Posted in: Comics | Tagged: aquaman, Batman, dc comics, superman, Topo

What Were They Thinking? – Aquaman

Published Sun, 04 Aug 2013 19:00:48 -0500

Last updated Mon, 05 Aug 2013 10:33:28 -0500

So far I've been doing villains with the What Were They Thinking line, but today I'm going to turn my attention to one of my favorite characters, Aquaman. In a lot of ways I think this is one of the most unique characters in the DC Universe yet he has become the butt of jokes in all aspects of pop culture. So the question of today's column isn't about the creation of the character, but rather what they've done with him since.

Originally created in November of 1941 for the 73^rd issue of More Fun Comics, Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris took the mysteries of Atlantis and made a superhero from them. Aquaman wasn't the Lost King of Atlantis or the offspring of a Human and Atlantean, he was simply the son of a famous explorer who discovered the lost city and studied the science and trained his son to survive underwater. He also could speak to fish in their own language and were in hearing range. And I'm not sure why, but his base of operations was a sunken fishing boat instead of the city his father found.

Aquaman spent the 1940s and most of the 1950s fighting Nazi's and being a hero we could respect, and then with the Silver Age rolling in and Superman getting Krypto and Batman got Ace it seemed Aquaman needed his own pet. In October of 1956 now in Adventure Comics, Aquaman got himself a partner… Topo the Octopus. I guess we should be happy he didn't get a dog in a diving helmet.

During this time also got his expanded origin. No longer the son of an explorer, he was the child of a human lighthouse keeper Tom Curry and an outcast from Atlantis named Atlanna. (Would you name your child after the city she was born in?) Now his powers were from birth and they even wrote some adventures for him as Aquaboy where he teamed with Superboy. After Atlanna's death, Tom goes on and has another son named Orm (I went to school with a kid named Orm… no, wait, no one did.) who later went on to become the Ocean Master. (Sibling rivalry can be a bitch).

Two other changes were made during this time. His fish-talking abilities turned into telepathy and it was less about chit-chatting and more about issuing commands. Also, like other characters of that ear, Aquaman needed to have a weakness. Superman had Kryptonite, Green Lantern had Yellow and Batman had being a normal human. So suddenly Aquaman needed to be in contact with water at least once an hour. I think he would love this era of bottled water everywhere.

So we take a very straight forward character who learned his abilities through Atlantean science to a hybrid of two species with weaknesses and a pet octopus. And they continued to try and force a square peg into a round hole. Everything that worked for Batman and Superman were tried with Aquaman. He got his own rogues gallery with some great ones like his half-brother Ocean Master or the eco-angry Black Manta, but there were also the Fisherman, The Scavenger and King Shark. With Batman, most of his best villains are extreme version of his personality quirks, with Aquaman they just have to have something to do with water. He got male and female sidekicks in Aqualad (Garth) and Aquagirl (Tula) as well as his own irritating sprite to annoy him called Quisp.

Then they do the next horrible thing, they have him help start the Justice League of America. Why take a character who's superior to just about anyone in water and put him with a bunch of super powered heroes? Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman all bring unique traits when the work together. Most of what is special about Aquaman ends when he walks out of the water. This is where most of the jokes started.

As the Modern Era started, Aquaman got a mini-series that is most known for Aquaman's oft maligned orange and green costume being replaced with what could be best described as 'deep-sea camouflage'. This was not an improvement in anyway. (edit – this costume was designed by Neal Pozner. Thank you posters.) But there was a significant change to Ocean Master, who was now a sorcerer and quite a bit more powerful.

Over the next twenty-five years there were some good added to the character such as the royal blood, some interesting things like the long hair, beard and hook hand and some just head-scratchers like the water hand and the missing year where he became Conan and traveled with a talking shark and a outcast from a Lovecraft novel.

Geoff Johns, the man who can make any character relevant has taken up the challenge, but there has been so much damage done that it's spread out into the pop culture. Whether it's the Aquaman movie in Entourage, Raj's repeated claim of "Aquaman Sucks" on Big Bang Theory or the plethora of video's picking on the King of the Seas on Youtube… Aquaman has become such a joke that when IGN went though the characters history, they started by acknowledging the popular opinion of the character and then assure viewers he can kick butt. Even Johns mentions the jokes in his relauch of Aquaman as part of the New 52 and in the Justice League.

I started this column saying that Aquaman is one of my favorite characters. I love the history and the he brings something so unique to comics that other companies of copies him (you know who I'm talking about). But DC's decisions during the early days to try and make him in the same mold as Superman and Batman is what turned him into the joke that he has become. I would love to write the character, especially in a "Earth One" type book, focusing on what make the character special and avoiding the mistakes of the past. This isn't a superhero, this is a King and he deserves a little respect.