The Backbrain has featured work from the Ray Harryhausen Presents imprint of Bluewater Comics before, but here’s a bit of an update, focusing on the most monstrous of covers.
Wrath of the Titans: Cyclops
First introduced by Bluewater in their Wrath of the Titans series (an extension of Harryhausen’s film Clash of the Titans), the Cyclops from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad gets a comic of his own. The story follows the beast “as he matches wits and muscle against pirates, prehistoric monsters and even other Cyclopeans, with the magical lamp as the glittering prize.” It’s an interesting concept, as many of the Bluewater titles are.
20 Million Miles More
Based on Harryhausen’s 20 Million Miles To Earth and featuring one of his most iconic monsters, the Ymir.
It’s been 50 years since the strange being from Venus rampaged through Italy. So it has been 50 years of secrets, misinformation and outright lying. Once the world was convinced that the Ymir was a giant hoax and the mission to Venus never happened, it was lulled back to sleep, ignorant of the truth. But no one counted on genetics. Years of secret testing and breakthroughs in many of the gray areas of science created unintended consequences that could bring the Earth to its knees…and only an 11-year-old child can save it.
War of the Elementals
Based on a Harryhausen project that never got off the ground (as it were).
1915 France. The Great War rages and a new breed of hero take to the skies. Part bull-terrier, part daredevil, the aces of the Royal Flying Corps’ 5th Squadron are Britain’s elite. It was an era of counter-intelligence, dogfights and drinking songs. But that was before the world changed. That was before the Elementals. When a routine mission goes awry, the 5th Squadron finds itself trapped in an unreal world called The Source. Here giant bat-like creatures dominate the world keeping the Universe, and all of its parallel realities, in a precarious balance. But despite its serene appearance, it is a violent, predatory land. Trapped along with Germany’s greatest flying ace, they all must work together to find a way back home. But the home they left is no longer the world they knew.
It Came From Beneath the Sea … Again
Based on … well, you know what it is based on!
In the 1950s, the U.S. Navy encountered and destroyed a gigantic octopus that attacked shipping and wreaked havoc on the west coast of the United States. American forces killed the creature and ended the threat once and for all. Or so they thought. They were wrong. Now, another monster is rising in the warm blue waters surrounding Taru Taru, a speck of land far out in the Pacific. And this time it’s worse than anyone ever imagined.
The Imaginaries
This one isn’t a Harryhausen adaptation. Rather it is the work of Mike S. Miller, who is associated with such franchises as The Adventures of Superman and Wolverine.
The story began with the universal idea of imaginary friends, and what happens to them when their creators stop believing in them; they go to a miraculous world called ‘the Imagined Nation’.
[This] new series takes a slightly more mature tone visually [than the original, published through Image Comics] while maintaining the wonder and imagination of an all-ages title. Superhero G has found a new purpose for his existence, but struggles with his desire to return ‘home’ to his best friend and sidekick, Tanner.
- Source: Bluewater website (on the suggestion of Kaiju Search-Robot Avery)
