Auqaman is always ridiculed. I think a lot of this stems from guys like me growing up watching the Super Friends. And while all the characters were campy and over the top, Auqaman seems to have suffered the most, often being the blunt of jokes and SNL / Mad TV / the State skits and sketches. Many writers have tried to change that image of this character, including a great story about the loss of his son, his right hand, and his kingdom for a time. He was even reimagined to have long hair, loosing the orange scale shirt & a harpoon hand. Not to mention having a magic water hand which he could manipulate into stabbing weps ala Terminator.
So all that's going to be fixed with the New52 right? Well... maybe. The first arc in the Auqaman series pits a disconnected Auqaman against monsters surfacing and feeding on people from the deep. And there's some meta references in there in the form of locals poking fun at him, which i personally think is not only bold but needed. Once the audience can get over their initial "go talk to some fish" jokes, hopefully they'll give this Auqaman refresh a chance.
This story takes place from Aquaman's childhood and gives us his revamped backstory in which (spoilers) his dad bites it, tells him to tell his mom he loved her, and that, you know, she's in the sea, so... Good Luck! and croaks. So apparently a science dude is telling everyone that Arthur is from Altlanis and everyone's pestering him. He jumps into the water, resucues a boat, meets the rescuees and they tell him where someone claiming to be from Atlantis lives. He goes there and there's a long exposition that culminates in his mother dead, his brother killing her, and now ruling Atlantis. Arthur's like "Let's go, old man!" and they take off and go to Atlantis. Boom... Aquaman Begins! </spoiler>
So this is the thing: even though this felt pretty rushed and almost like a cookie-cutter superhero origin. I dug it. The panels with Arthur dealing with the media outside yelling at him about his (mostly unknown to him) Atlantian roots was a really relatable moment. It echoed the scene from Man of Steel where young Clark's in the closet (not as dirty as it sounds). But instead of having a parental figure to coax him off that ledge, Arthur shoves through the crowd & throws himself into the ocean.
From that moment it seems like a movie. Every panel gives a credit to the writer, artist, colorist, etc... and it honestly draws you into the fact that you're on this journey with him too! Geoff Johns really delivers here, as he always does, with dialog only where it's needed and letting the artwork tell a beautiful story. While the exposition dialog from the old guy was a little lengthy, I can totally forgive it for drawing me in, the way it did with it's cinematic-like visual panels.
Oh and he punches a shark & tells him to eff off. Gotta love that. Who wouldn't want to punch a shark in the teeth?
It's really too bad that alot of people are going to pass this title up. Having read the following 1st Auqaman arc of the New52, it really looks like they're giving the right treatment to a character that alot of people have already written off as a joke. Remember kiddos: before we got Nolan's awesome Batman Begins, we had to sit through the travesty that was Joel Schumacher's horrid Batman & Robin.
God I hate Clooney's Batman.
No comments:
Post a Comment