As ships full of immigrants gaze up at the Statue of Liberty, few notice the smaller woman also greeting them from the waves. Ariel spends all her free time swimming around Ellis Island and Coney Island, watching the humans from all corners of the globe converge to start a new life of endless possibilities. She longs to join them.
What tips the scale for her is rescuing a handsome Danish immigrant named Eric Andersen, after the mob drops him off to sleep with the fishes. Ariel cuts a deal with the Sea Witch, swapping her pipes for a perfect pair of gams.
Ariel stumbles onto the beach initially in nothing but her clam bra. Scuttle scuttles to put together a swimsuit out of a torn sailboat sail, getting Ariel covered just in time for Officer Grimsby to arrive with his tape measure. In this new age of exposed legs and liberated ladies, even the priest conducting a nearby beach marriage struggles to maintain his holy composure.
Ariel finds Eric, who takes a liking to her even without her voice. His maid helps her pick out the dresses and stockings that young flappers are now using to show off their scandalous getaway-sticks, and teaches her how to apply "Knee Rogue"--blush on the kneecaps, for extra-scandalous flirtations. Eric takes her to Coney Island for a day of adventure, where she learns how to horrify conservative pricks like Grimsby with controversial, leg-displaying dances like the Charleston and the Shimmy. Meanwhile, Sebastian runs from Eric's family chef, who moonlights as a hit-man for the French Mafia.
The Sea Witch decides things are going too well for Ariel, so she slips Eric a mickey strong enough to make him think that a giant squid-woman is a petite redhead. The sea creatures stall the wedding long enough for the mickey to wear off, and an epic beach shootout follows. Ursula cackles madly under her fedora, as she fires sharp fish bones from the mouths of Flotsam and Jetsam like a pair of slippery, living Tommy guns. Before the night's end, Ursula grows the size of the Statue of Liberty, but ends up shanked on Lady Liberty's pionty crown. Defeated, the tentacled mob boss falls back into the Atlantic for a permanent sleep with the fishes.
After Ariel's voice is restored with some over-the-counter heroin cough syrup, she and Eric are married on the Coney Island. Interracial marriages are scandalous in the 1920s, and inter-species marriages even more so. Just when it seems that the prudes can't be more horrified, King Triton bestows on the newlyweds a five-foot art-deco painting of Atlantica, and all its shimmering gold towers, for Ariel to remember her home by. It goes on display in a speakeasy called the Dinglehopper, where Ariel smuggles snarfblats full of giggle-water to complete the reception ceremony.
AN: This was a soul-destroying nightmare to draw, but it had to be done. The old version is nice, but Ariel deserves something epic. Her flapper look was inspired by silent film star Clara Bow, and the character Billie Kent from "Boardwalk Empire."
