REVIEW: The Little Mermaid #3

Story: Joe Brusha
Writer: Meredith Finch
Art: Miguel Mendoca
Publisher: Zenescope
Release Date: 04/22/2015

Despite my statements on the review of issue #2, I am back trawling this Grimm version the children’s classic.

The sea witch continues with her overall plan, again using Issoro’s love for Liz presumably against him. Â For a sea witch, it does seem she is just Â one trick sea pony. We get more origin for Erica all whilst she continues to enjoy the attentions of the resident mad scientist.

And here lies the problem. Â This book is all about continues…. Yes there is a daring escape attempt and yes the blessing is probably the key part of the overall story, but that’s it. Â Looking at the review for the last issue, I can’t say that anything much is different.

Meredith Finch writes the characters in a believable manner. Â I have to say, that her work from this series has led me to pick up a couple of issues of her Wonder Woman book. Back to Mermaid and it seems that although the characters sound how they should, they are pretty much stereotypical characters. A King, a love, a witch, a mad scientist and the daughter who is the focus of all the attention. I am not saying that this is a bad thing, the book is linked to the original story, so elements do need to be recognisable.

Art is again handled by Miguel Mendoca and like Finch, continues the style and quality of the previous issue. It may be just me, but it does seem that Mendoca may have an issue with perspective and the panel’s with the witch’s “surprise” covered shows a box, yet a sphere is revealed. Overall though, these are minor problems as for the most part the “Grimm” style suits his clean lines. Again the the colours by Jorge Alberto Cortes steal the show. At times, the non descript backgrounds allow Cortes to demonstrate his skills and helps accentuate the frame of the characters. This is important as with a heavy background, the delicate lines of Mendoca could be lost.

So all good stuff? Not quite. Issue #3 and Erica is still captive, the sea witch’s plot is moving equally slowly. Sure it looks good but the the shelves are filled with good looking books. With the pace of the arc, this book runs the risk of floundering against the tide of disinterest.

Author Profile

Johnny "The Machine" Hughes

I am a long time comic book fan, being first introduced to Batman in the mid to late 70's. This led to a appreciation of classic artists like Neal Adams and Jim Aparo. Moving through the decades that followed, I have a working knowledge of a huge raft of characters with a fondness for old school characters like JSA and The Shadow

Currently reading a slew of Bat Books, enjoying a mini Marvel revival, and the host of The Definative Crusade and Outside the Panels whilst also appearing on No-Prize Podcast on the Undercover Capes Podcast Network