Im Eisland, or Icebound in English is a 2014 German comic based on the story of Franklin's Lost Expedition, a real-life British voyage in which over a hundred men and two of the most advanced ships in the world set sail in search of a "Northwest Passage" between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and were never seen again.
Originally released in German in 2014, the comic was translated into English and posted to Tapas
, where it can be accessed for free.
Tropes:
- A Taste of the Lash: Sinclar gets it twice in the comic. The first time, after being caught with a male love in the hold, which results in his lover's death, and then a second time when he attempts to desert during the winter and has to run the gauntlet.
- Break the Cutie: Jopson, Evans, Torrington, even Fitzjames to an extent.
- Dated History:
- As the wreck had yet to be discovered when the comic was made, Terror is depicted as being crushed in the ice while trapped in Erebus bay, while the real ship was found in good condition a few miles further south in Terror Bay.
- Lead Poisoning is also brought up as one of the causes for the expedition's downfall, when this theory was later disproven, as the amount of lead found in the bodies is equivalent to others of the time.
- Downer Ending: As expected, every member of the expedition dies horribly before the comic reaches its final page.
- Driven to Suicide: Crozier and later Fairholme take this option over a slow death from starvation and sickness.
- Even Evil Has Standards. Even after he and his mutinous band had already abandoned all of their sick and dying crewmates in an attempt to survive on their own, Sinclar still refuses to take Fairholme with them as food. Not that it does him any good in the end.
- Laughing Mad: Evans falls into this when he, alone, abandoned by the rest of the crew, and dying of scurvy shoots a fox and discovers a tag pointing them to a nearby rescue ship.
- Hope Spot: After the first few weeks of their grueling march south, the crew gets word that the ice has started to melt and they may be able to sail out of there after all. Of course, they are only able to sail a few miles before they become trapped again and end up having to abandon the ships yet again.
- Late to the Tragedy: The comic opens with Charles Francis Hall interviewing the various Inuit groups who interacted with the lost expedition, and the remains that they found.
