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A review by emkoshka
Beneath the Surface by Steven Woolman, Gary Crew
4.0
I was excited to discover a sequel to The Watertower. One of the original boys, Spike, returns to the town and the watertower to make sense of the nightmares that have been haunting him. Stephen Woolman's illustrations are every bit as sinister and malevolent as in the original and employ the same panel format to great effect, juxtaposing disparate scenes from across the world to show how far the watertower mark has spread with Spike's investigations.
This book is a lot darker than the original and strongly suggests that the watertower mark has alien origins, as conveyed through the beautifully detailed image of two affected scientists sitting at a computer inside an astronomy dome. Each subsequent page shows a different part of the world and reveals that people have been affected, but the text continues to tell Spike's story, which makes for a bit of confusing reading at first. But as the story and images unfold along separate paths, you start to realise the implications and when they converge again (on the page after the particularly creepy image of devilish-looking men sitting around a broken circle table looking at the planet earth), the unfortunate conclusion looks inevitable.
The sequel manages to capture the creepy sinister atmosphere of the original and extend it beautifully into something even scarier: alien domination. Classic and very scary science-fiction.
This book is a lot darker than the original and strongly suggests that the watertower mark has alien origins, as conveyed through the beautifully detailed image of two affected scientists sitting at a computer inside an astronomy dome. Each subsequent page shows a different part of the world and reveals that people have been affected, but the text continues to tell Spike's story, which makes for a bit of confusing reading at first. But as the story and images unfold along separate paths, you start to realise the implications and when they converge again (on the page after the particularly creepy image of devilish-looking men sitting around a broken circle table looking at the planet earth), the unfortunate conclusion looks inevitable.
The sequel manages to capture the creepy sinister atmosphere of the original and extend it beautifully into something even scarier: alien domination. Classic and very scary science-fiction.