The Wake #4 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (story), Sean Murphy (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors)

The Story: Don’t look behind you—what you see might make your head explode.

The Review: When it comes to writing fiction, going with the flow is a pretty good rule of thumb.  Often, the worst pieces I ever read in my creative writing days were the ones where the authors had such a specific vision for their stories that they snuffed all sparks of originality, failing to develop the little details that could have given their stories life.  But I think there’s a happy middle ground where you have room to improvise, but a clear plan as well.

That’s the sense you always get from Snyder-written works.  These opening bits have all been rather obscure, even seemingly random from their lack of contextual connections.  You can sort of shape a vague narrative from them, using quite a bit of guesswork, but for now, you must have faith that Snyder will weave them all together in the end.  He can’t do that by just writing off the cuff, however.  It’s clear that he knows exactly where this story is going and he knows precisely what information we need and where.