The Underwater Welder

Sarah Sammis

Dimitris Papastergiou

I gave it 3 stars cuz it kept me reading until the end. Don't really know why, but it did. I'm also shocked by how popular it is with nothing justifying it as being a book that's worth 5 stars. Oh well.. whatever floats your boat I guess.

It was a nice story, not a great one, not something you read and go WOAH.. but nice overall. Don't know why all the praise. I was even waiting to see something Twilight Zone-y to come out of it as I was reading (as Damon Lindelof said in the introduction) but.... nothing. Don't expect anything out of the ordinary than just a really irresponsible person who's stuck in the past.

To get things started I just wanna say, to those who expect MYSTERY. They will NOT FIND ANY MYSTERY in this books. Nothing to make you interested to it unless you like reading drama.

Main character, Jack, who's an underwater welder.. and after so many years he's still grieving about his dad and can't get his mind off of it. His dad drowned when he was a kid. He's got a pregnant woman with a baby coming, but what he does is going out in the open with a bad storm to go underwater to find "his dad"...His wife is ready to give birth and she tells him to stay and help FINALLY because all of this time he didn't do anything to help, but he's like "Sorry, I know I should stay but I have to do this". I mean. Really? Really Jack? Anyway, if I keep re-thinking about it I'm gonna make it 2 stars, so I shouldn't. Because all of his actions didn't justify a thing to me, a purpose, nothing. The guy was acting like he was on drugs or something.

Maybe I'm harsh, ok. The ending wasn't such a disappointment for what it was. But it was just a good read and I had high expectations and wasn't expecting just a story full of drama with a stupid character who the only good thing he did was make bad decision and be irresponsible.

And aside of all of that, the main reason was that I read like 300 pages for a story that I could have read in 50 pages. And that's sad.

I didn't like the main character of the book (Jack) as you can clearly see), he was too... too much. I liked his wife. She was the only logical person and the one with the voice of reason. 

Artwork was good. I like Lemire's artwork, so I guess that's one star for it. 

I wouldn't recommend it. Maybe if someone wanted to read a drama story about careless characters, maybe then I would.

aaliyah

This was a sweet story. I’m not a frequent reader of graphic novels but i really did enjoy this one. It was a quick read to leave you thinking about a lot, and holds some valuable lessons. Overall four stars because I wasn’t really connected to any of the characters, they were written incredibly well and had lots of depth though.

Omar AlHashmi

Wow.. Beautiful... Just beautiful. That's the word to describe the graphic novel. This is how you write a character driven story. You feel for the characters. You sympathize with them and are with them side by side in their journey. To be honest I was at first taken aback at the art. But as I kept on reading I appreciated it so much. Each panel was so perfectly chosen to give off a certain emotion for the reader. I loved it. And I have been loving Jeff Lemire and looking forward to reading more of his work.

The Underwater Welder

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