"Marooned" is a two-part storyline released in the Tales of the Black Freighter anthology series. The story is split across Issues 23 and 24 and were written by Max Shea and illustrated by Walt Feinberg. Marooned tells the story of a young mariner whose vessel is wrecked by the Black Freighter before it can reach his home town of Davidstown, and the man's sickening quest to warn, or save, or avenge his family.
History[]
Marooned is considered the height of Max Shea and Walt Feinberg's talent, and is unique in that it is a one-character story narrated mostly in captions, making it different than the rest of their work in Tales of the Black Freighter. [1]
Issues[]
Issue 23[]
Only the second half of Issue 23 is shown, cutting in after (presumably) the young mariner's ship was wrecked and he had been cast to a nearby shore of some island. [2]
The first part was read coinciding with the placement of a Fallout Shelter sign and the presence of a man who held a sign reading "The End is Nigh". It indulged in the heartbreak of the young mariner and his realization that this place where dead bodies were piled beside him was not Hell, and he was alive.
The second part is read to coincide with the Fallout Shelter sign that was similarly being placed on Doctor Manhattan's door during his decision to leave to Mars and its inclusion in the newspaper. The mariner recalls the disaster of the attack and thinks about his unsuspecting family, imagining their onslaught. He then buried his shipmates, and along with them hope of his family's survival.
Issue 24[]
As the sun rose, the mariner decided to find a way back home and unburied his shipmates so he could use their gas-bloated bodies to support his raft. He left at night and ate gulls that flew near to him. He began to drink salt water in small amounts, then could see fins approaching. The sharks took away his shipmates' bodies and then he was attacked by a large shark that he stabbed in the eye. It eventually died, and provided him with food and support for his raft since it was entangled with its cords. [3]
With thoughts of his dead family, decided to leap from his raft into the sea only to find he had arrived in Davidstown. He considered himself a spectre of revenge on the flow tide home. [4]
Two horse-back riders came by the shore and saw his Captain's infest raft. The mariner killed them both and left for Davidstown upon their horses. [5]
The mariner finds Davidstown and enters his once own home, that he now knew to be the home of the pirates. He attacked the first figure he could find and upon realizing it was his wife, he fled from the town and saw the Black Freighter out in the water. He swam towards the massive ship and reached for the rope, to climb to his destiny, now that he was marooned from his home, the world, his life. [6]
Trivia[]
- Marooned is an example of post-modern metafiction and comic-within-a-comic that also serves as a foil for the main plot.
Behind the Scenes[]
- Marooned is read by a teenage boy named Bernie while he sits beside a newsstand, whose proprietor, Bernard, contemplates the latest headlines and discusses them with his customers. This juxtaposition of text and images from the comic-within-a-comic and its framing sequence uses the former to act as a parallel commentary to the latter—which is the plot of Watchmen itself.
- Alan Moore has said that the story in Tales of the Black Freighter ends up describing "the story of Ozymandias" (who admits, in his final scene, to having a recurring nightmare resembling a prominent image of the Black Freighter). In addition, the comic can also be seen to relate "to Rorschach and his capture; it relates to the self-marooning of Dr. Manhattan on Mars; it can be used as a counterpoint to all these different parts of the story."
References[]
External links[]
- Tales Of The Black Freighter: "Marooned" (The Reconstruction), an attempt to recreate the comic as it may have looked.