Broken Frontier

Adult-only fun takes the "Little" out of "The Little Mermaid".

Tarot has been chained under the island of the warrior mermaid, with the sea ravaging her with every wave. Sharks, eels, and crabs all want their piece of the swordmaiden. Can she convince her mermaid captor that she's on the side of good before evil witches come to steal her treasure? Will she learn the name of the mermaid? How bad is her back killing her?

Continuing the story from the last issue, Tarot has arrived at a mermaid island, but has been misread as an enemy of the mermaids. She's there to atone for the messes made in recent oil spills, and only arrives as a friend, but like many superhero team-ups, a few punches have to be thrown before they can ally themselves against the true threat. Like many Tarot issues, a fair amount of nudity, mammaries, and absurd concepts have to be mixed into the battle.

There's a certain fun absurdity to Witch of the Black Rose. This is a book that, famously, featured the line "Samantha Brown, you have to get out of here! Your vagina is haunted!". Nearly every breast on the page is the size of a human head, Balent manages to find a way for the mermaid of the storyline to be anatomically correct, solving the long-asked question of "how was Ariel supposed to… you know…" which someone had to ask in third grade (me), and an eel bites off someone's nose, apparently including the entire bone structure inherent. The phrase "self induced sex magick" is said with a straight face, and the mermaid fights with a narwhal-fashioned cutlass or fencing foil. It's hard to take this book without a silly grin on your face, and it shouldn't be.

There's also a true love in this book. It's no secret that Jim Balent and Holly Golightly are married, and their relationship seeps into the pages. Like Palmiotti and Conner (with Gray as writing partner), their work is nearly inseparable, and works best with each other. The fact that they have fun is seen throughout the book, thanking friends for modeling mermaids, showing Halloween and comic convention images on their credit page, dedicating a page to a marriage of friends, alongside photo collages of a trip to Germany and the costume work done for the book, let alone a page for Holly's own online comic. It's a true work of love that gets on comic book store shelves (although it may be covered up), and it's something the industry needs more of.

Tarot offers no high-brow entertainment, no missives towards society (at least in this issue), and no realistic proportions. Much like the cinematic work of Andy Sidaris, it thrives in both the buxom and the big-ideas. There's something crazy here that's not for everyone, but if you give it a shot, it can be a certain amount of fun that many comics lack.