I’m speechless. I have no idea what to say about this. Nothing happens in this issue, it’s mostly entirely unnecessary flashback. Something the previous issues have struggled with is jumping all over the place with no real narrative direction. I didn’t really understand the previous flashbacks and I don’t really understand the flashback that dominates this issue. Is it supposed to establish the evil octopus lady? I think that was established when you made her an evil octopus lady. Do we need more than that? Is to establish the sea prince that she makes human for a day? I guess, maybe? He might be our titular Little Mermaid's father but why does that matter? How does any of it tie together? I suppose we’ll find out in the next 3 issues but the track record for this book isn’t great. I don’t have a lot of payoff to give me faith that the breadcrumbs they’re dropping are leading anywhere.
The story we’re given is that we have our Little Mermaid book-ending the issue with experimentation. Not the sexy experimentation that you may have experienced in college. Those nights of booze and nervous fumbling’s… I assume anyway. I didn’t go to college. Everything I know I learned from that pretty smart raccoon down by the old, abandoned grain silos on the Mississippi and he wasn’t big on experimentation. A real straight edge stickler that old raccoon.
Where was I? Oh yes, I was starting a third paragraph to bloat this review a bit. So we bookend on Little Mermaid getting experimented on and making a friend with one of the scientists in the span of a handful of panels. The rest of the story goes 20 years into the past with a woman looking for a merman. That merman is the Prince of Atlantis and Aquaman is his father. Not really but really it’s just Aquaman with a tail. Anyway he apparently wants to be human so he drinks something he found on the ocean floor. How do you drink something underwater anyway? Is it because the liquid is heavier than the surrounding sea water? Is that how that works? You might want to adjust certain story elements to compensate for the fact that you’re under-god-damn-water. But this merman turned manmer gets it on with some lady who I’m assuming is Little Mermaids mom. Aaaaaaaand that’s the whole issue really. Not a whole lot going on and not a lot of hope for the future.
Score: 1/5
The Little Mermaid #2 Writer: Joe Brusha/Meredith Finch Artist: Miguel Mendonca Colorist: Jorge Alberto Cortes Publisher: Zenoscope Entertainment Price: $3.99 Release Date: 3/25/15 Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital