra pages is now available. So if you want to catch up with the early adventures of extravagantly bemuscled superhero Steve Ocean, his improbably pneumatic companion Lt Charlotte Green and the rest of the cast, this is the place to start.
Marineman is not one of your dark comic-book heroes, though he does get a bit brooding as he starts to unravel the story of his origins here. I think the artwork is fantastic, particularly the way in which Ian Churchill treats the underwater environment – the wateriness of his water is truly impressive!
My only slight disappointment is that this set is mainly concerned with that origins story, whereas the first issue had included diversions into underwater issues such as tonic immobility in sharks and freediving, and so promised
to be a little more educational. But perhaps there will be more of that to come.
What each edition, and this book, does include are interviews with divers active in underwater conservation around the world, and these can be interesting.
The foreword, incidentally, is by Dave Gibbons, co-creator of Watchmen. And as Watchmen was probably the most influential of all modern comic-books, I suppose that’s as good as a nod from God.
Steve Weinman
Image Comics
ISBN: 9781607063995
Softback, 288pp, £14.99
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