I often find myself confronted with comics which I would never normally pick up. If it was not for the fact that they were sent to me to review I would never read them, or more precisely never even look at them. This book especially fits into that category because on all levels, this is not a book I would even think of reading. It is a first volume of an Image comic, which means it is unlikely to have any connection to any book I have ever read before. Unlike IDW which is almost entirely licensed properties, or Marvel and DC which have a shared universe (as to a lesser extend so do Dynamite, Zenescope, Valliant and the other Image imprints like Topcow), a straight up Image book can be about anything, set anywhere and any time.

This book takes that to extreme as Undertow is set in pre-history, at a time when Homo Sapiens were mere savages and it focuses on the water breathing race of Atlanteans. And like most of their books, it comes with no introduction, no slow build up and no plot dump, just a short sharp shock into the sea with blood, guts and gore everywhere.

Well I say blood, guts and gore, but that would be slightly misleading. This book falls into the artistic category I call ‘Francavillain’ because Francesco is the current biggest proponent of this art style; colour is merely for effect, it is not used consistently throughout the book. Think of ‘mood lighting’ in a film where red panels illuminate the characters, or sunlight passes through water making everything blue. Then take it one step further and have the colour not necessarily come from anything, but use it to accentuate the feelings and meaning of the scene it is in.

So, here I am, presented with a book I know nothing about (my review copies don’t even get sent to me with a back page, so I don’t even have the blurb there for guidance.*) in an art style which I find off putting at best and downright annoying at its worst and boy am I lost…
… for about 5 pages until the book skilfully scoops you into the story and manages to dump a lot of plot without making you feel like you are sitting through a history lecture. The most amazing thing is the art actually starts to grow on me. It is never going to be my first choice of styles, I have been spoilt too much in recent years by art that looks like it could have stepped out of a feature film, but this is never confusing and frankly it is quite beautiful in places (and intentionally horrible in others I might add!).

This is an entirely new world for us to explore and be guided through and I am fascinated. I reviewed another Image comic a while back which invited us to be guided through a space world and it resorted to full page encyclopaedia entries showing us all the peoples and planets. Suffice to say it was just plain awful and made me want to digitally rip pages out of the book, but this does the exact opposite. You are slowly showed more and more of this world, from the surface to the watery depths, the savage humans ruled over by ‘The Amphibian’ to the life that our young protagonist left behind.

That leads me on to my only complaint about this book and really it is also a backhanded compliment. This book is deep, complex, long and just packed with story. I have been flicking back and forth trying to find the guys name and I simply cannot find it; this is not a Marvel comic where every time they address someone they use their name in BLOCK CAPITALS so the reader knows who they are. It is easy to become lost in this book, in both a good way and a bad way. This is more of a comment on me than the book, as I have become so used to reading comics that require only minimal thought or attention that when I am confronted by a comic with equivalent depth of Game of Thrones my brain starts to cook.

This is not an all-ages book and not just because of the in-depth story. There is copious violence, brutality, near cannibalism and occasional nudity which is very much in keeping with the darker more adult themes in the volume. What tempers most of this is the intentionally imprecise art, no one wants to see in anatomical detail someone having their leg ripped apart, what we get is the impression of it not a photograph and for that I am genuinely grateful.