Erica: Behind the Science

Erica: Behind the Science I wanted to come back to Erica because I had talked about The Little Mermaid as a story, but there is a lot going on with her specifically that I hadn't really broken down. And this version is a lot darker than the name probably makes you expect. She's being held in a lab where they keep forcing her through tests to find out what her body can do. They send mechanical creatures after her, push her until she changes, then look at the results like she's a piece of equipment. There's a point where the scientist wants the water's viscosity doubled because the equipment isn't holding up against the pressure waves she's producing. Meanwhile, she's exhausted and they're already planning the next test. That gets into the interesting part of her powers. Erica has sonar, which she uses while finding her way through the facility, and she also produces a scream powerful enough to destroy things. Those aren't automatically the same ability just because both involve sound. Sonar is about getting information from returning sound. Destroying machinery or a person requires transferring a completely different amount of energy. The comic gives her both, but it doesn't give us numbers that would let us pretend we know exactly how powerful either one is. Then there's her body. She can have human legs, a mermaid's tail, or that much more frightening siren appearance with the teeth and the altered face. That's not just changing her skin color. You're looking at major changes to her anatomy, and ordinary biology doesn't explain how she can switch between them like that. The drugs suppress what she can do, and getting back into the ocean helps her recover, but that isn't a real-world formula for turning someone into a siren. What I liked is that she still has to think her way out. She steals keys, gets a badge, takes opportunities and decides who she can trust. Her powers matter, but she doesn't spend the entire story waiting for someone stronger to rescue her. By the time she finally has a chance to meet her father, the story takes that away from her too. Her final attack on the scientist comes after all of that, not out of nowhere.