Voyage To The Deep!

Voyage to the Deep was the Dell Comics attempt to capture some of the glamour of Irwin Allen's big-screen epic Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. And it does a magnificent job of capturing the bravura and over-the-top adventure blended with specious science that can make for a heady narrative brew. The new collection from IDW starts with a blisteringly detailed essay from Stephen Bissette on the long history of submarines both in the real world and in fiction. I learned a lot just from the essay and always look forward to his detail-crushing endeavors. The comic book itself is a Sam Glanzman effort with the writer unknown. Bissette suggests the earliest issues my have been written by mystic and poet Lionel Ziprin. It sure reads like no comic I've ever encountered before, offering up an imagined apocalyptic vision of the world demolished by crushing waves of water. 

That was the gimmick of these stories. Like the Allen movie which inspired it, the Proteus is a submarine which had a weird technological ability to change its shape (get bigger and smaller and frankly reminded me of a penis...I know that's a bit odd) and is commanded by a genius who is able to tackle world-beating threats with a reliable crew of seamen. This phallic wonder of science is up against and unidentified "Enemy" who for four issues relentlessly tries to destroy the world for reasons left unclear. 

First there's the shifting of the world's axis creating massive tidal waves, then a tampering with sea flows to create destructive snow storms, followed by an anti-matter device that literally seems to eat the planet and finally a somewhat humdrum notion of raising volcanoes with sound. It's one thing after another after another with almost no time between them, as the Proteus never docks once between these attacks. Also just for kicks the Proteus is always attacked by some giant sea creature (featured on most of the John McDermott painted covers -- it's a giant lobster in the fourth issue which doesn't make the cover). 

The wonky fun issues showcasing some fantastic artwork and some relentless storytelling about utterly absurd threats. The general idea that the world is subject to transformation by man's ingenuity and tampering is sound, but the speed with which it happens here is stunning. Fun  stuff from a forgotten time. 

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