It Should Have Been a Great B-Movie in Comic Form
Who doesn’t like a good giant monster story? You know how it goes: an impossible creature — sometimes mutated, sometimes from the distant past — begins attacking some desolate or remote area. People start to mysteriously vanish, a pet is found half-eaten, and a hero is called in to investigate.
That is largely what happens in Under: Scourge of the Sewer, by French writer Christophe Bec and Italian artist Stefano Raffaele, originally released in France in 2010 and published in English in the United Kingdom in 2017. At an unspecified point in time, the futuristic city of Megalopolis is facing a serious problem in its vast sewer system. Unsurprisingly, people are disappearing, there are some strange goings-on, and corpses bearing peculiar marks are being discovered. It soon becomes clear that a giant spider is involved — particularly as the reader was probably drawn to the book by its cover, which places the aforementioned spider centre stage.
In any case, a disgraced police officer, now reduced to patrolling the sewers, teams up with a female scientist to get to the bottom of the mystery — literally, in this instance. There is some intrigue, plenty of gruesome deaths, a hint of romance between the leads, and a minor conflict between the social pariahs living below ground and the henchmen of the city’s corrupt mayor. And little else.
Overall, the story starts promisingly, while the reader still believes something interesting might happen. One naturally expects an epic confrontation with the 30-foot spider or, at the very least, a battle involving both the spider and the giant crocodile featured on the cover. However, be warned: not even this comes to pass. No crocodile ever meets the spider within the pages of this comic. I should sue.
The ending is, at best, passable. It lacks inspiration and is in no way hair-raising. The method used to dispose of the spider is serviceable enough, but it fails to truly engage the reader. A shame. As B-movies go, this book had potential; it could have been a brainless but entertaining romp. Instead, it ends up just below (pun very much intended) average.
Under: Scourge of the Sewer (2017, Titan Comics)
By Christophe Bec and Stefano Raffaele
112 pages
Rating: 4 nerds (out of 10) 😎😎😎😎
