Adam Post

Adam Post's The Mermaids is a tale of all female mermaids at the bottom of the sea, centering around Jhana a school teacher in the land of Loria and former tutor of the Lorian Princess Melina. I liked the story and the art is done well but I have to rate it slightly below average due to some story issues, a couple typos, and a couple art issues. I plan to back volume 2 when it comes around.

Jhana left the tutoring job after her lover Edris, the Princess of Sandar, became engaged to Melina. The story begins with a teaching scene to drop exposition, the origin of life story is quality worldbuilding and the following scene sets up the wedding between Edris and Melina. There is a character named Vava mentioned in the school scene who will show up in a later but could had been handled a lot better, we really don't know who she is or why she matters, she just a vehicle to explain how bad Loria's become under Melina's mother, Queen Leith. Another scene with Vava could fix this. Eventually Jhana joins some rebels trying to overthrow Leith and restore Loria. The story also includes some noble vs noble machinations as well. Overall the story works well, but in this volume the story doesn't seem to resolve and I expect graphic novels to have a beginning, middle, and end, even when a larger story is going on. During reading I was confused on if Jhana blames Edris for marring Melina or if she considers her a captive. The story could have provided some better combat moments to show off how the creature power stuff works (one character turns into a shark, another has puffer fish abilities) and show the use of swords and other traditional weapons as they are barely used in combat. I did find about 4-5 typos. Two of the typos were comma typos that I myself make but expect to be removed from a published work. The other typos were spelling and other grammar that shouldn't have made it to print.

The art is quality and I think fits the material well. The Shark Queen looked really cool. One issue was the carriages: there was something off about them. When one carriage almost runs a character over the action lines are confusing, running from a center point almost following the mermaid character when the lines should have emphasized the carriage's movement, as it'd be faster. Another scene it's drawn being pulled by eels, with a background character covering them, but then the next panels say it should be pulled by a seahorse. Every time a carriage is shown, it is shown at an odd angle and almost never fully in frame. This sets off an alarm in my brain that maybe the artist wasn't confident in drawing carraiges or something like that. As I mentioned above combat could have been improved. What's shown is great with the Shark Queen biting into mermaids, but with swords and blades being shown early on and only one panel with swords being any use, I wanted more. I don't think another fight scene would be needed but the one shown should have more combat frames. There's also the Lorian palace which is shown twice, I think, but doesn't feel like the same place. There were 2 lettering/speech bubble issues, the first was a far away shot where the bubble leads to side character that isn't speaking, this one is easy to work with and realize who's supposed to be taking. The 2nd one really pulled me out because it's two characters whose personalities we know and one tells the other to hush and it's painfully obvious the text was switched. Even with these criticisms I'd still say the art was above average.

There's a section in the back of the book with character/place/important stuff bios which was cool but I did find typos in it as well. I wish it was alphabetized or grouped with headings somehow. The paper weight is great and printing is good.

All that being said I did enjoy The Mermaids and want to know what happens next. I will be backing volume 2 if it's ever launched.… (mer)