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community weblog
The Inner Sea
Mare Internum is a complete webcomic by Der-shing Helmer. An Eisner-nominated work about getting lost underneath the surface of Mars. A relatively short read with the cadence of a sci-fi novella. Recommended for fans of alien environments, survival stories and light body horror.
CW: suicide and child sex abuse.
A print version was kickstarted in 2020, but copies are still available via Gumroad.
Der-shing Helmer also wrote The Meek (nsfw; non-sexual nudity). Another award-winning comic about a young girl discovering the world while two countries gear up for war. After 5 chapters it's been left on indefinite hiatus, but what's there is still a good read.
posted by Lorc on Jun 04, 2026 at 5:01 AM
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Lorc you continue to hit it out of the park with these reccs, thank you!
posted by Wretch729 at 5:49 AM
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These posts have been like a direct line to my computer circa When I Still Enjoyed The Internet. Thanks so much for these! (And to whomever brought me back to Dicebox, I thought it had been abandoned!)
posted by foxtongue at 7:20 AM
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Lorc you are fast becoming my favorite poster. You keep bringing these FABULOUS web comic recommendations of beautiful work that I've somehow missed. Please never stop!
posted by DarlingMonster at 8:45 AM
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[Added content warning as requested by OP ]
posted by loup at 8:53 AM
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I enjoyed that, but I was a bit disappointed with the ending.
[Spoilers]
After the encounter with the processor, I was rooting against Bex and Michael making it out. Here we have the fragile remnants of ancient Martian civilization preserved in a closed biological system, and even after being told that leaving could collapse the system and forever destroy the last of the Martians, you still fight to get out? And you call yourselves scientists?
I know it works as a metaphor for human perseverance through pain and trauma, but, within the fiction, the legacy of the life of an entire planet weighed against the personal well-being of two humans skewed the calculus too much for me. We were introduced to something alien and compelling and then, whoops, we circle right back around to human concerns without really reckoning with that. It tried to reconcile the disconnect at the end by looping the processor/Kalla into Michael and Bex' own escape -- it was escaping too! -- but that just undercut the alienness by squeezing it into a human frame.
I would have rather seen a more ambiguous ending, where they stay and learn about the Martians but reckon with the fact that they're fully cut off from their human lives. And maybe they're not even fully human, any more, after enough time. That could have worked as a metaphor too. You don't always overcome pain and trauma, but you can keep living, not always as the person you once were, but you can still find meaning.
When I thought that's where it might be going, I was mentally giving the author props for preemptively undercutting an Adam and Eve reading: he's gay, she doesn't want children. But they're both suffering and looking for something else, and they're both scientists. And now they've found something else.
Ah well.
But I did enjoy reading it! Thanks Lorc!
posted by postcommunism at 10:52 AM
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I'm still sad that The Meek is unfinished -- I found that one first. I'm going to re-read it.
posted by confluency at 12:02 PM
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