Seasickness: Aquaman #14 Review

Editor’s Note: One last review of the comics of November 28, 2012 before the comic store opens with the new stuff today…

I have never understood the general enthusiasm over the New 52 reboot of Aquaman, even though my co-editor Amanda liked it enough at the start to mutter things like, “Hero’s Journey” and “Joseph Campbell” and a bunch of other stuff that made me wish I’d learned more in college than the fluid dynamics surrounding beer bongs. For me, the sudden DC focus on Aquaman, who has never been able to support his own book for very long (his longest running self-titled book lasted 75 issues – about six years) stunk of a Trading Places-style Gentlemen’s Wager between Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio: “I will wager you, sir, one American dollar that I can transform this water-sucking, fishfucking, orange-pantsed fashion victim into a proper superhero!”

So I read the first few issues and then kind of tuned out – and I’ve just realized that I’ve said that about no less than three New 52 books in the past couple of weeks, which might be a topic for another time – but with Throne of Atlantis, the next big Justice League arc, on its way, I decided to check out Aquaman #14 to bone up and get a sense of what’s going on with the book.

The short answer? I have no fucking idea.

The issue opens on some kind of a pirate ship in 1826, with dudes firing harpoons at an Aquaman looking dude and hauling him on deck. They gaff Aquadude dude, express their displeasure that Aquadude’s wife failed to acquiesce to gang rape at the hands of the pirates as befits a lady, and then Atlanteans surround the ship. Then we cut to actual Aquaman telling fish that he requests a meeting with his brother Ocean Master. Then we cut to Black Manta, in Federal custody, telling Amanda Waller that he would prefer not to join Suicide Squad by way of blowing shit up. Then Aquaman and Ocean Master meet and reminisce about the good old days when Atlanteans would whack out rapey pirates, Ocean Master denies he’s planning to attack the surface world, and some unseen dude with the old Atlantean king’s scepter releases The Trench – the Cthuhluian monsters from the first arc of Aquaman – from, well, the trench. Fin.

So… what the hell was that? Again, I freely admit that I haven’t been closely following Aquaman since the first arc last fall, but I’ve checked in now and again. I know from an issue not too long ago that someone was going after artifacts from Atlantis’s history for some reason, so I get that the sceptre used to release The Trench was one of those things… but otherwise, I’m frankly a bit lost. What do these 1820s pirates have to do with anything? Yeah, Ocean Master uses the wreck at the bottom of the ocean to try to convince Aquaman that he’s not planning to attack the surface, but we spent three out of 20 pages up front with these guys… why? To show that pirates were rapey douchebags?

Look, I’m not a dope. I get that Johns is trying to demonstrate that the Atlanteans could choose to cause real problems for the surface world should they choose to attack, but it’s a lot of real estate to show that the people that they have attacked had it coming… and frankly, I can think of about five different ways to show the power of Atlantis than the sinking of a 190-year-old boat that a ten-year-old could sink with a Jack Daniels bottle, a rag and 50 cents worth of kerosene.

There is stuff here that just doesn’t make any sense to this causal, somewhat behind reader. We see Vulko in Norway, seeing an Atlantean wash up on shore for some reason, which causes Vulko to return to the ocean for some other reason… and I don’t know any of those reasons. There’s another ten percent of the page count down the drain. The most effective part of the book is the sequence with Black Manta in Belle Reve prison; it shows how dangerous Manta is in a Hannibal Lecter / Silence of The Lambs kind of sequence, and it demonstrates the depth of hatred and obsession Manta has for Aquaman… but it ends with Manta still in custody and disconnected from the remainder of the story. It is a powerful sequence, but its one stuck in the middle of a bunch of other, completely disconnected sequences. It tells me that Manta is a badass and it implies that he will be part of Throne of Atlantis, but it just sort of sits there, all on its own.

The art by Pete Woods and Pere Perez (They’re credited as co-pencilers) is solid, if not particularly remarkable. The figures are realistic and faces expressive, if a bit angular, with everything having a standard realistic and not particularly stylized look. The panel layouts are easy to follow, and the storytelling is clear – not the most important thing in the world in a book where the main “conflict” is a calm and civilized discussion between two brothers, but still good. Further, these guys need to depict things from an 1820s ship to weird fish to the surface world, and they cover them all with a goodly amount of pleasing detail… although their fish look particularly big-eyed and overly expressive for fish; their “faces” look like someone just told Sailor Moon that she’s adopted. But overall,the book has a good, workmanlike, realistic look to it.

I recognize that, as an occasional reader of Aquaman who has admittedly fallen behind on the book, Johns doesn’t owe me any particular consideration to explain to me everything that has happened in the title up until now. But the fact of the matter is that this book is hyping itself as the “Throne of Atlantis Prelude” on its cover. Which means that it is reasonable to expect that there will likely be readers like me, who do follow Justice League but not Aquaman, who might check in to get a taste of what’s coming… and those people will be baffled. This is an issue of a bunch of people talking about relatively inscrutable thing, punctuated at its start with a pirate attack, and it really doesn’t tell me what’s going on or what I need to be concerned about for the upcoming event.

All I can really glean from this book is that we’ve got two brothers jockeying for power on each other’s unfamiliar turf. Which I guess means that we really are one good Jamie Lee Curtis boob shot away from Trading Places.