2 out of 5

Having not read the original Hook Jaw strips, and just going off of wiki and other various summaries, I appreciate that the 70s take had that classic brew of extremes and blunt social commentary that birth Judge Dredd, and was somewhat typical of scribe Pat Mills’ high brow / low brow style; so a modern take, if staying true to that, is going to advance its ecological themes and violence to the current era.

Writer Simon Spurrier inarguably does exactly that, taking a very Mills-y approach of piling together a variety of morally grey folks (fussy environmentalists; various political extremists) and upping an anti-authority vibe, while artist Connor Boyle lobs on the gore. And the creative duo further attempts to maintain our hooked shark’s “POV” via its impressionistic “thoughts” of blood and flesh as it swirls around our leads.

The main problem is: none of this is very fun, or very interesting. The gore punchlines are arrived at after long stretches of inconvenient chatter: generally unlikeable characters dropping some admittedly interesting shark factoids amidst an overly-worded setup of scientists tracking some curious aquatic behaviors being beset upon by sweary and bossy government types (and later other antagonistic factions while Hook Jaw occasionally pokes their head out of the water and bites someone.

This framing is valid, and gives an “in” to a more realistic take on giant killer fish territory, but it leans too heavily into surrounding us with general unpleasantness – an uncaring world, ill-defined and brittle characters – before cluttering things with escalations that are way too oblique (information is withheld, or buried in talking heads) to create much tension.

And limited to, essentially, a single setting – boat, at sea – Boyle has a tough job of finding visual zing, but also doesn’t really carve out the boat itself as a lived-in space. Lastly on my list of nits: I like the concept of giving HJ a font-specific “voice,” but the way it’s effected doesn’t sync well with the art or pacing; it doesn’t read as part of the story.

Somewhere in this, there’s a truly valid attempt at updating Hook Jaw, and I like that Spurrier tried to ground it. That approach subtracts the kooky b-movie vibe, though, and the story never becomes strong enough to sell that.