On the New Aquaman

 

Well, here's some good news.

"The announcement of the first new ongoing Aquaman comic book series since the end of the Kelly Sue DeConnick-written run in November, 2020 came during DC’s Absolute/All In Universes panel at New York Comic Con 2024. The series will be written by Green Lantern scribe Jeremy Adams, with art by John Timms; the title will launch January 8, 2025."

Apparently Aquaman will not only be back, but Better Than Ever.

Like any sensible person, I skipped the "Absolute Power" crossover. An upside of it, however, seems to be that if you take everyone's powers "away" for a bit...

Don't you hate it when that happens?
The idea that "powers" are these magical abstractions that can be added and subtracted, rather than natural results of particular physiologies and circumstances is really too absurd even for comics, but... we are stuck with it.

...you can give them BACK in whatever form you want.

In the immortal words of that villain of villains, The Hooded Claw:
"How TERRIBLY convenient!"

There are probably several (many?) characters who are being polished with this plot device; today, we discuss only Aquaman, who, FINALLY, is getting some form of hydrokinesis. We know this not simply from the cover image about, but from solicits.

Each of the seven seas? There's a kaiju in the Adriatic Sea? I'm just going to assume you don't mean the Classical seven seas, but are using "the seven seas" to mean "all the oceans". 

That solicit refers, interestingly, to Dagon (historically a one-off hydrokinetic foe of Aquaman).

With a snarky attitude and really questionable taste in swimwear.

It also refers to "The Blue" (also sometimes called "The Clear", because of course water isn't really BLUE), an aquatic parallel of "The Green" (the force that Swamp Thing accesses to control plant life) introduced in comics in 1995, but not discussed a lot since its initial introduction.

So, it sounds like this new writer, Jeremy Adams (whom the internet seems to love but I've never heard of), is using this opportunity to tie Aquaman back into some forgotten pieces of his lore, rather than crazily blasting off in some new, outré direction.

I mean, you'd have to be a fool or a monster to do that.

I am certainly happy that Aquaman will return to comics, and to finally see him get some form of water manipulation power.

Which he has had in several other media instantiations.

Because this means that Aquaman will at last have:

BALLS!

Filmation Studios (makers of the '60s Aquaman cartoon) knew instinctively what Aquaman needed to round out his power set: a ranged attack that didn't require FISH. 

Not that that power isn't awesome, mind you.

A bottomless source of aquatic batarangs with which to wallop enemies.  And so he had his hard water balls.

I know there are some Mera-stans who think hydrokinesis should be Mera's schtick, alone.  But if you look closely, Aquaman's used of HK has always been more limited and specific than Mera's. Without belaboring the details, Mera's HK works at a distance and on a larger (and finer) scale .  Aquaman's HK always works the same way: he can use it to create a smallish simple weapon he's holding.  One assumes his hard-water balls have a limited distance or time they can travel away from him before they dissipate. 

It's perfectly reasonable for Arthur to have a simpler, more limited version of this power, in the same way that not all characters with "superspeed" or "superstrength" or "telepathy" have the same kind or degree of that power.

That discussed, there is another aspect of this cover that I want to point out and it's just as ingenious and overdue from an artistic standpoint as the HK is for the purposes of plot.

Ask a gay person what color those pants and gloves are; they will NOT say "green".

This cover does a great job of narrowing the color palette to create a more iconic image. But the key is the main change he has made in order to do so: the formerly green parts of Aquaman's costume are now AQUAMARINE.

Aquamarine is not green. Neither is it blue. Nor, for that matter, clear.

THAT CHANGE makes Aquaman's color scheme click into place.  Because while 'orange and green' are not the most natural color combination, 

(which, as Rousseau knew, evokes the jungle, not the sea)

"orange and aquamarine" not only look very complementary, but evoke a maritime environment.

After over 80 years, that single cover image has solved Aquaman's " costume problem". 

A fresh take on Aquaman by a popular creative team who know how to synthesize a new interpretation that takes some of the best aspects from previous versions, integrating them thematically and visually with his environment?  

Sign me up.