CREATORS/WRITERS David Accampo and Jeremy Rogers
ILUSTRATOR Chris Anderson

Lake Vostok is the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica. It is located beneath Russia’s Vostok Station, 4000 metres under the surface of the central Antarctic ice sheet. Because of its estimated 15 millions years of isolation, it is believed that the water inside could contain new life forms, and unique geochemical processes. For five years, scientists in Russia and the United States have sought to probe the lake to discover the secrets lying inside this pristine body of water.

Core drilling have revealed an oligotrophic extreme environment, one that is supersaturated with oxygen 50 times higher than those typically found in ordinary freshwater lakes on Earth. The sheer weight of the continental icecap sitting on top of Lake Vostok is believed to contribute to the uncommonly high oxygen concentration, producing a natural lake environment unmatched on Earth. Any organisms in Lake Vostok must be capable of overcoming very high oxygen stress. They may have had to evolve special adaptations, such as high concentrations of protective enzymes, in order to survive the lake’s oxygen-rich environment. Scientists suggest that the lake could possess a unique habitat for ancient bacteria with an isolated microbial gene pool containing characteristics developed perhaps before the dawn of man.

The catch 22 inherent in Lake Vostok is that the very thing that make it potentially unique: its millennia of isolation from the rest of the world cannot be explored without introduction of the outer world… But steps have been taken. Now with approval from the Comprehensive Environmental Assessment Program, and with backing from NASA, and their interest in testing new subglacial laboratory equipment as a design for research on the Jovian moon, Europa, a team of scientists will be going into Vostok…

(VOSTOK: Character Concept Sketches)

In late 2008, Habit Forming Films, in association with esteemed artist, Chris Anderson, will debut Vostok, a pitch-black science fiction thriller graphic novel aimed to push madness and claustrophobia into truly monstrous reaches of the mind.