Ocean is a 2004

2004 in comics

-February:*February 6: Marvel Enterprises and Electronic Arts announce a multi-year agreement in which EA will develop a new generation of fighting video games pitting Marvel superheroes against a new, original set of EA heroes....

 six-issue comic book

Comics

Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...

 miniseries

Limited series

A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....

, written by Warren Ellis

Warren Ellis

Warren Girard Ellis is an English author of comics, novels, and television, who is well-known for sociocultural commentary, both through his online presence and through his writing, which covers transhumanist themes...

 with pencils by Chris Sprouse

Chris Sprouse

Chris Sprouse is an American comic book artist.-Biography:Chris Sprouse was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. At the age of 3 he moved with his family to New Delhi, India where he first discovered comics as he was unable to play outside due to the dangerous amount of snakes in the house yard...

 and inks by Karl Story

Karl Story

Karl Story is an American comic book artist specializing in inking. He is one of the original members of Atlanta's Gaijin Studios.Over a career of almost two decades, he has worked on books such as Nightwing, Batman, Star Trek: Debt of Honor, Aliens versus Predator, X-Men, Wildstorm Summer Special,...

. It was published by DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

 under the Wildstorm

Wildstorm

WildStorm Productions, or simply WildStorm, published American comic books. Originally an independent company established by Jim Lee and further expanded upon in subsequent years by other creators, WildStorm became a publishing imprint of DC Comics in 1999...

 imprint.

Plot

Set in an era "one hundred years from now", Ocean is a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 story that tells the tale of Nathan Kane, a United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 special weapons inspector, and his mission to Cold Harbor, a UN research station in orbit around Europa

Europa (moon)

Europa Slightly smaller than Earth's Moon, Europa is primarily made of silicate rock and probably has an iron core. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is composed of ice and is one of the smoothest in the Solar System. This surface is striated by cracks and...

.

The Harbor's scientists have discovered a set of nonhuman artifacts in the ocean deep below the ice that covers the moon, and further research reveals that the artifacts are the weapons, wormhole

Wormhole

In physics, a wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that would be, fundamentally, a "shortcut" through spacetime. For a simple visual explanation of a wormhole, consider spacetime visualized as a two-dimensional surface. If this surface is folded along a third dimension, it...

-based transport system, and cryogenic

Cryogenics

In physics, cryogenics is the study of the production of very low temperature and the behavior of materials at those temperatures. A person who studies elements under extremely cold temperature is called a cryogenicist. Rather than the relative temperature scales of Celsius and Fahrenheit,...

 resting place of a warlike race of prehuman beings.

This culture's home world was located between Mars

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

 and Jupiter

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

, and in their ongoing civil war, they wrought great damage on Mars, which used to be a far more temperate, colonized Earthlike planet before its atmosphere was destroyed in the same conflict that also utterly destroyed their home planet. This last act was apparently a threshold event of some kind that caused the culture to lay down their arms, possibly out of shame or out of fear of some kind of reprisal. They put themselves and their technology in suspended animation deep within Europa. One of the Cold Harbor scientists suggests that this was motivated chiefly by their inability to live with themselves. However, before doing so, the culture seeded Earth with the genetic material that eventually allowed human life to grow.

However, thanks to the unscrupulous acts of the insane manager of a weapons testing facility also in orbit around Europa, owned by an interplanetary corporation

Corporation

A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...

 named Doors – a reference to Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 and their Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 operating system – the race starts to wake up, putting the Earth itself at risk from the resurgence of the extremely powerful and violent precursor race.

Publication history

A trade paperback

Trade paperback (comics)

In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...

 collection of the series was published by Wildstorm

Wildstorm

WildStorm Productions, or simply WildStorm, published American comic books. Originally an independent company established by Jim Lee and further expanded upon in subsequent years by other creators, WildStorm became a publishing imprint of DC Comics in 1999...

 in 2005

2005 in comics

- January :* January 3: Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit, dies at age 87.-April:*April 13:**DC Comics announces the discontinuation of its Humanoids and 2000 A.D. titles....

 (ISBN 1-4012-0849-5). The series was originally intended to be a film script and then as a single graphic novel, leading to an absence of the traditional cliffhangers associated with monthly comics.

Film

The comic has been optioned by Gianni Nunnari and Nick Wechsler

Nick Wechsler (producer)

Nick Wechsler is an American film producer.He married model/actress Stephanie Romanov on December 26, 2001 in Cambodia. On June 1, 2005, she gave birth to their first child, baby girl, Lily Andreja Romanov-Wechsler.-Projects in Development:-Filmography:...

 who have history with films based on comics, the former produced 300

300 (film)

300 is a 2007 American fantasy action film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller. It is a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant...

and the duo are slated to produce the film based on Ronin

Ronin (comic book series)

Ronin is a comic book limited series published between 1983 and 1984, by DC Comics. The series was written and drawn by Frank Miller with artwork painted by Lynn Varley. It takes place in a dystopic near-future New York in which a ronin is reincarnated...

.

Ryan Condal, writer of the spec script Galahad, has been approached by Warner Brothers to produce a screenplay for them.