Shadows of the Sea
Shadows of the SeaCartoonist: Cathy Malkasian
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Publication Date: November 2025
Cathy Malkasian’s Shadows of the Sea tells an intimate story of grief and healing set in a fantastic world that follows its own logic yet remains intriguingly strange.
A small but handsomely suited terrier named Stanwick, referred to as “Landmine Sniffer Dog #336” in his corporate dismissal letter, has recently found himself unemployed after losing his leg in an accident. While wandering along a deserted mountain road, he witnesses a troubling tableau. A fierce and frizzy-haired woman defends herself from three thugs, who flee in terror after being thoroughly trounced. Stanwick approaches the woman, who introduces herself as Doris and informs him that she’s on a journey to find a new pocketwatch for her husband.
With little else to do, Stanwick accompanies Doris as they continue through the forested hills and traverse a fantastic abandoned city carved into a mountain before descending to a hidden cove, where the waiting ocean summons unpleasant memories they’ve been at pains to ignore.
Doris has been lying to herself about the watch she wants to buy for her husband. Though her love for a man who provided her with a home and a purpose is real and good, Doris’s difficult childhood has given her a history of repressing bad memories, and the stories she tells herself about her past are more fiction than reality.
Stanwick, who has been denied his livelihood and purpose by a sinister corporation that blithely punished him for doing his job, has painful memories of his own. Even worse, his shock from the accident that took his leg is still so strong that he’s unable to speak.
Before Stanwick and Doris can make it to the other side of their grief, they must first confront the sources of their trauma, but their path is anything but straightforward. Despite Doris’s infectious energy and Stanwick’s quiet competence, Shadows of the Sea takes its time to arrive at a resolution. The story allows the atmosphere of grief to linger, stretched out like the long and empty roads Doris and Stanwick follow on their way to the ocean.
Cathy Malkasian’s distinctively stylized artwork invites the reader to inhabit the emotional weight of the journey. The distortions in the visuals reflect the inner turmoil of the characters, and the disquieting landscapes underscore the severity of their past experiences. The limited color palette sets the mood for a surreal blending of the characters’ interior and exterior worlds in a powerful climactic scene. After Doris and Stanwick return from their ordeal, however, the blues and browns of their world transform into the refreshing colors of the sky after a storm.
In his review here on The Beat, John Seven assesses Malkasian’s 2017 graphic novel Eartha as one of the artist’s characteristic “gloomy, apocalyptic parables that don’t make you feel so great about humankind.” It’s difficult to disagree, as Eartha is deeply disquieting. In contrast, Shadows of the Sea feels like a gentler turn of the same thematic wheel, presenting a story that’s smaller in scope but richer in emotional immediacy.
Stanwick’s quiet fortitude and Doris’s unruly vitality form a compelling pairing, and their companionship serves as a steady thread guiding the narrative away from desolation and toward renewal. The fantastic world Malkasian has painted is cruel and strange, to be sure, but it still affords the possibility of healing. Shadows of the Sea lingers not because of its darkness, but because of the hope that emerges after a brave confrontation with bitter truths.
Shadows of the Sea is available from Fantagraphics.
Read more great reviews from The Beat!
