JulianPerez
Council of Wisdom
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Posts: 1168
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« Reply #2 on: December 10, 2005, 01:20:33 PM » |
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You know, I should have started a thread that said "Who can save Aquaman now? ...SEAN McLAUGHLIN!" on the DC message boards, see if that got any attention. That guy wrote some of Aquaman's best moments in his 1991 Miniseries, the only time besides his backup days that the character was treated with any dignity. I sent an email to Tegan Gjovaag, the internet's premiere Aqua-fan, about this, and I have yet to get a response. Rick Veitch, bless his soul, decided that the most interesting thing that can be done with Aquaman is give him new powers - which never works (although POWER OF THE ATOM *was* pretty interesting). It doesn't matter if one gives a character with a gimmick like Aquaman or the Atom "new powers;" what is important is taking the character and his world seriously.
That said, although I was initially resistant to the concept of making Aquaman Conan at sea, Busiek's using Killer Shark, and THAT sounds pretty cool. Really, all one needs to set something apart is a gimmick and the water gimmick is as good as any. Remember all the "animal hero" cartoon shows of the 1980s? SILVERHAWKS, THUNDERCATS, TIGERSHARKS, NINJA TURTLES, BUCKY O'HARE AND THE TOAD WARS (a Neal Adams creation, I believe). TIGERSHARKS could hardly be a THUNDERCATS-clone...because everybody was a FISH!
At first I was hoping for a reboot. Usually I'm against reboots as being pointless makeovers that fix something that ain't broke...but an exception can be made for Aquaman: if there was EVER any character that called for a reboot, it would have to be Aquaman, whose previously straightforward concept (son of a surface-dweller and a mermaid) was eliminated, and I don't blame Busiek at all for not putting his foot in the sinking quagmire that is Aquaman history post-ATLANTIS CHRONICLES and post-TIME AND TIDE. While I admire Peter David for his work elsewhere, his Aquaman was so titanically labyrinthine that it was nearly impenetrable: the "curse of Koryak" that gives Aquaman his powers, the various other Atlantean Cities...Kurt Busiek himself once said that there are some things that call for a retcon story and some things that aren't worth it, and it seems Peter David was dead set on answering questions nobody asked. "How does Aquaman tie into WARLORD continuity?" I don't know, but I'm betting the answer will be REALLY complicated!
Though Busiek's praise of Dan Jurgens's AQUAMAN run has to be a very sly joke. Dan "I created Electric Superman" Jurgens, instigator and participant of the two nadirs of comics history of the 1990s: the Spider-Clone Saga and Electric Superman, followed this up with an Aqua-run where he had the "shy, quiet Garth get Dolphin pregnant white-trash style," in the words of Tegan.
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"Wait, folks...in a startling new development, Black Goliath has ripped Stilt-Man's leg off, and appears to be beating him with it!" - Reporter, Champions #15 (1978)
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