2 out of 5

I sense that Mike Baron is the type of guy who likes to keep busy, and so you’ll see his name on all sorts of things over the years, including what would appear to be strictly work-for-hire joints like Aquatic Bourne.

The difference between just taking a paycheck versus wanting to stay busy, though, is generally pretty clear in the output, which, in the former case, often reads like a shell – a template, with words stuck in; just getting by – whereas the latter, while maybe not good, at least has some blip of life to it.

That latter applies here (not to say Baron hasn’t been guilty of the former at points…): a one shot which sets up the premise – maybe tied into a book, according to the updated-likely-once-and-ne’er-again publisher’s website – of the secretly Atlantean Audrey working undercover in human territory at SeaWorld.  But is she a spy for the humans?  Or loyal to her people?  …And though the drama is rather cheesy, it’s valid cheese, and works well enough with David Hahn’s Saturday morning cartoon art (though the digital coloring is pretty blah).  The tail end of this workable read is stuffed with subplot setup for whatever was intended to come after, leading to a silly sequence of page after page And Then What? shenanigans.

No, not required reading, but, y’know, evidence of barons in exhaustive work ethic.