Plunge #2 Review

Writer: Joe Hill
Pencils: Stuart Immonen
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letters: Deron Bennett
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: March 18th, 2020

After an oil boat (with a side mission to do some animal research) called the Derleth that has missing since 1983 starts sending a distress signal again, the oil company hires a team of salvagers and a biologist to go investigate. At the end of the issue, the body of a man is discovered on the island with a slashed throat. Moriah, our biologist and the person who found him, sees centipedes coming out of his neck... and they're calling her name.

I felt that the first issue of Plunge was a near perfect first issue. But how's the second issue?

Moriah has called over the rest of the team that's on the island, but none of them can tell how long the man has been dead because. As Russ puts it: "I'm a diver, not a medical examiner." They inform the captain back on the ship and he comes to the shore in a raft with a body bag. We get a quick frame of three other dead looking guys wearing the same orange jumpsuit watching in the woods, but when one of the salvagers points his flashlight to where they are, they're gone. 

That morning Russ and Moriah are talking on the beach as the body is being loaded onto the raft. She's of course freaked out, especially since she swears he called her name (although it was made obvious to us readers that it was the centipedes). Russ kind of has a cool theory about stuff like this. The day after their father died (Captain Gage, Russ, and Clark are brothers) he went downstairs to get some water and he saw his father was sitting in the living room. "It probably takes a while to break the habit of being alive." And he tells her "Maybe the dude you found today was so happy not to be alone anymore he forgot he was dead for a moment."

Everybody is talking crap about Clark's coffee, but it turns out it's not coffee but mushroom tea. I love mushrooms and I love tea, but that sounds gross.

They decide who is going back to the MacReady (their ship) with the body and who is going to sweep the island to make sure there aren't anymore castaways there. When Lacome, who is an employee of the oil company, is alone with the body he even calls him by name. "Hello, Peter. You don't look a day older than the photographs." So this guy is somebody who was on the sunken ship. 

The Captain and another crew member decide to take a look at the Derleth with an R.O.V. There's big giant symmetrical holes on the side, so they start wondering if there was explosives on board. But then this big giant sea monster comes out of one of the holes and eat the R.O.V. Back on the shore, Moriah has noticed deformities in the crabs on the island, and she ends up swimming out to get one on a rock while Clark yells at her that the water is too cold. The crab jumps off the rock and swims away, but Moriah sees that it really wasn't a rock. It's like a giant underwater totem pole carved with the centipedes she saw coming out of Peter's neck coming out of people's faces.

And if that's not enough, Peter has come back to life and he's out of the body bag! And boy, does he cause some damage.

Zombie Peter smashes an emergency glass case to get to the hatchet, smashes the fuse box, then he kills a crew member, cuts open a sulfur fuel pipeline, and sets the MacReady on fire by putting a live wire to the fuel. Meanwhile back on the island, Russ has found a cave with some interesting carvings in it.

Bits and Pieces

What the freakin' hell? Talking centipedes that come out of peoples faces, enormous sea monsters living in sunken ships, and zombies lighting floating ships on fire. Joe Hill does a great job of giving each character their own voice, and the art is just so good! So far this series has been a must-read. Also, I learned about something that I was not aware of: fire retardant grenades.

9/10