Wednesday Webcomics: “Ice Massacre”

Ice Massacre tells the story of Meela, who has to decide whether she will save her people or the mermaid she has fallen in love with.

Ice Massacre, written by Tiana Warner and illustrated by April Pierce, is about Meela, whose people have been at war with mermaids for eons, being tasked to join her fellow comrades in the “Massacre” even though she was in love with a mermaid when she was a child. As she goes on this voyage with the other women of Eriana Kwai, it remains a question whether she can overcome feelings she had for a mermaid she is trained to kill. It is not only a enemies-to-lovers story, but also about warrior women and badass mermaids as the comic’s Patreon states.

The webcomic begins with the death of Meela’s brother at the hand of mermaids and Meela training to become a warrior. Another woman, Dani, is her rival. Meela saves another person training alongside her who is trapped in the rope and confides to her friend Annith about Dani. The instructor gives out badges to those who have completed the course. Meela laments that the island will need more than a sea mermaid massacre to make the people of Eriana Kwai free again. Tanuu presents her some flowers but she isn’t as sure about him, and she goes back home, vowing to kill every single mermaid. We see back eight years earlier when Meela had a childhood friend, a mermaid named Lysithea. The story goes on from there, but I don’t want to say any more, as that provides enough of the story to pique your interest.

Ice Massacre has compelling characters and storylines. This includes Meela who wants to avenge the death of her brother, the mermaid Lysithea who once fell in love with Meela and has trained to battle against the humans, and Dani, a human who is a rival with Meela and wants to prove herself. There’s also Tanuu, Meela’s boyfriend, and Meela’s best friend, Annith, who has a boyfriend named Rik. The focus on mermaids is a common one, but tying into into a girls’ love story makes it all the more interesting, as many mermaid stories are more along the lines of mermaid preying on women, not mermaids falling in love with women. The fact that the majority of the women are brown-skinned is significant and notable, as other mermaid stories only focus on White people.

Ice Massacre, which has more than 121 episodes, is written by Warner and illustrated by Pierce, while it has Rachel “Tuna” Petrovicz and Mimi LeBlanc as colorists and Todd Baker as the Indigenous art director. Ice Massacre is the webcomic adaption of Warner’s fiction trilogy entitled Mermaids of Eriana, comprised of the books Ice Massacre (2014), Ice Crypt (2016), and Ice Kingdom (2017), which won two Sequential Magazine Awards in 2020.

Warner’s other novels, published in 2019, specifically Ice Storm and Aries 181, also center on LGBTQ themes and protagonists, like those in the Mermaids of Eriana series. Warner also has a novel The Helheim Princess, a valkyrie romance, which will be published next year, as will a sapphic paranormal romance collection entitled Eternally Hers, for which she is a contributing author. On the other hand, Pierce is the artist and lead writer of Prince and Swan, a fantasy/fairy-tale/magic webcomic which is currently on hiatus.

It is one of the many of the recent stories which have focused on or featured mermaids. This includes Yongchan’s enjoyable webcomic, Swimming Lessons For A Mermaid, and Sapphire’s exciting webcomic, The Pirate and the Princess. Additionally, Mermista, a bisexual water princess who can transform into a mermaid, appears in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and while the protagonists of the young adult animated series, High Guardian Spice, seem to turn into mermaids in a scene in the show’s 11th episode!

Ice Massacre is available to read on WebToon, Tapas, or the webcomic’s official website. You can interact with the webcomic on its official Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, while physical copies of the webcomic can be purchased on Amazon.

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You can find April Pierce on her Instagram and Twitter, and Tiana Warner on her Instagram and Twitter. The webcomic can be supported on Patreon.

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For more great webcomic recommendations, check out our Wednesday Webcomics archives!

Author: Burkely Hermann

Burkely is an indexer of declassified documents by day and a fan fic writer by night. He recently earned a MLIS with a concentration in Digital Curation from the University of Maryland. He currently voraciously watches animated series and reads too many webcomics to count on Webtoon. He loves swimming, hiking, and searching his family roots in his spare time.

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