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In Undertow #1, young Ukinni Alal is given Wesley’s choice in A Princess Bride, essentially: join the Dread Pirate Roberts—in this case a charismatic rebel named Redum Anshargal—or die. Ukinni joins the crew, and we the readers get the tour of life on board Redum’s ship. Redum’s Nautilus-like craft holds 5000 former Atlanteans that have rejected the land of their birth in order to find freedom to think the rebellious thoughts encouraged by Redum. The story’s MacGuffin is Redum’s hunt for an amphibian, which will enable him to engineer air breathing in his people so that they can gain independence from Atlantis.

That very few people get the choice to join the Dread Pirate Roberts in real life is our first indicator that we have arrived in the world of science fantasy, and the second is that our cast of characters are Atlantean water breathers that wear steampunk astronaut gear with fish bowl helmets to breathe on land. Humans are still only precultural and the object of Atlantean intellectual curiosity, and Atlantis is the dominant civilization. Also, to hear Redum say it and Ukinni relate it, Atlantis is a repressive materialistic culture.

That Redum talks in the language of agitprop and brainwashing in this comic (“freedom doesn’t mean safety” and “here you can define love, friendships, life, for yourself” or “your father was trash, you were a commodity to him”) is fascinating, and makes of the first issue a kind of a study of a personality cult, albeit a minor one since the personality that is hero-worshipped has Ahab-like limited horizons and ambitions. Redum’s craft circuits Atlantis and makes raids, and Redum himself has some critical things to say about this Babylon, but one gets the idea that Atlantis is big enough to survive the forays, the scorn, and Redum’s white whale-sized hubris. The impending tragedy is two-fold, since Ukinni worships Redum, at one point venerating Redum by calling him an unflinching statue of a man that cared forcefully for his crew and walked like a fist. That is some massive bromance, and one way or another, this mancrush might not let Ukinni down gently. For his sake, we can only hope that there are cult deprogrammers in Atlantis.

After a few panels of Undertow, you will be swept off your feet by the staggering pencils and color art of Artyom Trakhanov. You’ll be carried under and away by the alien template of blues, greens, oranges, and purples. Just as the best way to learn another language is by full immersion, Trakhanov has inundated the pages of this comic with the Atlantean reality and the reader is drowned by it. This is one of those comics in your pull list that will get 100% of your attention.

One way to measure the quality of a fantasy is in its ability to transport the reader to the virtual world. One step further than Coleridge’s suspension of disbelief, which is only the quality that elicits acceptance in the audience, the fantasy’s ability to transport the reader must give the reader the sense that they’ve travelled. One does not read Middle Earth, one visits it. Undertow has passed that test in its first issue not only with Trakhanov’s amazing color art which shows us the palette of an ocean-tinted living environment as it’s lived in, but by Steve Orlando’s staging. He has presented this alternate Earth in several believable vignettes, each one of which opens a window into the world of Undertow. Orlando’s characters are capable but limited, flawed but whole, and the reality that is synthesized by their interactions in this setting is a very satisfying one. By the time we reach the last page, there is a sense that we have travelled to this new vista.

Undertow #1 is highly recommended. It is published by Image Comics, and while at this point it will be a rare find at your local comic shop, it is available digitally through the Image Comics website and on comiXology.