I just read Water Baby, by Ross Campbell and I have to tell you, I really really did not like this book. I've been a fan of the Minx line from DC Comics from the beginning because I love comics and anything that introduces more girls to that medium is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. I haven't enjoyed every one of the titles but I have liked most of them and certainly not hated any of them but with Water Baby I am having such a visceral reaction of disappointment that I was tempted to throw the book across the room.

Yeah, for me , it's one of those.

The main story is simple: Brody is a surfer girl who has her leg (from the knee down) bitten off by a shark. That's a pretty intense idea and not a common storyline (or a common accident) but I had no problems with it. From the very first pages however (actually the first panel that shows Brody sitting on the toilet) I was lost by this one. First, from the perspective a former surfer and body surfer I have to assume that Campbell knows nothing - nothing - about surfing. He is clearly trying to present teenage Brody as a very sexual creature and has her surfing in a tiny pair of bikini bottoms and what looks to be a torn t-shirt. You can't surf in a torn t-shirt. It doesn't stay in place and you will spend all of your time pulling it down. (Not to mention we all know what happens to a wet t-shirt.) Except Brody's outfit is clearly glued on because it never moves - it defies all laws of gravity and the power of the ocean. She is on a surfboard with her legs partly spread and the bottoms stay in place! Now I don't need to see them creeping up but the point it is, SHE WOULD NOT BE DRESSED THAT WAY AND REALLY SURF!

Board shorts, an actual bathing suit top, these are requirements. Campbell could have made her look plenty sexy and still be dressed in a manner that makes sense if you're surfing. He didn't have to go to an extreme that became laughable if you know anything about the sport. Then I noticed that he has Brody and her friend Louisa surfing without leashes which attach the board to your ankle so every time it gets away from you, the surfer doesn't have to chase it all the way back to the beach. That made no sense either. So already I'm a bit frustrated but then, as the story follows Brody supposedly adjusting to her new life, I just got mad.

This girl is obnoxious, completely and utterly obnoxious. She doesn't wear deodorant or take showers or use soap in the bath tub - and brags about all of this. She picks her nose and apparently eats it. She cleans out her belly button lint and ponders it in front of her friends. She makes messes no one cleans up, tortures her poor caring mother, is a brat to her long suffering friend Louisa (why she is friends with Brody I'll never know) and twits back and forth between straight and gay in a way that only a teenage boy would fine appealing (or honest). I could find no reason to care at all about the book's main character, and honestly, other than her mother, I pretty much couldn't stand anyone else either.

Let me reiterate - there is not a single likable or sympathetic character in this book.

The story is pretty much a road trip plot that follows Brody and Louisa who are living at her mother's and disturbed by the arrival of Jake, Brody's ex who crashes on their couch and makes obnoxious comments (and has obnoxious thoughts) and sort of still wants Brody but maybe doesn't. The girls get sick of him and decide to drive him home to NY. He meets a chick at a rest area and gets it on with her in the bathroom and then she joins them! Oh yea! And then they buy pie at a roadside stand and the book ends.

Really. Rest stop girl is skanky and mean, Jake gets dumped off at his mom's and the two girls go walking off in the rain to....I don't know, a bus stop or something where I guess Brody's mother will save them. Basically, thirty minutes of my life gone for no good reason. And less you think I'm being mean, I'm not the only one who felt this way. From Comic Mix:

The girls (who have a relationship that meanders toward lesbianism, but never conclusively) decide to drive Jake back home to get rid of him, and things kinda sorta get even crazier when they pick up Chrissie, a girl who's either cool or a slut or just crazy. Maybe.

Brody, in particular, should be a fascinating lead, as she's obsessed with surfing and has that ripped from her life, but the story shows no change in her at all. What would seem to be a life-changing moment is instead just a speed bump in her vague existence.

And then at Shuffleboil, John said:

That is a big part of the problem. Having a character whose leg is eaten by a shark seems like a pretty easy way to elicit sympathy regardless of the character’s personality, but Campbell really tests my patience here. Brody is not likable. In the slightest. This is fine — characters don’t have to be likable, but you do have to care what happens to them. Care story-wise. Brody is such a mean-spirited and whiny character that it’s almost like having an annoying roommate you thankfully get to shut off in a little book to get a break from her. She’s a jerk to her mother and she’s a jerk to her friend, Louisa, who has a crush on her, though I don’t really understand why, since Brody spends most of the book griping at her and bossing her around and then demanding to be treated like a little baby. I can’t feel a lot of sympathy for Louisa, though — the most personality she exhibits is as an ineffectual doormat.

I don't know why Ross Campbell got so lost in this book or why he thought there was enough story here or decent enough characters here to craft a novel. All I know is that it is boring and annoying and inaccurate. The truly bad thing is that I'm so disappointed by this book I have no interest to read anything else by Campbell either. I feel like he tried to make up lack of research and story by drawing scantily clad girls. It didn't work for me and I doubt it will work for most Minx readers.