Artist – Howard Purcell
Inker – Sheldon Moldoff

A new threat sails the seven seas, and he goes by the name of the Sea Wolf. He is a formidable foe and one the Sea Devils have never heard of before encountering him in this very issue. The Sea Wolf holds formidable tech at his command, things the Devils find quite amazing despite the fact that such inventions are in the hands of a villain. Even when those weapons are used against them, the Sea Devils find them fascinating, while also thinking they can somehow avoid or overcome them. It is all futility when the two forces come into contact, and the Sea Devils soon find themselves prisoners of the dastardly new foe. With no credited writer on this book, one has to wonder who came up with the idea to have the Sea Wolf wear a wolf’s skin, including its head as a costume. Visually, it looks good, and the name is spot on, but it is exceptionally silly to see a villain like this under the waves fighting the Sea Devils. It drives home the message that he is the ‘Sea Wolf’, yet, at the end of the day, it is one of the more ridiculous moments in the title as a whole. Silly or not, the story is entertaining, a credit to that mysterious writer and to Howard Purcell and Sheldon Moldoff, who continue to make this title look exceptionally good. What is quite hilarious in a variety of ways is that the Sea Wolf is not the funniest thing to appear in this book, as the villain has a master himself. While he might be fearsome in his own right, he does not hold a candle to the robotic Master Manchine. Not Machine, but Manchine. It is a truly terrible name, any way that one looks at it, and it is more than a little laughable, yet sad that whoever penned this tale could not come up with anything better. As it is, Manchine is not just any normal computer. It is centuries ahead of anything else on the planet, and it can predict just how the Sea Devils plan to escape and how they plan to defeat the Sea Wolf. In a strange bit of story, it all ends up mirroring today’s current events involving artificial intelligence, how this simple computer ended up evolving into the monstrosity it currently is, an ever-present fear in the present time. Come the end of it all, the only reason the Sea Devils survive the Sea Wolf and the Manchine is due to a bit of luck and quick thinking. Were they smarter than the Manchine? Probably not, but it seems that no matter how smart someone or something is, there is always that one chance in a million that goes unaccounted for. A decent outing for the team, even if it was all a bit ludicrous.

2.5 out of 5