| The Red Seas --> | |
| Schedule: | Weekly |
| Anthology: | 2000 AD |
| Titles: | 2000 AD #1313-1321 2000 AD Prog 2004 & #1371-1379 2000 AD #1416-1419 2000 AD #1460-1468 2000 AD #1491-1499 2000 AD #1513-1517 2000 AD #1562-1566 2000 AD #1600-1609 2000 AD Prog 2009 & #1617-1623 |
| Swash: | y |
| Publisher: | Rebellion Developments |
| Startyr: | 2002 |
| Endyr: | 2013 |
| Main Char Team: | Jack Dancer Isaac Newton |
| Writers: | Ian Edginton |
| Artists: | Steve Yeowell |
| Letterers: | Annie Parkhouse Ellie De Ville |
| Editors: | Tharg (Matt Smith) |
| Creators: | Ian Edginton Steve Yeowell |
| Nonus: | y |
| Tpb: | Under the Banner of King Death |
| Isbn: | 1-904265-68-5 |
| Tpb1: | Twilight of the Idols |
| Isbn1: | 1-904265-72-3 |
| Altcat: | 2000 AD comic strips |
| Sort: | Red Seas, The |
The Red Seas is a series appearing in the British comics magazine 2000 AD. It was written by Ian Edginton and drawn by Steve Yeowell.
The stories revolved around Captain Jack Dancer and the crew of his ship, the Red Wench. It mixes pirates with anomalous phenomena, including magic, zombies, the hollow earth, and werewolves.
"Under the Banner of King Death" saw the crew fighting the zombie pirates of Doctor Orlando Doyle, and culminated in an appearance by Satan 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, who wanted their help in finding the floating island of Laputa.
"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 of World War II . 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 recruit Jack's crew to aid him in the American War of Independence.
These are being reprinted by Rebellion Developments as trade paperbacks:
By virtue of several shared people, places and concepts, The Red Seas forms part of the same universe 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 Stickleback 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.