Aquaman: A history of successes, failures, deaths and reboots

 What's the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear about Aquaman?

If you're a non-comic reader it will probably be: "Oh, the guy who talks to fish", "The Superfriend who needs to be in the water" or even "The lamest superhero ever".

And you know what? Based on the references that you see in TV, movies and the internet, who could blame you?

Is not easy being Aquaman, he's a pretty hard character to get right, not even mentioning making him cool, that doesn't mean that people haven't tried though since he has been treated by several great creators including: David Michelinie, Steve Skeats, Jim Aparo, Neal Pozner, Craig Hamilton, Curt Swan, Keith Giffen, Peter David, Esteban Maroto, Rick Veitch, Will Pfeiffer, Kurt Busiek, among others so as you can see there's no shortage of talent on his history nor people uninterested in his potential.

I plan to talk about the current volume soon but first I guess we can dwell a bit into the past. Aquaman was created by Paul Norris and Mort Weisinger in 1941 on the birth of the Golden Age. In this early incarnation he was born as Arthur Curry whose father was an undersea explorer who discovered the lost city of Atlantis and a way to make his son breathe underwater and be able to communicate with sea life. This was surprisingly a much more ridiculous origin than the ones we will see later.

Hard to believe now but in fact he was one of the few superheroes popular enough to survive until the Silver Age and that's the era when most of the classic mythos and supporting cast were introduced including his wife Mera, his sidekick Aqualad, Aqualad's girlfriend named Tula, his advisor Vulko and his pet sidekick called Topo (Every superhero had one then). This was the period where most of his classic rogue's gallery was created too which consisted in characters like Ocean Master, Black Manta, The Fisherman and The Scavenger being the most notable but he also deal with aliens and normal criminals by throwing polar bears towards them, you know, typical Silver Age stuff.

The big change however, came in the 1970's with the classic story "Death of a Prince" where
Aquaman's infant son, Arthur Curry Jr., is murdered by Black Manta. It's necessary to add that before this event, death of characters was something still pretty rare and especially no one could have expected that a child would die in a superhero comic, this is considered by many as one of the defining points that ended the Silver Age and marked the beginning of the Bronze Age where stories would become more serious and relevant to the real world.

I also have to mention that this was the story that pretty much cemented Black Manta as Aquaman's most deadly and cruel enemy, before "Death of a Prince" that title was practically hold by Ocean Master, Arthur's half brother who was introduced first, but the death of Arthur Curry Jr. created a whole cycle of hate between Aquaman and Black Manta that has managed to trascend the times.

However, the event Crisis on Infinite Earths altered Aquaman's history as much as every other DC hero by retelling his origin and creating a new, mystical oriented direction in the 4 issues miniseries called simply "Aquaman" released in 1986 written by Neal Pozner and drawn by Craig Hamilton. This story explored deeply the relationship between Arthur and his half-brother Orm (Ocean Master) and made it much more complex than ever before, it also gave Aquaman a new blue costume as well as updating some of his mythos.


This title was fantastically written and beautifully drawn and I would say that it was a pitch-perfect reboot for the character, unfortunately it was never followed by any ongoing series and the concept and reimagination were lost. Still, I must say that this created an interesting idea that may probably play an important role in the future: The tribe of Tuatha De Dannan from Thierna Na Oge.

The powers at DC decided to retell once again Aquaman's beginnings so they hired none other than Keith Giffen and legendary Superman artist Curt Swan to handle the new reboot starting with "The Legend of Aquaman" special. This time the origin would be much more radically changed as Aquaman was born in Atlantis (Pretty different from his Silver Origin where he was half-Atlantean, half-human) and had to deal with the discovery of his legacy and how he was abandoned by his mother. One of the most interesting aspects that this special introduced was that Aquaman's classic costume was in fact a prison uniform.

This was followed by a 5 issues miniseries with the same creative team of Giffen and Swan and it was basically the follow-up to Death of a Prince where Arthur tries to save Mera from her madness after the death of their son. This miniseries was pretty solid and would became the groundwork where a lot of writers would start working on.

After it would came one of the most influential writers that ever worked in the character. In 1990, Peter David arrived with a series named "The Atlantis Chronicles" drawn by Esteban Marolo which would expand the mythology of Atlantis and its history exploring the time from its sunking until the birth of Aquaman.

I'm not kidding when I say that this is one of the best Aquaman stories from the last 20 years despite of not starring Aquaman himself. Excellently written and wonderfully drawn, it developes an engaging tale of tragedy, betrayal and revenge creating an unique and complex roster of characters including the two different races of Poseidonis (Humanlike) and Tritonis (Mermen) while also giving Aquaman the birth name of Orin and explaining that he's the son of Atlanna, queen of Atlantis and Atlan, a wizard from the same civilization. I highly recommend you to read it if you're interested in the mythology of the character or even if you just like fantasy stories.

This reinvention was followed by a 13 issue series written by Shaun McLaughlin in 1991. This series was frankly pretty mediocre since it contained some of the most basic superhero stories ever and didn't explore more of Aquaman's personality nor his universe. In fact, the only notable aspects that it introduced were giving Black Manta a tragic backstory to explain his hate for Orin (Which actually contradicts his previous portrayals and it's not really a fitting origin for him, I will explain why later), reintroducing Thanatos, Orin's doppelganger who was created on the 70's (Who strangely reappeared using Aquaman's blue costume from Pozner's series) and reforming The Scavenger. Again, none of these ideas were particularly great nor executed adequately.


DC wisely decided to cancel that volume to once again update the protagonist's history on the 4 issue miniseries "Aquaman: Time and Tide" written this time by Peter David in 1993. This story was directly connected to David's Atlantis Chronicles and explores Orin discovering the history of Atlantis and his connection with Ocean Master while also revealing Aquaman's first steps as a superhero.

This series was immediately followed by a proper ongoing on the capable hands of Peter David in 1994. I suppose that if you know anything about Aquaman then you know that this series introduced his infamous beard and grappling hook, it was a desperate move from DC to follow 90's trends and get people's attention but it ultimately paid off since the title launched with pretty healthy sales and maintained them for a good while.

This volume tried to portray Aquaman as a more angry and violent hero (Again, 90's trends) but fortunately David's story was pretty competent focusing on Orin's quest to find more about his origins and trying to reunite the five lost cities of Atlantis that included: Poseidonis, Tritonis, Thierna Na Oge, Hy-Brasil and Basilia. David also tried to integrate several of DC's ocean focused characters like Dolphin (Who became Aquaman's love interest for most of the volume), Tsunami, the Sea Devils and Power Girl (Who at the time was a descendant of Atlantis, God knows why) while also making progress on certain characters like Aqualad who became more powerful and adopted the identity of Tempest.

There were several other sub-plots that David tried to include into his vision including a quite interesting one where Aquaman would become the avatar of The Clear, a supernatural connection similar to The Red in Animal Man and The Green in Swamp Thing that allowed Orin to communicate with sea life. Sadly, this premise has never been followed by any author yet.

Now, I'm going to be honest here, despite that I liked David's run on the franchise I don't think it has aged well at all. You have to understand that David is a really smart writer but also a funny one and he tries to inject humour in every project he works on and believe me, I love humour but sometimes his jokes tend to go to extremes where they become silly, not to mention that he keeps using catchphrases from that era that are pretty dated today ("vast tracts of land" comes to mind). In The Atlantis Chronicles he managed to include jokes but did it in a much more subtle and natural way, here he went just overboard and sometimes makes me wondering why some people were complaining about Johns using fish jokes at the beginning of the current volume when David did it even worse here, they were everywhere.

Another complaint that I have is how most of his stories never managed to have a satisfactory conclusion, once that Aquaman interacts with the five lost cities they're pretty much forgotten and David ended his run with a whimper instead of a bang. Besides, the antagonists were kinda underwhelming, not as much as the ones written by someone like Mark Waid (Who I will be talking about soon probably) but still were quite one-dimensional. Plus, Orin's 90's attitude was always a problem, it seemed like he was compensating for something everytime he overreacted.

I have to be thankful about doing this kind of articles, if it wasn't for this I wouldn't have discovered what came after David's run and while I kinda regret reading Erik Larsen's work in the character since it had none of the strengths of David's but all of its flaws and made them even worse (Namely worse conclusions, worse villains, worse humour, etc) not to mention that it contained some of the most awful samples of 90's art I have seen... where I was going with this? Oh yeah, I'm pretty thankful about finding Dan Jurgens' run.

Jurgens has never been one of my favorite authors. He's a fantastic artist but I always considered him an "okay" writer, rarely great. However, this run was indeed great, helped by the magnificent art of Steve Epting, Jurgens went to create a story told from
the perspective of an old Tempest who was reminiscing the story of how Orin used his position as a king to try to stop a war that was provoked by surface nation (a plot that has a lot of similarities with one that Geoff Johns would use in the future I might add).

For the first time since the beginning of this volume, Aquaman was actually living to his potential as a ruler and leader managing to act as an ambassador to create a better relationship between the two
nations. Jurgens' didn't have any of the silly jokes that consumed David's work but also portrayed an Orin genuinely sure of himself and a really admirable man. I frankly would say that Jurgens' run will probably stand the test of time better than David's.

Of course, the lack of big names on the cover affected negatively the sales of the title and therefore it was cancelled with issue 75 so DC decided to do what they always do when a franchise is struggling: Reboot!. Although to be honest, this was just a soft reboot, Aquaman had a major appearance in DC's big crossover event "Our Worlds at War" written by Jeph Loeb in 2001 where he apparently died along with Atlantis and a beacon with his figure was created in his honor.

However, it turns that he didn't actually die (Basically none of the people who were assumed dead in Our Worlds at War were truly gone, the event failed at producing ramifications) but he was able to transport Atlantis to the glory days of its civilization as told by The Atlantis Chronicles, except that it turns that the chronicles were all lies and it was actually a terrible era called "The Obsidian Age" written by Joe Kelly, this story was told in the pages of JLA starting with issue 69 and ending with issue 75 returning Aquaman and his city back to present time. It wasn't a good conclusion to Orin since his people ended exiling him for his mistake which would create the next development for his character. I really suggest to read this storyarc since it was pretty good despite that it contained what possibly is the worst portrayal of Green Arrow ever (Hey, I'm a GA nut, what do you want?).

The following volume of Aquaman was given to Rick Veitch who wanted to make Aquaman go into a more mystical route by replacing his grappling hook with a magical water hand and finally making shave. This was an... interesting period for the character, Veitch introduced several supernatural aspects to the series but unfortunately failed at producing an engaging story and creating good challenges for the protagonist. Plus, he also created another origin for Black Manta where he was born autistic and his hate for Orin was produced due to his own illness, how is that everytime that an author tries to make Manta more complex they just make him a worse character?

Anyway, the sales were slipping so they decided to replace Veitch with Will Pfeiffer, John Ostrander and John Arcudi starting with issue 13 who made more classic superhero stories including a fan-favorite one called "American Tidal" where part of San Diego sank and its population learned to breathe underwater, thsi storyline also introduced Lorena Marquez, the new Aquagirl.

But sales weren't increasing so this time they hired awarded writer Kurt Busiek, surely things will work better this time right?!

*sigh*

Busiek's run consisted on telling a story based on DC's event "One Year Later" retitling the book as "Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis" with issue 40 and creating a new character named Arthur Joseph Curry as the protagonist, a human who due to experiments was able to breathe underwater (Which made him share parallels to the Golden Age Aquaman), it turns out that Orin had made another magic deal to save his people, became the mutated Dweller in the Depths and finally died towards the end of the volume.

Busiek tried to go back to the mystical direction from the beginning but he not only failed at telling a compelling story but also at making Arthur Joseph Curry an interesting character, in fact he didn't even tell his origin, the one who handled it was Tad Williams in issue 57, the last one of the volume. The sales were worse than ever and one of the possible reasons for it was that they discarded the original character without giving him a proper send-off and so alienated most of the fanbase.

*whew* Sorry, did I say "dwell a bit"? I meant dwell a lot!

I was originally planning to make this just one article but I ended ranting and rambling way too much. Anyway, I will speak of the current volume next week when the last issue of Johns' run gets released along with the usual thoughts for it. Believe me, things do get better.

I need to stop doing these things (but probably won't).