If you ever get the writing gig, I'll be buying it!

As a kid, I had an orange bathing suit (made of some waterproof, skin-tight material).

Anyway, I LOVED those and would imagine myself as AQUAMAN swimming in the sea.

Due to their waterproof material, they always had a "rubbery" smell that whenever I smell something like it, to this day, I flash back to my days as Aquaman.

~P~
P-TOR

I'm a huge Aquaman fan. In fact, he's my favorite comic book character (Black Panther is a close second) and for me Aquaman works best when his adventures keep him near the surface of the ocean interacting with non-Atlanteans. Think about it. What is Aquaman's cornerstone ability; the power that everything else is built upon? He can breathe underwater! Yeh, yeh, yeh, the character himself doesn't consider this ability a super-power. Well, it is a super-power, dammit! It’s a very basic thing that Aquaman can do that the Navy and the Coast Guard and everyone else trying to protect the seas cannot.

The residents of Metropolis don’t all fly. The residents of Keystone City don’t all travel at superspeed. But everyone in Atlantis shares this basic super-power – they all breathe underwater. There’s a really good reason why Thor slums with the Avengers. In Asgard, he’s a god among … well … among lots of other gods. On Midgard, being a god means something!

I wish we could get an Aquaman book that would embrace the fact that Arthur is a super-hero. Give him some trustworthy contacts in the Navy and Coast Guard - discarding the Atlan origin and bringing back the Silver Age Tom Curry story would help in this regard. I want an Aquaman who fights crime on and under the sea, again. I want a writer to explore the psychology of his rogues. Forget the futility of robbing a bank in Metropolis – how nuts do you have to be strap on scuba gear and go gunning for a Justice Leaguer when the environment itself can kill you. I want an Aquaman sailors and fisherman and all the people who live on the sea can count on for protection.

For years, Aquaman was a super-hero who had super-hero adventures. Now, he’s some strange unsatisfying hybrid of super-hero and fantasy hero. I want Aquaman, the super-hero, back.

Aquaman? Seriously? What’s next, Stilt-Man and Rob Liefield’s art?

I could've sworn I did Stilt-Man already, but I guess not. One more for the list!

This has all the geniuses that decided to build their criminal careers by robbing banks in Metropolis hands down. With that kind of firepower in their hands, imagine what they could have accomplished if they actually had goals that weren't incredibly petty...

He always has been that bland good guy DC hero, like Barry Flash, Hal GL, or Superman. Barry died and was replaced with flawed Wally, Hal was given a past as a drunk, and Superman..stayed the same. Aquaman really didn't get his post crisis revamp. There were some darker stories, but that was it. There was the McLaughlin series, which I liked as well...that started dealing with him as world leader more than as super-hero, but it still had him connected too much as the nice guy hero.

It was Peter David's series, which built up the mythology and power of the Atlantis setting, while also revamping Aquaman. It's his Aquaman that's so awesome in Morrison's JLA. It's his Aquaman that's so awesome on JLU. He was someone who wasn't a hero..he was a king..and Kings have to do things that Heroes won't.

(as an aside, I always wanted a PAD-Aquaman/Priest-Black Panther crossover).

That brings me to why I'm not a big fan od 50's & 60's DC, or of any of their main characters. They just don't have any personality. At least not from what I've read. They're all fairly bland, vanilla, boring. that's a major reason Marvel really kicked DCs ass in the 60's. Even now, I can't get into the characters, much less the universe, because their long standing (seeming) lack of characterization is all I can see.

There was a while (late 80's/early 90's) when I tried getting into DC, but it was with the fringe characters, like Hawkman & Aquaman. All the retcons & revamps quickly turned me away. Great job DC did of turning away a new reader with their lack of continuity.

And Namor would totally kick the crap out of Aquaman. AM might be able to summon & talk to sea creatures, but Namor would bring out the horn thing (I for get what it's called) and control them. Then he's knock the piss out of him.

The main problem with Aquaman is nobody has decided what he really should be.

I favor 'king of most of the earth because it's the oceans'. Which is tied into 'guy who can tell Superman to go away, because he is a sovereign nation of his own'. Similar to 'guy who deals with Wonder Woman as a royal equal'.

That was what they usually squandered. The fact that he was a king. That he had superpowers AND secular powers. Superman must always work within the law. Aquaman WAS the law.

The latest run, tied in with One Year Later, I actually gave up. "Oh, now it's a NEW aquaman, with a similar name, and..." Um...that's just dumb. MAYBE if it was a total restart, but otherwise...and really, no. The art was ghastly, the plot worse (oh, suddenly there are all these other undersea places that nobody knew about? riiiight.). What plot there is is thin. (The 'albino assassin' had not, when I stopped, been revealed, but I figured it out about 2 minutes after he slew Squid Aquaman. (Trying to capitalize on Pirates of the Caribbean, maybe, with the squid look?)

Aquaman does best when he's publically king, with a hint of arrogance.

I liked the first couple of years of Peter David's run a lot, until it turned into Namor and His Three Sons, so I came to like the long hair and beard. It really helps to seperate him from the Superfriend image.

I want a swashbuckler Aquaman. Robin Hood of the Sea.

Off-topic: During the Superboy special, when he comments "Aquaman doesn't have a sword" I realized (and I may be the last person to do so) that Superboy Prime is the world's worst fanboy.

At least he's cooler than Namor.

But Aquaman's too potent a DC archetype to remain on the outside forever. One of these days, he'll be back. Let's hope he gets some high-quality attention.

I bought the comic after repeated watchings of the Superman/Aquaman Power Hour where I grew to love the character, and if every issue was this good I would have kept buying forever.

And on a more personal note I remember my little seven-year-old self staring and staring at that cover illustration of Mera in Aquaman's arms, over and over, realizing just how different girls really were from boys, and getting these funny little feelings and stirrings deep down below...
Then thirty-one years later, when I first saw my wife-to-be with her long red hair wearing a long green dress with bare shoulders, that little seven-year-old self suddenly re-emerged, shouting "this one! this one!" and I was pretty easy game from there on.

Now, of course, her hair is dark brown, and I realize that she's rather more of a Barda than a Mera.
Equally different from boys, just as likely to cause those funny little stirrings down below, and really strong, too.