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Comics Modern Age

Monthly (Comic) Book Club - September - Fathom vol. 115616

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Michael Turner’s Fathom (1998) #0,1/2,1-14

Wk1 (8/30-9/5): Fathom (1998) #0,1/2,1-3












Wk2 (9/6-9/12): Fathom (1998) #4-6
Wk3 (9/13-9/19): Fathom (1998) #7-10
Wk4 (9/20-9/26): Fathom (1998) #11-14


Discussion topic ideas:

* Thoughts on the story or artwork
* Details in the story, artwork, or presentation
* References to outside events or other works of fiction
* Making of/Behind the Scenes details
* Editions you will be reading from
* Items in your collection pertaining to this week’s selection
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Great Artist ! Sad that he passed WAY before his time...
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He was great fun at shows. I had the chance to see him several times. I remember I had brought my Art of the Darkness book to get signed. It might’ve been his first time seeing the book because he started geeking out over seeing his art in it and calling over his co-workers’ whose art was also featured in the book.
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So I have a bunch of Fathom stuff but I’m too lazy to dog up the individual issues or the standard TPB which is in a storage box somehwhere.





This is the original Hardcover edition released while Fathom was still under the Top Cow umbrella. Volumes 2 & 3 were released after the switch over to Aspen MLT and were elimited to 500 copies each








Fathom the Definitive Edition was also released after the move to Aspen and collects the entire first volume and was limited to 1000 copies






So one thing kept bugging me and that was why only Aspen 1-9 were collected in the original trade and hardcover and why the remaining issues haven’t been reprinted as much. Fortunately, the definitive edition answered those questions.

So, Fathom vol 1 is divided into three arcs (and I might adjust the reading schedule to match). The first arc is issues 1-9, the second is issues 10-11, and then 12-14 in arc 3.

Apparently after the first arc they did a comic shop tour so there was a 2 month gap between issues 9 and 10. The third arc was being published during the tour and there was a 3 month gap between issues 11 and 12. It was at this point that Michael Turner was diagnosed with cancer so the tour and the story were interrupted while he recovered.

Issue 12 has a cover date of July 2000 but issue 13 isn’t dated until February 2002, nearly a year and a half later!

Additionally, the final arc was a bit of a crossover as Sara Pezzini/Witchblade and Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), who were both being published by Top Cow at the time, make appearances. This poses a problem as Fathom now lives under Aspen. The definitive edition states that their appearance is only ancillary to the main story and that it has been “remastered” to make it strictly about Aspen, ao I guess they have been edited out, which is interesting and makes me want to track down the original issues to see how things were changed


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I read Fathom 0. I was a pinch worried that it would spoiler things somehow since it came out well after the series started, but it was actually a low-stakes introduction. The art is solid, and Turner's covers are a good representation. Very 90s. It seems like we're in for a story about a woman who doesn't know exactly who she is but has some kind of water-y powers, and weird underwater people with at least some magical-ish powers.
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@xkonk Did you mean the 1/2 issue? That one came out in 2001. Issue 0 came out two months before issue 1.

I just finished issue 0, 1/2, and the preview (not part of the reading but included in the book).

I do like how the definitive edition book gives context for the major arcs and releases. This definitely gave me a new appreciation for the 1/2 issue as the book explains that Turner’s father was diagnosed with cancer while Turner was undergoing treatment for his. The two moved in together while they were both being treated. Turner’s father passed away in October 2001, after which Turner co-wrote and illustrated this issue, cover dated the same month of his father’s passing and during the hiatus between issues 11 and 12.

Given that background, the generational story of the issue takes on a far more personal feeling. I don’t know anything about Turner’s relationship with his father but this issue almost feels like a eulogy.

Looking at the storyline itself, I wonder if this is a simple standalone issue, or if Killian’s grandfather, the Nazi nuclear program, or the betrayal of these sea people to the destructive humans, will play a part in one of the three arcs we will be reading.

On the storytelling, it might be because most of these have been previews but there has been a very clear style of narration boxes (as opposed to dialogue) paired with artwork. One of the preview stories was designed like a trailer with narration and a montage of imagery without much context and spanning different points in time.

Issue 0 sets things up with Aspen’s mysterious past, her upcoming research job, the mysterious captured mer-person, and Aspen’s mysterious connection to them
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So this book doesn’t have issue breaks but I think I’ve just finished the first issue. The definitive edition explains that the issue was originally released in three slightly different versions, where certain scenes are seen from one of three different perspectives. It’s not a whole lot, I counted 3 points of divergence and each one is only a page. The first is from Aspen’s point of view, the other is from one of the aquatic people’s point of view, and the third is from a mysterious character that looks almost like they’re wearing a mask. They are also aquatic but we don’t know yet if they’re the same species as the other.

Things are still pretty mysterious at this point so the different perspectives serve to establish some vague objectives. Aspen is unaware of anything yet, the aquatic man that Aspen saw in her past has some sort of mission with her but we don’t know what. The third is apparently there to protect Aspen and is opposed to the second guy.

The issue begins with Aspen, as a child, arriving at port on a cruise ship that was apparently thought lost a decade earlier. The people on board don’t seem to be aware of anything out of the ordinary with their trip. I wonder if maybe some sort of time travel is involved.

As an adult, Aspen is a marine researcher and has been requested to advise on a secret project on an underwater research base.

This part of the story reminded me of the book and film (also released in 1998) Sphere by Michael Crichton. In that story, researchers of various disciplines are taken to an underwater research facility to study an ancient spaceship discovered buried in the ocean floor. Here, Aspen and others are taken to an underwater research base to study a mysterious vessel stuck in the ocean floor.


Concurrently, the military is trying to track a USO (Unidentified Submerged Object, which are actually a thing). It was a little unclear if the original sighting was meant to be in the past, when Aspen arrived in San Diego, or in the present. The military is still investigating in the present and they have jets that can also dive so when the USO destroys one of their jets, the submerged fighter disobeys orders to pursue it. They fire a torpedo, which the USO evades, leading the live torpedo to find a new target and it finds the research base.

Overall, I really enjoyed this issue. It sets up several mysteries, what happened with the cruise ship, who are these underwater people, and why are all these forces interested in Aspen? I really enjoy Turner’s artwork for the most part. It does get a little distracting how his women are so often tip-toeing, even when it makes no sense to. When they’re swimming in the water or wearing high heels it is easy enough to ignore but Aspen does seem to have a problem standing flat-footed once on land.
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Issue 2(?) was wall-to-wall action. The torpedo from the last issue misses the pod Aspen is in but it instead hits the lab’s generators. The damage is bad but things seem to be under control, when the blast causes a nearby cliff to collapse wrecking what was left of the lab and killing just about everybody we’ve met so far, though the director seemed to have gotten into a diving suit and Hawke seems a little too comfortable with just dying so I have a feeing we might be seeing him again.

The previously captive sea-man tries to take Aspen but is stopped by the other aquatic person. More of the sea-people arrive, stopping the fight but they disappear as rescue vessels arrive. The aquatic person imbues Aspen with some sort of power before disappearing. As the sub-jet that fired the torpedo arrives to survey the damage, they see Aspen dissolve away as we’d seen the aquatic characters do.

I enjoyed this issue as well, though everything went by pretty quickly. I fo like how the story keeps adding little wrinkles to the mystery as we find out that whoever built the aquatic vessel also has some connection to outer space. Are they aliens of some sort?

It was clear that the meat of the story would involve the underwater civilization we’d glimpsed at but I also wasn’t expecting the human characters to be almost entirely wiped from the board. While I expect one or two survivors, most are all very much dead and that leaves just the military as the remaining human characters and apparently the admiral knows more about the sea-people than we have been privy to so far.
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Issue #3 is the slower wake of the aftermath of the previous issue. As expected, most of the installation crew are died and their bodies are piles up on the deck of the aircraft carrier.

I was a little surprised to see Akiko survive. We also learn that Aspen is physiologically different, as though that weren’t obvious to us already.

We do learn the aquatic prisoner is named Killian and he’s leading a small group of his people on a mission of some sort. Things turn violent very quickly as his team assaults a Japanese oil rig to convert it into something.

Speaking of the Japanese. It came up briefly while in the lab but there are some tensions between Japan and the United States over the research of the submersible. After the accident at the lab and the attack on the oil rig, those tensions are made even worse.

Chance, the pilot that destroyed the lab is being built up as a more central character. It’s still not clear where the story is going as we are, like Aspen, still in the dark about the forces at work.

Hawke is revealed to still be alive and holding authority over at least some of the sea-people, if he is not one himself.

I’m enjoying the book but I think I’m ready to start seeing some answers and to have Aspen participate in the story instead of it just happen around her. Hopefully we start seeing that in the next few issues
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Wk2 (9/6-9/12): Fathom (1998) #4-6








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Quote:
Originally Posted by dielinfinite
@xkonk Did you mean the 1/2 issue? That one came out in 2001. Issue 0 came out two months before issue 1.


hmmm... I definitely read the 0 issue. I didn't check the date on the book itself (and haven't gotten to #1 yet because I'm slacking), but MCS says that 0 came out in January 2000 but #1 came out in August 1998. https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=129831 . Maybe I read the wrong 0?
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Okay I think I’ve figured it out. It is the correct issue. Wizard originally published the issue in 1998. MCS lists this one under the separate title “Fathom Wizard Zero.”




In 2000, Top Cow reprinted it without Wizard, which MCS lists along with the rest of the series

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Mystery solved :-) I will also try to catch up this week.
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Fathom 1/2; this one doesn't have Aspen at all, but introduces us to the family history for a character named Cannon. It's a fine story but nothing great, perhaps because I don't know anything about Cannon or his family. Compared to after reading #0, I do know that the underwater people have some kind of hydrokinesis ability, and maybe more.

I was curious about heavy water (I remembered what it was but not details about it) so I skimmed through the wikipedia article while partway through the story. Heavy water itself is not radioactive, so it shouldn't have killed people in the city that way. It is poisonous, in that if a person drinks enough it stops cell division and thus does a lot of bad things to the body and will kill you. However, you have to get a lot of heavy water into your system for that to happen, which means you have to drink a fair amount of pure heavy water. So it's also, practically speaking, unheard of for people to die this way. Drinking heavy water is actually part of some magnetic resonance tests. So the science of the story is probably a bit off, but that's ok.
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Fathom 1; apparently all the science-y content is kicking in my wikipedia habit. 1200 feet is not all that deep. The Alvin, for example, dove to nearly 15,000 feet starting back in 1964. People went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, over 35,000 feet down, in 1960. Maybe this sub that Aspen et al. are on is special in some other way so that 1200 feet is 'deep'.

They certainly do a good job of establishing Jack's character as a complete ass.

There's a bit of mix-in with the story we got in #0, at least with the interludes about Aspen's first time diving, so that's a little filled in now. And we also meet Cannon from #1/2. Like much of this book, Cannon Hawke is very 90s.

The issue ends on a cliffhanger, which I'm game for.

Quote:
Originally Posted by dielinfinite
I really enjoy Turner’s artwork for the most part. It does get a little distracting how his women are so often tip-toeing, even when it makes no sense to. When they’re swimming in the water or wearing high heels it is easy enough to ignore but Aspen does seem to have a problem standing flat-footed once on land.


I'm not against the artwork, but he definitely has a thing for drawing attractive women. I think they're all also 60-66% legs.
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@xkonk I think I had misread 1/2 because I thought the issue was about Killian not Cannon. The two characters look a lot alike.

I didn’t take it as the heavy water itself being poisonous but maybe a byproduct of creating it. We don’t know their technology after all.

Looking at the wikipedia article though, it does mention a pervasive misunderstanding about heavy water itself being radioactive. Given this was written 20 years ago, perhaps Turner was unaware of that detail and thought it was radioactive
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xkonk
1200 feet is not all that deep. The Alvin, for example, dove to nearly 15,000 feet starting back in 1964. People went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, over 35,000 feet down, in 1960. Maybe this sub that Aspen et al. are on is special in some other way so that 1200 feet is 'deep'.


I didn’t get the idea that it was meant to be record-settingly deep but I don’t think we should let the fact that there have been much deeper dives affect our prespective. By most any qualification, 1200 feet of water is very much deep, just like being 15 miles in the sky is high, even if the atmosphere extends another 300 miles higher.

1200 ft is well into the deep sea region where sunlight is insufficient for photosynthesis, which starts at half that depth. Additionally, you’re looking at around 40 atmospheres of pressure.

I guess if you’re looking for something to hang your hat on, 1200 feet would be the deepest an underwater lab has been built. Sealab III went down to 600 feet and the lab in the film, the Abyss would’ve been something like 1700 feet down.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dielinfinite
I didn’t take it as the heavy water itself being poisonous but maybe a byproduct of creating it. We don’t know their technology after all.

Looking at the wikipedia article though, it does mention a pervasive misunderstanding about heavy water itself being radioactive. Given this was written 20 years ago, perhaps Turner was unaware of that detail and thought it was radioactive


Could be, for sure. The issue does say that people in the city got radiation poison and hundreds died, so I took it as an implication that it was the water itself, but they don't say much about his experiments.

The copy I read online has some material at the end with sketches but also a timeline of events in WWII and also a half-page on heavy water. It doesn't say anything about its radioactivity (or lack thereof) directly, but it seems like someone put in at least a little research.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dielinfinite
I didn’t get the idea that it was meant to be record-settingly deep but I don’t think we should let the fact that there have been much deeper dives affect our prespective. By most any qualification, 1200 feet of water is very much deep, just like being 15 miles in the sky is high, even if the atmosphere extends another 300 miles higher.


Sure, I don't mean to imply that it isn't far down. I was just a little taken aback after looking it up because the dive master gives the impression that this is a serious deal and some impressive stuff (he says "we're going 1200 feet into the depths, which is totally unlike anything you've done before" when people have actually been diving like that for quite a while. One would think that with whatever it took to build that base there that the dive would be pretty routine. Maybe he was just trying to emphasize the safety issues, which would certainly be serious if they did have any kind of decompression.
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@xkonk I took the dive master’s spiel more like what he gives to the scientists and stuff that he’s been ferrying that probably haven’t been deep sea diving. Even Aspen who’s been in the water all her life says something like she’s only ever dived to about 300 feet. So I thought the speech felt authentic
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#2 would be a good movie action sequence. It's a bit cliche but it all makes sense and goes together. I'm not so sure about the pilot shooting a torpedo when an admiral tells him not to makes sense (at the end of #1), but otherwise I was on board.

I had a little trouble following all the narration/internal monologue bubbles, but I went back and reminded myself that the blue guy's speech was coded green and the sea creature guy's speech was coded blue. I guess blue with blue would have been too straightforward.

Despite being mostly action, the story (or mystery, really, at this point) gets advanced some. There are two underwater guys, one of which looks like the other bunch of underwater people, and both want Aspen for some reason. The blue guy seems less threatening of the two, or at least more interested in directly helping Aspen, and does something to her that turns her into water at the end of the issue.

I've been writing my stuff before going back and reading @dielinfinite's comments; looks like we're pretty in agreement on this one.
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Issue 3: I have to admit that I've never gone to the ER after being on an underwater research platform, but I think the scans they did on Aspen seem optimistic. A head MRI, a bone map (I don't even know what that is), and a lung scan? I would believe the blood test.

Fitting with the art's general theme, she's naked under the sheet at the hospital. They kept her necklace on her but couldn't find a gown, I suppose. And the usual bikini shots, shower scene, etc. I appreciate Turner's art but it's honestly getting a bit old.

I do give credit for the opening pages with Joker seeing all the bodies on the deck. He messed up pretty badly and seems to understand it.

Plot-wise, the aggressive underwater people seem to be attacking other research facilities involved with their technology, and other groups are still interested in Aspen being the key to some mysterious something.

Quote:
Originally Posted by dielinfinite
I’m enjoying the book but I think I’m ready to start seeing some answers and to have Aspen participate in the story instead of it just happen around her. Hopefully we start seeing that in the next few issues


Same. There's a fine line between withholding to build suspense and withholding in place of actual suspense. The reader can't be that involved in what people are going to do or what's going to happen next if they have no idea who people are or why they're doing anything in particular.
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Issue 4: I never gave it much thought until reading this issue, but who says "hello, brother"?

The action picks up again, with Aspen being kidnapped in broad daylight basically in the middle of a conversation, and Connor coming to the rescue. We also got a tiny bit of background on the history with the Paradise, with Connor having been there as part of some kind of disagreement between the underwater people.

The thing with the American and Japanese planes and the submarine seems like a hell of an escalation. I get the background of the research facilities being blown up (one of them obviously due to the US' own screw up) but it seems a stretch for the Japanese to suddenly be on patrol near Midway, and it also seems odd for the US pilots to see a giant ray of light come from the sky and then say their submarine was torpedoed. I wonder if Turner didn't have a great opinion of the armed forces or if he didn't want to take the time to really develop an international incident. Countries with actively cooperative, peaceful relationships don't start aggressive maneuvers and shooting at each other.

It looks like maybe we'll finally learn more about what Killian (I think that's who the lead bad guy is, and thus was the guy at the end of the issue) is up to next issue.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xkonk
Issue 3: I have to admit that I've never gone to the ER after being on an underwater research platform, but I think the scans they did on Aspen seem optimistic. A head MRI, a bone map (I don't even know what that is), and a lung scan? I would believe the blood test.


Most of that made some superficial sense to me. The brain scan to look for brain damage due to lack of oxygen (who knows how long she was underwater for). The Lung Scan, possibly to check for fluid in the lungs and the bone thing discovered while checking for fractures. So I thought it made enough sense to suspend my disbelief.
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Yeah, they sort of make sense. And we don't know exactly how long she's been there. Honestly, the part that broke me out of my disbelief was that the government let her out of their hands. Your fairly-secret underwater research lab gets blown up by your own armed forces while they're chasing mysterious lights, causing an apparent international incident since we're shooting at the Japanese a few days later, and you're letting the small number of survivors out in the wild?

Part of it was also just the level of detail. I figure the hospital would do some x-rays (you can see lung issues with an x-ray, and brain stuff with a CT scan), which are much cheaper than MRIs and whatnot, but there they are imaging her alveoli and whatnot.

Part of it is that I'm apparently being overcritical.
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@xkonk I don’t think the lab was a military installation. There were some international tensions but it seemed to be a private facility. I’ll have to double check that when I get home.

Joker was unaware of it and though he seems low enough on the ladder to be kept out of the loop. I think they would have told him it was there even if he knew nothing about what is being researched there.



Quote:
Originally Posted by xkonk
Part of it was also just the level of detail. I figure the hospital would do some x-rays (you can see lung issues with an x-ray, and brain stuff with a CT scan), which are much cheaper than MRIs and whatnot, but there they are imaging her alveoli and whatnot.


I kind of figured if any of the other tests showed something unusual (like strange structures in the brain or lungs) they would move on to more detailed tests to investigate further
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Issue 5: We've more specifically resolved some of the mystery with the underwater people, although it just verifies things that were fairly clear before. There's a group that wants to start warfare with humans, a group that doesn't, and they were both racing (represented by Killian and Cannon) to get Aspen on their side. It looks for now like Killian is winning.

That said, I wish they'd move things along a bit more. Chance's drunken escapades are altogether too annoying to be taking up pages on their own unless it's going to pay off. And why is his brother getting the book intro treatment? And why is Aspen's roommate floating around the periphery (besides to provide someone else to wear extremely tight clothing)? Some books do a good job or otherwise earn all their backup characters popping up and keeping plotlines going, but I guess this one isn't doing it for me. I'm sure it will end up with something like Aspen switching back to the "help the humans" side with Chance and the roommate providing valuable government/news-spreading assists, but in the meantime it doesn't seem worth the few pages to have a conversation between the random kid and the random roommate.

I know I've been fairly critical of the series so far, so I want to say something positive, but besides the quality of the artwork I'm not sure what to point to. Cannon saying that he isn't a cold-blooded killer but that he'll feed someone to the plankton? Chance singing immediately dated songs (that I still enjoy! but extremely dated)? The writing isn't that great and I'm not enjoying the pacing, so I'm struggling a bit.
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Issue 6: the first page puts a spotlight (hangs a lampshade? not sure which is the better metaphor) on a big conceptual problem - Aspen has been a human her whole life (as far as she knows) and now over the course of a month or two she's ready to go to war on them. That's quite a turnaround! Granted, she knows pretty clearly that she isn't human now, and maybe she's a staunch conservationist and can get behind the general point that humans are ruining the oceans (although that hasn't been discussed in the book at all), but this is a big character change in a short period of time, nearly all of which has occurred off-panel. Might be hard to swallow.

Aspen's first battle, meant to just be a test of her abilities, is awfully bloody considering that they said last issue that they hoped to resolve things without the loss of a single human life.

Aaand I'm still skeptical of the Japanese-US war that's starting. This book must be taking place in an alternate universe where not only are there sea people, but international relationships and norms are very different.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xkonk
The thing with the American and Japanese planes and the submarine seems like a hell of an escalation. I get the background of the research facilities being blown up (one of them obviously due to the US' own screw up) but it seems a stretch for the Japanese to suddenly be on patrol near Midway, and it also seems odd for the US pilots to see a giant ray of light come from the sky and then say their submarine was torpedoed. I wonder if Turner didn't have a great opinion of the armed forces or if he didn't want to take the time to really develop an international incident. Countries with actively cooperative, peaceful relationships don't start aggressive maneuvers and shooting at each other.


This seemed to me like some sort of manipulation was going on in the background. The Japanese fighters said the submarine was in Japanese waters which was confusing to the American pilots. So it felt like someone was feeding the Japanese pilots incorrect information in order to put them in a position to escalate conflict.

At this point it seems suspicion was already building up on the Japanese side. The information they have on the lab’s destruction seemed like it was obtained via their own channels rather than a debriefing from the military. They know the lab was destroyed by the US military but they suspect it was deliberate to prevent them from from learning more about the vehicle and I think the oil rig attack was attributed to the Americans and the crew was killed before they could communicate that it wasn’t. So it kind of fees to me like the conflict has been engineered by an outside force.

I do agree that it’s a little strange that the pilots would report a strange skybeam as a torpedo attack. I think a better solution, storytelling-wise would’ve been to have one of Killian’s underwater fighters fire at the sub from below to make a more convincing “torpedo attack.” At this point, I wouldn’t think it strange for the conflict to escalate as it did had the attack on the submarine been more convincingly attributed to the Japanese fighters. I wonder why they (both the writers and the villains) decide to use the space weapon, aside from being more visually impressive.

lol, honestly the more unbelievable thing to me was that the beach only had the two kids surfing! I live in San Diego so I know some of the locations that are being referred to. The beach where Aspen is handed off, judging by the gliders and the cliffs, seems to be La Jolla, though it is nowhere near as lonely as it is depicted here, even 20 years ago.
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I’m enjoying the book so far but the thing I’m feeling is that Aspen is not the main character, despite this ostensibly being her book. The conflict established thus far is between Killian and Cannon and Aspen’s the instrument to reach their goals.

I don’t mind the time spent with the side characters but at halfway through this arc I would’ve preferred they spent that time with Aspen and her training/indoctrination with Killian instead of reducing it to a brief montage that’s as long as the time they spent with Aspen aimlessly swimming with dolphins.

Speaking of supporting characters there have been a couple that just seemed to have disappeared like the watery person that saved Aspen after the explosion and the scientist from the lab that turned up alive when Aspen awoke at the hospital.

So apparently Aspen lives on Coronado, which is not a cheap place to lice and having a place right on the beach, she must be doing pretty well as a marine biologist lol. The little kid, Cameron, also confirmed that he was surfing off of Black’s Beach in La Jolla, Funny thing about Black’s is that it’s a clothing-optional beach so make of that what you will lol
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