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Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Most Poorly Handled Character In Comics


Aquaman, ladies and gentlemen! He swims fast and talks to fish. Yes, Aquaman! He's the king of the ocean, so you better be nice when you talk to him or he'll have his servants beat you up.
Yes, I know I'm oversimplifying his heroic traits, but come on DC. When Hawkman got revamped by Geoff Johns, we got a brilliant angsty love story, Nth Metal that can really do some cool wacked out stuff, and a gritty, barbarian warrior attitude that made a "dude with wings" pretty cool.
Aquaman has even more name recognition, but no revamp has pulled off making this guy as awesome as he SHOULD be. Some really clever writing gave him purpose outside the water in the very first story arc of JLA in the 90's. But without some power revamping, no amount of creative writing can keep him consistantly relevant out of the water.
I propose that during the upcoming "Final Crisis", we ditch the new aquaman (if he's not dead already) and get the real Arthur back in there with the power to control water. Imagine that for a second. Not only could he swim faster than ever (propelled by the water itself!) but he could pull off crazy Magneto-like stuff on anything with a little H20 in the mix. With a name that basically means "waterman", Arthur should be no less than "god of all things water".
How we get there, I don't really care. A gift from Poseiden, or Tempest (Aqualad's grown up name) could be killed (if he hasn't been already) and his powers somehow transferred and amplified. We're talking about comic books, so anything is possible. But please, do SOMETHING! I've seen this character flop too many times (and the last two relaunch attempts I invested money following) and made fun of all too often. Does he deserve it? Of course, if the status quo remains. But it need not be that way.

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