The Wake #5 – Review

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

The Review: I discovered one of my all-time favorite books when I was in elementary school: D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths.*  Though nearly every story within its pages is a treasure, one that really struck me at the time was the Deucalion legend, when Zeus flooded the land for what he saw as man’s transgressions.  The similarities to Noah’s Ark were not lost on me, and noticing that was perhaps the first subtle shift in my understanding of religion, history, culture.

As it turns out, the Greeks and Hebrews weren’t the only ones with flood tales, or “hafgufa,” as Dr. Marin calls them in this issue.  He cites, in rather chilling fashion, ancient texts from Babylon, China, and India, all recounting the anguish and near extinction of humanity from an unimaginable and unexplainable torrent of water.  Though the cause of this seemingly universal disaster remains a mystery in the real world, Snyder uses it quite effectively for his own purposes, simultaneously linking his present storyline with the one to come, and laying out the relationship between The Wake’s creatures and mankind: hostile.