Written by Geoff Johns
Pencils by Michael Turner
Colors by Peter Steigerwald
Letters by Dreamer Design
Aspen Matthews is an ex-Olympic swimmer, marine biologists, and a girl with a past shrouded in mystery. Age eleven, she was found on a cruise ship, with no memory of who she was, or how she got there. Now, as the crew of the top secret US military Deep Marine Discovery platform encounters a strange, alien craft, something is stirring at the back of Aspen’s mind, flashes of her earlier life, a life beneath the waves. There is nothing wrong being an amnesiac that is totally hot, in swim gear most of the time and is a super-secret spy chick. That is one of the appeals of this story line, hot strong woman who kicks butt and has almost no past that she knows of.
This story collects together Geoff Johns and Michael Turner’s complete 37-page Fathom story from the original three Aspen issues, this incredible Extended Edition also contains six new pages of brand-new art and story line. Sadly though this also means that in this smaller graphic novel, the authors rewrote the ending of the book from the original comic book. While the new scene between Aspen and Black is interesting, sometimes you really do not want to mess with the original. Sometimes reading this issue seems like watching a revision of star wars later on after you fell in love with the original. In its own right, the way that the story has been revised, this is almost a new novel, and if you take it from that point it is awesome. If you are a previous reader of Fathom, then you might have difficulties with it because it does deviate from the original material.
This issue also gives you some bonus gallery material of Fathom, Ekos, and Soulfire that really do work, and will appeal to just about any guy. Cover galleries are always interesting because it gives you an idea of the special covers you missed at the local comic book shop.
My difficulty with this was that I really do like this series, but being a regular reader, I had to suspend some of my in place notions from the comic book for this edition. The edition I got was from Graphicly, so I don’t know if there is a print edition and if the print edition is similar to what I read online. Overall awesome, but again, with a revised ending I was kind of disappointed that they changed that because the original ending was just fine. The cover gallery is very cool and worthy of noting that they did a great job with it. So going to rate this one 4 of 5 stars, they take the ding for the revised entry, but otherwise this is the normal and expected awesome story line with hot spy chicks who have amnesia. Well worth finding the physical copy to own and keep hold of.
Related articles
- Aspen Comics in December 2011 (graphicpolicy.com)
- Preview – Fathom Blue Descent #3 (graphicpolicy.com)
- Aspen Comics Heads to NYCC With Tons of Creators and Exclusives (graphicpolicy.com)
- Aspen Comics Review – Broken Pieces #1, Exective Assistant: Lotus #3, Fathom (vol 4) #2 and Soulfire (vol 3) #4 (graphicpolicy.com)
- Aspen Comics Review – Dead Man’s Run #0 (graphicpolicy.com)
- Aspen Matthews – the lady in her element! From Fathom, Vol.4, #0 (roscoesdreams.wordpress.com)
