The Wake #9 – Review

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

The Story: Leeward discovers that Captain for a Day is as much a jip as the queen version.

The Review: For a very brief period of time in my college days, I was editor of a hopeful (soon to be hopeless) literary magazine. The work was thankless and the pay was pitiful—good practice for a future in comic book reviewing, honestly—but I enjoyed it, nonetheless. I learned that a good editor wields his power rarely, pushing the writing only when it doesn’t do what the writer wants it to do. Giving creators their freedom is great and all, but you have to step in if they’re not living up to their own standards.

Were I editor of The Wake, I probably would’ve stepped in somewhere around #6
or #7 and gently (but firmly) told Snyder and Murphy, “You’ve got to give this more than ten issues. You’ve gone through the painstaking trouble of crafting this brand new world—you drew a map, for heaven’s sake—and there’s absolutely no way you’re going to explore any of it, drive it to ruin, then save it in the issues you have left. Or, more accurately, there is a way, but it’s not going to be pretty.” If Snyder and Murphy are anything like the writers I worked with, they’ll nod politely and ignore me anyway, then give me resentfully chagrined looks if it turns out I was right: it wasn’t pretty, as it is here.