Fathom Volume 1: v. 1 [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

First a confession: This was an impulse buy with the intent to get the needed $25 for my free shipping from Amazon. That being said, I was familiar with, and fond of, Michael Turner's work with Witchblade, having already spent a small fortune on those titles. The art in Fathom is just as terrific, though the story was a bit lacking. While I generally can't put a good graphic novel down, it took several sittings to make it through Fathom. If you are a fan of comics, and most importantly comics with hot chicks, then you'll likely enjoy Fathom. Just don't expect it to change your life in any meaningful way.

Michael Turner struck gold with his earlier work on Witchblade. I was nuts over his work on that former book. Beautiful women and ultra-detailed backgrounds. Then when he left that book, I was very upset for a long while....

That was until my Fathom Hardcover Deluxe Collected Edition arrived in the mail! His work here is better than ever. Even more fluid than his work in Witchblade - although I have to say that there are pieces in Witchblade that will remain very special to me.

Top Cow puts in the highest production quality into their comic-books. This book is the perfect example of holding a summer-blockbuster movie in your hands. The effect is really THAT mind-blowing. Bill O'Neil's writing is overly wordy at times and there are many hanging plotlines left at the end of this volume. But after the whole experience of reading this book, well, I don't think you'll care about all its faults. Ultimately, the book is about Aspen Matthew's search for her true identity - human or water-being, warrior or pacifist, princess or destroyer.

If you like the movie, "The Abyss", you'll love this book. Or if you've ever wondered about the mysteries of the deep, the Bermuda Triangle, or the existence of pre-human intelligence, you'll love this book.

The Fathom saga begins with a brief flashback to ten years before the period in which the main story unfolds, to where a cruise ship called the Paradise is returning to port in San Diego after a decade's unexplained abscence, with an unaged crew and a memory-less little girl named Aspen. Ten years later, Aspen Matthews is a young oceanic scientist about to head off to a plum assignment at a secretive, joint US/Japan underwater research facility, where will begin pivotal events in the planet's history.

Or perhaps, to say 'where pivotal events will begin coming to light' would be more accurate. Fathom is the story of the meeting of worlds, of the human world and other races and civilizations here on Earth that mankind never had any idea existed. Except, perhaps, for certain individuals. Aspen is the central figure - both to the book and to a number of secrets within this new mythos introduced here - but a good-sized cast of other interesting characters are introduced and established in this volume, which reprints the first 9 issues of the original late-90s Fathom ongoing as well as the Fathom Preview Book (whose pages are presented in color for the first time).

The art by Michael Turner (also the book's writer) grows in quality over the course of the issues. From the very beginning, he excels at drawing creatures, technology and hardware, landscapes and seascapes, marine life (gorgeously rendered sea turtles, dolphins, fish, etc.) and just about everything else, but he does run into some trouble early on with humans - specifically facial features and proportions - in the first couple issues (page 10 of the first issue has a kind of glaring example). It's certainly not in every scene (and is absent from most key events and from the covers), but where it does happen it can be slightly distracting. Over the course of the 9 issues, though, these shortcomings largely disappear (and the rest of the art gets, if anything, even better). The problems in the first couple of issues certainly aren't nearly as bad as some instances I've seen where it's a major weakness for its comic, and in the last 5 or 6 issues the overall art is just astonishing. The color throughout the whole volume is outstanding. The concepts are great, the action spectacular and the writing is strong - the only hitch is that some of the scenes are way too short, almost soundbitish; the effect of the scene is sometimes hampered and the dialogue gets shortened, making it less engaging than in the great majority of the book. This material should have originally filled ten issues instead of nine, in my opinion - that would have solved this problem easily.

Despite a few chinks in this volume's armor though, I can't give it anything less than five stars. This book catapulted Fathom into the upper tiers of the comic book concepts I love the most, putting it roughly on par with some of the books I've loved for years and years.

In addition to the regular issue covers, the covers of the Collected Editions and almost all the variant covers are also reprinted here in all their sexy glory.

"Fathom" may be the best material Image Comics has ever published.