Friday Night Fights: I've Kissed Mermaids

As I was putting together yesterday's musical tribute to fallen minor comic characters, two thoughts occurred to me:

1. I'd have bought a monthly Aquagirl comic drawn by George Perez without hesitation.

2. For a character that was essentially a sidekick of a sidekick (and a halfhearted attempt to expand one of DC's less successful superhero franchises) who only appeared (mostly in minor roles) in a couple dozen stories during the eighteen years between her introduction and her death, Aquagirl (a.k.a. Tula) had the best-developed personality of all the Aquaman Family of characters. Granted, the most introverted sea slug would have seemed positively gregarious in comparison to Aquaman's befuddled surliness and Aqualad's agressive blandness, but even outside that shallow grading curve, Tula was pretty remarkable.

She was a "gawky pig-tailed kid" who matured into a strong-willed young woman who was unafraid to cut loose and enjoy herself...


...regardless of what the more staid men in her life thought about such behavior.


It wasn't just a case of being a flighty party girl, either, but was rooted in a sense of self-confidence...

...expressed (not frequently enough, sadly) by a willingness to dive in fist-first...

...and do whatever it took to get the job done.


Not that those qualities helped Tula much when she was caught in a spray of Chemo's toxic puke, but that's comics for you. One minute you're doing the sea-frug in Dr. Dorsal's Deep Sea Discoteque or throttling evil henchmen, and the next you're sucking up a lungful of caustic liquids sprayed into the Upper New York Bay of a parallel earth.

For the musical portion of our program, I need a song that incorporates oceanic imagery as well as the theme of tragic death. Something melancholy, yet oddly playful...

I've got it:

Pixies - Wave of Mutilation (from Doolittle, 1989) - There are only two songs by the Pixies I can bring myself to listen to. This is one. Feel free to try and guess what the other one is.

(Senseless? I think not.)