If your life leads you with questions/
Seek advice from under the sea/
Dear Aquaman, Dear Aquaman/
Please give your advice to me, Aquaman!

Featuring Mera!

It’s funny how that in five issues, Mera has been a focal point of this new run of Aquaman but I know very little about her. (Get that article cracking Jeff!) I mean apart from being Arthur’s wife, I know virtually nothing about her. Geoff Johns has tried to start creating a big backstory for her by going as far as saying she was originally meant to be Arthur’s assassin. Unfortunately with Flashpoint, that idea didn’t flourish too much. Now with the sixth issue out Johns is going all out on Mera by giving the entire issue to her.

Don’t be confused by the list of artists on the cover. Ivan Reis and Joe Pardo are the artists, but you should flip them to get the actual credits in this. Ivan Reis does the breakdowns while Joe Pardo does the finishes. It’s….a mixed bag to be quite honest. It looks go on paper (ha!) but if you look closely there are some problems to be had. Mainly when it comes to faces because Mera and others look inconsistent from panel to panel. Mera, at times, looks like the villain from RASL for god sakes and it really started to bug me. Plus the eyes that the characters have are pretty funky; their circles but they have a Jeff Lemire sketchiness to it that is very distraction. The action sequences though are pretty great, especially when Mera is using water, and again it all looks similar as if Reis did the pencils. I think Rod Reis does a good job too making it look consistent with the colors. But again most of the inconsistency comes from how Pardo, as great of an inker he’s been, is not up to par to match with Ivan.

Thankfully Johns saves the issue by writing a good semi-backstory and reasoning on why Mera is such a bad ass. The ending sequence on how she stops the stand off was fun and it shows a great dynamic to Mera’s powers. Once again I think this run is basically just telling us why Aquaman and Mera are great characters and we shouldn’t just go for the obvious when it comes to their powers. Two nitpicks though: A) As a man who once worked at a supermarket, I very much doubt that womanizer would still have a job. B) Mera getting to the stand off was a bit of a clunky transition. I like how Johns is trying to make the regular citizens unsure of how to deal with these two; but why would the cops drive to the stand off with Mera in tow? Clearly she would have been driven away by someone else.

There’s definitely some issues with this issue with the art looking a bit funky at times and Johns clunky transition towards the end is noticeably bad. But on the whole it’s a nice issue to give creditably to Mera and just how powerful she is. Also, the art isn’t that bad because Pardo does some nice pages here and he does try to match Ivan Reis’s style. But it’s clear that he is no Ivan Reis and hopefully we get him back doing the pencils full time next month.