Below the surface lurks something unknown. Depths are forever home to objects gone from memory, matter driven from sentience, a refuge to both terror and the sublime. Seas rock in storms of taloned sea-bound bird beasts, gills with teeth, fallen creatures lifeless and exiled. Whether sharks or squid, the soft and the wet tear bravery to shreds, craven quiver remaining the only emotion to wield. Michael Crichton put alien intelligence on the ocean floor, as did James Cameron. Breathless lack of oxygen and claustrophobia assume new extremes. Foreign and crushing, lightless and inhospitable, sizable bodies of water conjure fear and mystery, inspiration to many a narrative.
Ocean, a six-part comic series written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Chris Sprouse, sees fit to explore just these watery conundrums and soaked shakes of puzzlement, this time shifting the action away from Earth. A big face asleep stares sightlessly from the cover, stilled slumber beneath an iced surface, the swollen presence of Jupiter hovering overhead. Space black cuts the background, sizzling cold as oceanic blue melts into the panels. Revealed are coffins, a numberless flotilla drifting submerged, deep in the blue. Housed in each coffin, a face shines forth, sleep-grimaced as puzzlement comes to the fore.
Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is the focus here. The series hypothesizes that below its icy surface a vast ocean exists. With roots in reality, Ocean appropriates speculation in scientific quarters about what lies hidden under Europa’s exterior, choosing as a foundation proposals of a liquid interior. It’s an attractive idea and fertile soil for fiction, and clearly Ellis is interested in exploring such a possibility.
Introducing the plot is the discovery of lots of coffins in Europa’s ocean. A scientific research team posted in orbit around the moon makes the discovery, forced into cautious shudder at the virgin sight, words of astonishment inflected with fright buoying their find. Cut to New York City and our protagonist Nathan Kane. He’s a United Nations weapons inspector, obsessed by the infancy of space travel, NASA’s early voyages into space, the way they seem so unsophisticated in comparison to the interplanetary travel of the present. He’s also been trained in the Samuel L. Jackson school of attitude (or should that be Attitude): the bald head, the curt remarks, the ballsy comic invective, the flights to violence. He’s been sent to investigate the coffin situation, for it turns out that the coffins are not the only objects populating the ocean. Mysterious weapons, canon-esque and ominous, float close to the coffins, as does a large ringed structure. Kane’s purpose becomes clear: strip from the objects their ambiguity and nullify any risk they may pose.
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