Waiting for the Trade - Aquaman New 52

Waiting for the Trade

By Bill Miller

 

Aquaman vol 1: The Trench

By Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis and Joe Prado

Collects Aquaman 1 – 6
 

Why I Bought This: As I’ve said before Aquaman is my favorite DC character, so if I was going to sample New 52 titles of course I’d pick this one up.

 

The Plot: Aquaman and Mera try to start a new life for themselves in the small coastal New England town of Amnesty Bay when a new species of carnivorous humanoid creatures emerge from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Chapter 1 – Fanged creatures emerge from a trench in the bottom of the ocean discovering there is an “up” for the first time in their existence. In Boston Aquaman helps police foil a bank robbery in a scene that shows his power level has increased in this continuity as he effortlessly lifts a truck with his trident and takes a bullet to the head with only minor annoyance. Next Aquaman goes to a seafood restaurant and when he tries to order fish everyone gets weirded out since he supposedly talks to fish; although Aquaman corrects them as we’re back to his power being telepathically commands fish rather than talks to them (with the possible exception of Dolphins). He also reflects on his early family life and in this continuity Aquaman was raised by a human father in this same area of New England. Through his interaction with the restaurant’s patrons we also establish that most people think Aquaman is a joke, and they specifically reference some of the real world late night comedy sketches at his expense. Later Aquaman and Mera are at the lighthouse Aquaman’s human father operated. Aquaman reveals to her he didn’t know Atlantis existed or about his powers until age 13. We also learn that while he tried to rule Atlantis as king, he never felt he fit in and now he has forsaken his throne so he and Mera can have a new life together. Back at sea a fishing boat hooks one of the humanoids, who pulls the fisherman in the water and eats him. A swarm of them peer up at the boat and think “There’s food up there.”

Chapter 2 – The fisherman on the boat get eaten as do any trench creatures they shoot and kill. In the aftermath of the feeding frenzy the trench creatures see the lights from the shore town and think “more food.” The next morning Aquaman and Mera are looking over old photo albums and making plans to go skiing, when police knock on the door and ask for assistance investigating what happened at the docks last night. Aquaman and Mera (who has the power to control water) arrive and learn from the Coast Guard half the town is missing in addition to the dozens of bodies they have found. Aquaman tries to summon fish and learns there are no fish at all in this part of the ocean, which makes him fretful. The police find a cocoon and when they try to disturb it the trench creatures attack en masse. We get a viscous fight as Aquaman has no problem killing things with his trident in this continuity. This leads to the alpha male of the creatures deciding it wants to take Aquaman back to the trench.

Chapter 3 – Aquaman tries to use his fish telepathy to stop the alpha male but it just shakes it off and bites him deep in the shoulder. Mera is able to wash away most of the minions back into the sea; while Aquaman’s solo battle is fairly even. The creature manages to toss Aquaman aside before ordering its minions to gather up the food it has cocooned and take it back to the trench. Aquaman deduces how the cocoons work: it allows breathing underwater in hibernation, and he frees a dog from the one cocoon the townspeople recovered prior to the attack. Aquaman takes one of the dead creatures to scientist Stephen Shin, whom we learn helped teach Aquaman to use his powers before they had a violent falling out when Aquaman wouldn’t take him to Atlantis. While Shin examines the body, he also hints at a mystery foe whom Aquaman obtained the trident from. Anyway, the creatures have similarities to piranha and ants, and Shin hypothesizes they have to eat 20 to 30 times a day as well as noting they are an entirely new species of evolution. Shin wants to keep the body so he can publish in scientific journals but Aquaman refuses to allow it and Shin gets very upset. As Aquaman and Mera head to the trench she considers the creatures to be monsters that need to be exterminated while Aquaman notes they are just another species out to survive.

Chapter 4 – Aquaman and Mera find an old UFO in the trench of Atlantean origin from before the continent sank. Aquaman also notes the fish he had accompanying them have just fled out of fear despite his telepathy, which has never happened before. Eventually they find central hive of these creatures and much like ants (or Aliens) they have a really big queen that spawns for the entire race. Also out of Aliens all of the captured people have been cocooned to the walls, so Aquaman takes the entire wall with him as he attempts to save them. Of course the entire hive gives chase, and while Aquaman wishes he could communicate with the creatures, he is forced to use his trident to detonate a volcanic vent, which kills the queen and seals the rest of the creatures in beneath an avalanche. Afterwards when the townspeople are freed a little boy tells Aquaman he is his favorite superhero, and Mera and he are given the dog from last chapter since its owner did not survive the attack.

Chapter 5 – Aquaman falls from the sky into the desert. We flashback to 12 hours earlier when the military called Aquaman for help because an Atlantean artifact attached to the trench wall he brought up last issue has begin emitting a high-pitched noise when the military began poking around with it. Back in the desert Aquaman is bleeding and dehydrating. Back in the flashback, Aquaman says the device is similar to an airplane’s black box when a trio of armored soldiers attack and steal it. They attempt to fly off in a futuristic plane and Aquaman grabs a wing as they leave. In the desert Aquaman hallucinates about his dead father and then uses his telepathy to summon a lizard. Back in the flashback Aquaman discovers the attackers are Atlantean before they shoot him, accidentally blowing up their plane in the process. In the present Aquaman finds the black box and turns it on revealing a hologram of a man who talks of how Atlantis was sunk by beings that could use the ocean as a weapon. He hints at more secrets but the Trench creatures killed him before he could finish the recording. Aquaman is then rescued by military helicopters but news of the military operation gets out, making him an even bigger late night joke.

Chapter 6 – A flashback from four years ago, show us Mera’s parents trained her to kill Aquaman. In the present Mera has gone to town to buy dog-food. The salesman gets all sexual harassmenty so she breaks his wrist. The police attempt to arrest her but she uses water from the store’s bottled water inventory to put a stop to that. More cops arrive and the situation seems poised to escalate when an A.P.B. call comes in about a domestic violence situation prompting Mera to surrender so the cops can respond to it. Once at the scene she easily breaks free of the cuffs and cop car. When domestic violence dude pulls a gun on her and calls her “a fish out of water” she starts draining the water out of his body. He’s about to die of dehydration when his victim begs Mera to spare him. Mera states she doesn’t understand humans and flies off. We get a flashback to Mera choosing Aquaman over her father and being disowned (in fact he vows to kill her alongside Aquaman). The girl from the grocery store tracks Mera down and brings her dog food to show “We’re not all bad.” Aquaman comes home and tells Mera he wants to see Shin in order to discover who sank Atlantis, as the narration implies it was Mera’s people (after all who else can use the ocean i.e. water as a weapon?).

 

Critical Thoughts: Holy cow! This is the right way to start a new series. Issue 1 is really an absolutely perfect set-up issue telling a new the reader everything he needs to know about the new Aquaman: from his powers to his back-story to his place in the world.

The primary story of the monsters from the trench is really good. The art is flat out excellent. The story is suspenseful. The thought narration in particular is very well done, both in letting us see the different perspectives of how the creatures and Aquaman see the same events; to using Aquaman’s reactions to build the threat-level in moments when he telepathically finds no fish in the ocean after their attack or when the fish he commands leaves his side out of fear.

The desert story was also really good for a one-issue story both in the parallel story telling between the flashback and the desert scenes and for using the adversity to give us a glimpse into the hero’s psyche.

Johns is also building long-term subplots here, which you don’t see as much of in the modern writing for the trade era. In terms of building for the future look at the mysteries sets up in the background: we have who sank Atlantis, who owns the trident, Dr Shin, and Mera’s past. We’re setting up a lot of story threads and they are all introduced in a way that I want to see them play out.

That said I do have some criticisms. Within the story, I found this to be more violent than I think a mainstream superhero comic should be, particularly the Mera chapter (which admittedly does its job of differentiating her perspective and methods from Aquaman). There also doesn’t seem to be any reason for Aquaman not to let Shin keep the body of the trench creature. It’s not like Aquaman needs the body to track the creatures down or to build a weapon to fight them, and since they eat their own dead it’d be hard to argue it would be disrespectful to let scientists dissect and study it. I get Shin is potentially dangerous (and will probably become a super villain soon) but Aquaman really comes off as an A-hole in this scene, especially since he’s the one who went to Shin for assistance in the first place.

Outside of the actual story my main criticism would be some of the changes to Aquaman’s origin and powers. As I said in my review of Time and Tide I prefer an Aquaman that talks to fish rather than telepathically commands them, so that change feels like a step backwards to me. In general you can see this also knocks Time and Tide completely out of continuity, which is something of a shame. (It has to be out of continuity now since in that story Aquaman was born in the ocean and raised by dolphins, here he was born on land and raised by a human unaware of his powers until his teen years.) Again I probably prefer an Aquaman who has closer ties to the ocean; however, it’s not a deal-breaker as it is only back-story at this point and Johns’ clearly has a firm idea of where he wants to take the character. Since the point of the New 52 is to give some of these characters fresh starts, I am willing to let it play out, especially given the overall quality of this first volume.

 

Grade A. While there are some external choices I am not fond of, within the rules of its own narrative this is excellent.