Did anyone watch that Aquaman pilot that spun off of Smallville? How was that?

About on a level with the first season of Smallville itself. Lots of potential, lots of good ideas — I especially liked the setup of starting with young Arthur Curry, discontented son of a Coast Guard father, and working backward from that to the mysteries of Atlantis.

However, also like Smallville, I got the impression that the show would have ended up being MUCH more about the soap opera and the romance between A.C. and the various hot girls who were cast in supporting roles. Kind of like how we were hoping Smallville would be a Superman’s-coming-of-age story, essentially Superboy without the suit — and what we got was Dawson’s Creek with superpowers. I imagine that the CW Aquaman would have been Dawson’s Creek with flippers.

Still, we enjoyed the pilot here and it’s worth a look if you run across it.

I’d rather watch a back-to-back Man From Atlantis marathon than *ever* watch Catcher in the Rye, Thank You Very Much.

I am guessing so would JD Salinger, since he has never allowed his work to be adapted.

I’d rather watch a back-to-back Man From Atlantis marathon than *ever* watch Catcher in the Rye, Thank You Very Much.

It sounds a little like “Lost” crossed with “Smallville”. That means it would be on at my house.

It also means I would steer clear. Not a fan of either of those, and that’s putting it lightly. And I love me some Aquaman. Of course, I also think Aquaman would pretty much write itself as the most awesome comic in the world, but no one seems to agree.

Did anyone watch that Aquaman pilot that spun off of Smallville? How was that?

Good. Not as good as the first three (or so) seasons of “Smallville”, but better than the average action/sci-fi pilot. Worth a couple buck on iTunes to watch. The stuff they got right was how they portrayed Arthur Curry and the setting in the Florida Keys. The stuff they got wrong were some dull B and C plots dealing with the military dealing with Bermuda Triangle. In other words, they got all the important stuff right and all the fixable stuff wrong.

It is a shame the show didn’t get picked up, because it could’ve gotten a lot better as it rolled along.

I mutter some variation on this every time DC premieres an Aquaman book and it’s not happening. It was one of the things I liked so much about the way Kurt Busiek did Sword of Atlantis…. so, of course, all that went away when he did, five or six issues into the run. I read stuff like the Waid/Wieringo Aquaman pitch and it just makes me sad that Didio, or whoever, passes on things like that and we get… well, what we keep getting instead.

Aquaman is on the verge of joining Hawkman in the “might be better off appearing mostly outside comics” club.

The Golden Age origin for Hawkman is nearly perfect for the first act of a movie, it is just that the story-telling engine is limited for an on-going comic book series. Conversely, Aquaman has enough material to tell a lot of stories to an audience that is coming to it fairly devoid of expectations. If you combine the basics of the Waid-Wieringo pitch with Peter David’s mythology, then you’ve got a great cable TV series. Introduce a team of explorers on a quixotic quest for Atlantis. Introduce the son of a lighthouse keeper who is very eager to help them. Set up a little sexual tension between Arthur and the leader of the group. Introduce a mysterious woman named only Dolphin, who appears to live in the ocean to form a love triangle. Set up a rival team led by Arthur’s half-brother, Orm. Show them to be more ruthless and more effective. Dole out the PAD mythology in tantalizing spoonfuls.

That could run 4-5 seasons. Wrap Season 1 with the discovery of an abandoned Atlantean temple. Drop the reveal that Arthur’s mother was the exiled Crown Princess in the finale of Season 2. Have them discover a small community of Atlanteans in Season 3, only to have Orm kill them off after being tipped off by a traitor in Arthur’s group (i.e. the loser in the love triangle). End Season 4 with Arthur arriving in Posidenous, only to make a SHOCKING DISCOVERY. It sounds a little like “Lost” crossed with “Smallville”. That means it would be on at my house.

Matt Salinger’s movie is way better. Hell, I still legitimately like it, and would say it’s better than his dad’s Catcher in the Rye.

My hand to God, when I first saw it on VHS ten or twelve years ago, my first comment was, “Damned if I didn’t enjoy that more than Catcher in the Rye.” What’s wrong with us??

I never heard of the show until years later, but my wife loved it. It’s one of the many, many reasons I married her.

So, you don’t mind being a runner-up for Patrick Duffy, then?

Who wouldn’t want to read a book where Aquaman was essentially an aquanaut, exploring new regions underneath the ocean?

I must finally be going insane, because I had a dream last night that featured, at one point, a new relaunched Aquaman series debuting with that Marvel-y combined numbering– but sadly, the creative team was mediocre, so I’m sure it was doomed to fail, whatever it was.

I think I’ve got one issue of Man from Atlantis somewhere– a musty old beaten-up copy, missing half its cover. I had no clue what the hell it was at the time, but I love these tossed-off, batty Bill Mantlo comics now– the man was an adaptation machine, it appears, turning whatever you threw at him into mostly-awesome runs, like ROM and the Human Fly.

And they’ve just solicited Essential Sub-Mariner, so it should be out in a few months or so.

By the way, your point about some things seeming less ludicrous in comics than when acted out kind of apply to comics vs. the real world in general. Especially super-hero comics. I mean, come on, those outlandish costumes they wear look so utterly and completely silly in real life, but appear completely “natural” and awesome in comics.