''The Red Seas'' is a series appearing in the British comics magazine '' 2000 AD'', written by

Ian Edginton Ian Edginton is a British comic book writer, known for his work on such titles as '' X-Force'', '' Scarlet Traces'', '' H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds'' and '' Leviathan''. Career Ian Edginton is known for his steampunk/alternate history w ...

and drawn by Steve Yeowell. The stories revolve around Captain Jack Dancer and the crew of his ship the Red Wench. It mixes pirates with anomalous phenomena, including magic,

zombies A zombie (Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in w ...

, the

hollow earth The Hollow Earth is a concept proposing that the planet Earth is entirely hollow or contains a substantial interior space. Notably suggested by Edmond Halley in the late 17th century, the notion was disproven, first tentatively by Pierre Bougu ...

and

werewolves In folklore, a werewolf (), or occasionally lycanthrope (; ; uk, Вовкулака, Vovkulaka), is an individual that can shapeshift into a wolf (or, especially in modern film, a therianthropic hybrid wolf-like creature), either purposely o ...

Characters

Crew

*Jack Dancer: Captain of the Red Wench, late of The

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...

. Having encouraged his crew to rebel against a tyrannical Captain, they elected to follow him into a life of piracy on the high seas, forever on the run from British justice. *Ginger Tom: Jim's father. A grizzled old sea-dog. *Bill: A straight-talking, somewhat overweight Scot. *Jim Salt: Tom's son. A cockney teenager who was killed by Isabella during the events of "The Hollow Earth", leaving Tom heartbroken. The formless entity known as Hnau entered into Jim's corpse, thereby gaining the means to explore the world he had so long ruled over. *Julius: A young black sailor, illegitimate son of a famous London composer. *Erebus: An immortal, double-headed dog's head on a robotic chassis, formerly guardian between the realms of the living and the dead, a role in which he seemed to be largely analogous to

Cerberus In Greek mythology, Cerberus (; grc-gre, Κέρβερος ''Kérberos'' ), often referred to as the hound of Hades, is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. He was the offspring of the ...

of Greek mythology. The heads of Erebus have been a vital part of the crew, possessed of a wealth of knowledge of the mythic and arcane adversaries which Jack's crew frequently find themselves facing. *Alexander Dancer: a late addition to the crew, half-brother of Jack.

Enemies

*Doctor Orlando Doyle was a necromancer who sailed on a ship crewed entirely by the reanimated corpses of drowned sailors. He kidnapped Isabella to try to gain the secret of eternal life, destroying the Red Wench and killing most of Jack's crew along the way. He was defeated by no less than

Satan Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an entity in the Abrahamic religions that seduces humans into sin or falsehood. ...

himself. Doyle also appeared, although in a somewhat different guise, in the second series of Edginton's 2000AD story ''

Stickleback The sticklebacks are a family of ray-finned fishes, the Gasterosteidae which have a Holarctic distribution in fresh, brackish and marine waters. They were thought to be related to the pipefish and seahorses but are now thought to be more close ...

''. *Isabella was a young witch and Jack's girlfriend. After enduring several hardships at the hands of Orlando Doyle's zombie crew, she abandoned Jack to 'find herself.' She was next encountered as Queen of the hidden land beneath the Earth, worshipped by the lizard-like race there as She-who-must-be-obeyed, having killed her own father, a shaman, to obtain his power. Now openly hostile to Jack and his crew, she killed Jim and attempted to slay Hnau, the benevolent power who maintained the subterranean world. Hnau sent her to Mars, where before she could suffocate she was slain by Martians bearing an uncanny resemblance to those of ''

The War of the Worlds ''The War of the Worlds'' is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells, first serialised in 1897 by '' Pearson's Magazine'' in the UK and by '' Cosmopolitan'' magazine in the US. The novel's first appearance in hardcover was i ...

''. *Professor Karel Toten, late of Leipzig University, is a recurring villain who seems to be nothing more than a spirit form contained in his clothes, his face a blank porcelain mask. He commands power over lost souls, using them to animate men of straw and sacking, and later even metal, his army of 'Hollow Men.'

Allies

*Mistress Meryl Landlady of the Jolly Cripple, the pub on New Providence Island once frequented by the crew of the Red Wench, and sometime girlfriend of Billy. *Hnau was the formless entity who maintained the subterranean world below the Earth's Crust. A hive-mind composed of the last of an exiled race of Martians who fell to Earth in pre-history, it used its powers to preserve and succour a microcosm of the ancient world deep beneath the surface, populated by life that fell through the crack created by the Martian's fall. Now resides in Jim Salt's body. *

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the great ...

, in the world of The Red Seas, has lived far beyond his natural lifespan, a member of the Brotherhood of the Book. *Chevalier Augustus - Julius' estranged father, who once helped Isaac Newton thwart a plague of werewolves in London

Plot

"Under the Banner of King Death" saw the crew fighting the

zombie A zombie (Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in ...

pirates Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...

of Doctor Orlando Doyle, and culminated in an appearance by

himself. It was this first story that saw the destruction of the erstwhile pirate's ship and the deaths of most of the crew. It was also where Erebus joined the team - sent on a spiritual quest by Isabella's shaman father, Jack Dancer travelled to the Spirit World and decapitated Erebus in order to use his immortal heads as a spirit compass to help him locate Isabella, who had been kidnapped by Doyle. "Twilight of the Idols" saw the crew captured by the Royal Navy, only to be saved from hanging by an elderly

Aladdin Aladdin ( ; ar, علاء الدين, ', , ATU 561, ‘Aladdin') is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It is one of the best-known tales associated with ''The Book of One Thousand and One Nights'' (''The Arabian Nights''), despite not being part o ...

, who wanted their help in finding the floating island of

Laputa Laputa uh·poo·tuhis a flying island described in the 1726 book ''Gulliver's Travels'' by Jonathan Swift. It is about in diameter, with an adamantine base, which its inhabitants can manoeuvre in any direction using magnetic levitation. Th ...

. "Meanwhile..." explored what was happening to the cast of secondary characters while Jack and his crew were away. Erebus and the staff of the Jolly Cripple clashed swords for the first time with Toten. This was also where Erebus gained a new lease of life on his mechanical body; desiring his aid in gathering souls, Toten presented Erebus with the chassis as a bribe - Erebus having up until then been carried about in a glass jar. With Mistress Meryl's help, Erebus double-crossed Toten and kept the chassis. "Underworld" and "The Hollow Land" saw the crew saved from hanging again, (this time at the hands of the Pirate Council) by Jack's half-brother Alexander. Alexander, together with Isaac Newton, recruited Jack's help on an expedition to find their father, who had gone missing during an expedition to a subterranean world below the Earth's surface. Having located the senior Dancer, they were soon embroiled in a civil war between two tribes of lizard men, and shortly after met with Isabella once more. Both Isabella and Jim died before the return to the surface world, although Jim was resurrected, after a fashion, by the Martian entity Hnau. "With a bound he was free..." focussed on Isaac Newton's adventures with lycanthropes while the crew were below the Earth's surface. "War Stories" jumped several hundred years into the future, during the

London Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. It featured the reappearance of Toten, as well as Erebus minus a head and Hnau, a shapeshifting entity in Jim's form. "Old Gods", set two years after 'Hollow Land', saw

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of t ...

recruit Jack's crew to aid him in the

American War of Independence The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

Publication

These are being reprinted by

Rebellion Developments Rebellion Developments Limited is a British video game developer based in Oxford, England. Founded by Jason and Chris Kingsley in December 1992, the company is best known for its ''Sniper Elite'' series and multiple games in the '' Alien vs. P ...

as trade paperbacks: *''The Red Seas'': ** "Under the Banner of King Death" (in ''2000 AD'' #1313-1321, 2002, , tpb, hardcover, 2005, , softcover, 2007, ) ** "Twilight of the Idols" (in ''2000 AD'' Prog 2004 & #1371-1379, 2003–2004, tpb, hardcover, 2005, ) ** "Meanwhile..." (in ''2000 AD'' #1416-1419, 2004) *''Uncollected:'' ** "Underworld" (in ''2000 AD'' #1460-1468, 2005) ** "The Hollow Land" (in ''2000 AD'' #1491-1499, 2006) ** "With a Bound he was Free..." (in ''2000 AD'' #1513-1517, 2006) ** "War Stories" (in ''2000 AD'' #1562-1566,

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhut ...

) ** "Old Gods" (in ''2000 AD'' #1600-1609,

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

) ** "Signs and Portents" (in ''2000 AD'' Prog 2009 and #1617-1623, 2008–2009) ** "The Chimes of Midnight" (in ''2000 AD'' #1644-1649, 2009) ** "Hell and High Water" (in ''2000 AD'' #1688-1699, 2010) ** "Gods and Monsters" (in ''2000 AD'' #1728-1739, 2011) ** "Beautiful Freak" (in ''2000 AD'' #1792-1796, 2012) ** "Fire Across the Deep" (in ''2000 AD'' Prog 2013 and #1813-1823, 2012-2013)

Shared universe

By virtue of several shared people, places and concepts, The Red Seas forms part of the same

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. A ...

as many of other Ian Edginton's stories, both for ''2000 AD'' and other publishers. Orlando Doyle, villain of the first series of The Red Seas, features predominantly in the second series of

as a blind seer or scholar, member of the Brotherhood of the Book. The Brotherhood of the Book, a concept introduced in The Red Seas whereby certain individuals are keepers of the repository of humanity's hidden wisdom, was also returned to in Stickleback, operating out of the same secret base beneath London, the Temple of Mithras, which may act as a hub around which the different dimensions of Edginton's stories revolve. The Jolly Cripple, the tavern which Jack Dancer's crew frequent, also appeared as a pub in Stickleback. The spider-like Martians which appear at the end of "The Hollow Land" may be a deliberate nod to Edginton's H.G. Wells' ''The War of the Worlds'' comic adaptation.

References

''The Red Seas''
at 2000 AD online *

External links

Review of ''Under the Banner of King Death''
2000AD Reviews {{DEFAULTSORT:Red Seas, The Comics by Ian Edginton Pirate comics Nautical comics Fantasy comics Comics about time travel Comics set in the 18th century 2002 comics debuts 2003 comics endings