14. The Mermaid Attack (The Wake #4)
The Wake is a ten-issue, ocean-based horror miniseries written by Scott Snyder, drawn by Snyder's American Vampire: Survival Of The Fittest collaborator Sean Gordon Murphy and published by the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics. What The Wake might sometimes lack in originality is made up for by some seriously atmospheric and generally very cool artwork and, in this scene in particular, that is extremely prevalent. Issue four saw a spectacular scene in which the protagonists - Doctor Lee Archer and her team - (who are armed with curiously modern weaponry despite the book being set 100,000 years in the past) are attacked by man-eating mermaids who are on a crazed rampage and are tearing through machinery and flesh with equal relentlessness. The comic is atmospheric to begin with - what with the claustrophobic, cramped spaces and confined quarters of the protagonists being illustrated so brilliantly - and, in this scene, as they desperately try to escape from their rampaging aquatic stalkers, the tension is ramped up tenfold.