Fanfiction: A quick defense

 https://youtu.be/FFkZQOIl-PE?si=Kz5XatHvUTIRvIED

A quick discussion of what is fan fiction and how wide spread it is in our society and why that's not a bad thing. 

Fathom Vol II: Into the Deep by Michael Turner and JT Krul

 Fathom Vol II: Into the Deep

by Michael Turner and JT Krul

        Fathom is the creation of Michael Turner.  Born in Tennessee in 1971, Michael moved to San Diego after graduating from the International Performing Arts Academy, where Marc Silvestri, one of the founders of Image Comics, discovered him at a comic convention in 1992.  Mr. Turner was one of the creators of Witchblade, one of Image Comics' most successful characters,  and in 1998 he published Fathom with Top Cow Comics, an imprint of Image.  Sadly, two years later he would be diagnosed with bone cancer, which he would battle on and off for the rest of his life.  This is a personal opinion that has nothing to back it up, but in my experience with friends and family who have had bouts of that damn thing, I wouldn’t be surprised if his experience with cancer pushed him into creating Aspen MLT in 2002.  This led to a year-long legal battle that forced some rewrites, but afterward, he continued to write Fathom and work for DC and Marvel as an artist.  Unfortunately, his cancer returned and killed him in 2008 at the too-young age of 37.

After publishing Volume I, he released Volume II with Top Cow Comics.  This was a problem because when he left Image to form Aspen,  He took the rights to Fathom with him, but Top Cow wasn’t going to grant the rights to use their characters in his stories, so he had to rewrite it a bit.  It’s this rewritten version that I am reviewing today, I am told that there isn’t much of a difference though.  So let’s dive in.

Vol I: The World Below, is the story of a young woman named Aspen Matthews, her finding the truth of her origins, and the resulting fallout.  This involved her finding out she was a member of a human offshoot race named the Blue that lived under the sea, and getting involved in a shooting war between the United States of America and Japan. There’s also a little issue of a rogue Blue terrorist trying to shatter our civilization and seize control of the Blue using Aspen’s power. So all in all it is a rather trying time for our main character, who honestly just wants to be left alone to study the wonders of the ocean.  

Volume II opens with a time skip, with a mini-series called Dawn of War that covers the lead-up to these events.  To sum up the mini-series, the US took some Blue soldiers captive and started doing medical experiments to figure out the differences between Blue soldiers and American troops. There was a rescue attempt, and it turns out the leader of those soldiers was a member of a third race called the Black, which lives down in the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean. They promptly kidnapped Aspen, and this is where Volume II opens, with the US led by Admiral Mayweather at war with an underwater civilization who for some reason thinks hiding from everyone is still an option. 

We don’t get a lot of information about the Black other than they live in the deepest, darkest depths. It is also revealed that one of them is Aspen’s biological father, who seduced Aspen’s Mother, who was a married high-ranking Blue.  So already I’m not a fan and, after a brief conversation, neither is Aspen.  Then the Black disappears from the rest of the story as Aspen leaves, and the people who kidnapped her in the first place just…shrug.   I found this kind of confusing.  Why are the Black even a part of this storyline if all they do is demand Aspen do things and then just watch her leave and never show up for the rest of the storyline? 

The rest of the story focuses on the war between the US Navy, led by Admiral Mayweather, and the Blue, who are suffering from hidebound leaders who refuse to adapt to new circumstances.  The Blue are led by a council of elders, who insist the best course is to simply hide harder from the humans-- who know where they are and have a bunch of reverse-engineered technology from that rogue Blue operative I mentioned earlier. So this of course leads to the US Navy invading, bombarding at least two Blue cities and trying to destroy the Blue capital with a nuclear bomb.  So, you know, we’re the bad guys in this story, folks. 

During all of this, Aspen, is struggling to come to terms with just who she is and is hunting for her adoptive human father, Captain Matthews of the US Navy (retired).  He also happens to be the only person who actually did any parenting and shockingly hasn’t been making any demands of her. He is being held prisoner by Admiral Mayweather as bait, so the Admiral, who was somewhat of a gray character in the first Volume, is undeniably a full villain here.  Aspen rescues her father with the help of Chance, an naval ace pilot with a heart of gold, and forces at least a short-term end in the war by sinking the US invasion force.  She then just leaves, which I thought was unwise, but given the emotional turmoil she’s suffering is fairly realistic. 

All in all, I honestly thought Volume I was better. While we get answers to a lot of questions in Volume II,  there are also some rather big plot holes.  Like, what happened to the war between Japan and the US?  It just seems to have…stopped.  Are we allies again?  The Japanese were also aware of the existence of the Blue, so what are they doing during all of this?  There’s no answer to this, as Japan seems to have fallen off the edge of the world as far as the story is concerned.  

Also, it seems like the war is a secret?  There doesn’t seem to be any reporting on it, nor do civilians in the story seem to have any idea of what is going on.  This leads me to ask how Admiral Mayweather is getting the authorization to do this.  He’s deploying thousands of sailors, including an aircraft carrier while producing massive submarines and amphibious fighter aircraft that function both in the air and underwater.  That’s a lot of resources, and people pay a lot of attention to where the US aircraft carriers are. At no point though does it seem like the Admiral has to explain himself to anyone.  You would think the Senate would want to know what’s going on since this has to be eating up a huge chunk of the Naval budget. If nothing else, an Admiral starting a war by himself without authorization from the President?  That would get people shot in the real world! 

There are other interesting parts that I did enjoy, however.  When the story focused on the internal issues and politics of the Blue, I found myself intrigued and, like the characters, annoyed at the council.  I mean, a member of your civilization just openly used some super tech to try and burn a hole in the ocean!  At that point, I would have made open contact, just to make it clear that we weren’t hostile and were as much of a victim of aggression as the surface world. Instead, the ruling council decided to turtle up and hide harder, which likely led to Admiral Mayweather deciding they must be a threat. 

Now I didn’t give Volume I a grade in my video, but if I had it would have been a strong C+: better than average, interesting, but with a lot of room for improvement.  Volume II has many of the same problems of Volume I with the plot moving too fast, the characters needing more time and space to be fleshed out, and also it adds new problems as plot holes mount up. That said, the Blue are an interesting take on underwater humanity, and I do like the characters of Aspen and Chance.  However, I have to grade Volume II at a C-.  This could have been done better.  

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You can watch the companion video here: https://youtu.be/Vf9BJk4kj4Y available 3:15pm on 01/24/25