My Rating
“Dark Waters”
Kenn Kawa is slowly sinking into the dark abyss of the Pacific Ocean. Heavy chains have been wrapped around his body, binding him to a massive concrete block destined for the ocean floor. Whoever put Kenn down here certainly doesn’t expect him to return to the surface.
They obviously don’t know he’s a student of Harry Houdini.
The chains are tight, but Kenn understands the art of escape. Water loosens restraints and makes everything slick. Rather than panic as his air supply disappears, Kenn works the chains until he finally slips free. Within moments, the concrete block continues its lonely journey toward the bottom while Kenn begins the long swim back to the surface.
Unfortunately, escaping his underwater grave is only the beginning.
High above him, an offshore oil-drilling rig buzzes with activity. Something far more sinister than petroleum extraction is taking place aboard the platform. A ritual has begun, and fellow Challenger Brenda Ruskin has been chosen as the main sacrifice!
An ancient power sleeps beneath the dark waters, and its followers intend to awaken it. An elder god from another age is about to enter a modern world filled with high technology, superheroes, and metahumans. Whether any of those things will matter against something this ancient remains to be seen.
Can Kenn reach the surface before it’s too late? Will the Challengers of the Unknown arrive in time to save Brenda from becoming a human sacrifice? What kind of ancient horror sleeps beneath the Pacific Ocean? And what happens when mankind drills a little too deeply into places better left undisturbed? Collect the series to find out!
Review
If you’re an H.P. Lovecraft fan, you should enjoy this one. “Dark Waters” trades haunted cities, temporal anomalies, and Irish mythology for some good old-fashioned cosmic horror. We have a ritual sacrifice, an offshore drilling platform, dark ocean depths, and an elder god waiting to awaken. All we’re missing is a tentacle slithering over the side of the rig!
I particularly enjoyed the opening with Kenn Kawa. Dropping a man into the Pacific while chained to a concrete block should make for a pretty short comic book, but Kenn’s knowledge of Harry Houdini’s escape techniques gives him a fighting chance. It’s another example of something I’ve come to appreciate about this series. The Challengers don’t always escape danger because somebody suddenly develops a new superpower. Their knowledge and individual abilities actually matter.
The offshore drilling rig also makes a perfect setting for this type of story. There is something inherently creepy about a massive industrial structure sitting alone above miles of dark ocean. Steven Grant takes that modern technology and places it directly above something impossibly ancient. Man thinks he’s drilling for oil while something underneath may have been waiting there since long before mankind existed. That’s classic cosmic-horror territory.
Funny enough, reading this issue today reminded me of the BP oil spill. Maybe they didn’t hit an oil pocket after all. Maybe somebody just drilled a little too close to an elder god! Hey, stranger things have happened in Challengers of the Unknown.
Steven Grant continues to impress me with how easily he moves this series between different types of horror. One issue gives us Irish mythology, another plays with time and dimensional physics, and now we’re sailing into Lovecraftian waters. Yet it still feels like the same series because the Challengers approach each mystery as investigators first.
“Dark Waters” is another entertaining mixture of horror, science fiction, and supernatural adventure. If the idea of the Challengers taking on something straight out of a Lovecraft story appeals to you, this issue should be right up your alley.