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Saturday, April 21, 2007

Vs. Card - Ocean Master

sgAnother Vs. card, this time on Aquaman's most personal foe (I would argue Black Manta holds the title of #1 Aquaman villain), the Ocean Master!

It's funny to think about, but Aquaman--as a character--was certainly allowed to develop much more than most of other DC heroes at the time. Not only did he marry, have a child, but with Orm here he was given a brother, and one who was a super-villain, too boot!

I've always felt this brother vs. brother dynamic has never been fully exploited by Aquaman's writers. Neal Pozner did it best I think in the 1986 mini-series--you really got the sense of bitter sibling rivalry that causes Orm to want to not only kill Aquaman, but take everything--his family, his throne--away from him.

Sadly, for the longest time he had never been transformed into any action figure, until the just-released Mini-Mates two-pack which we'll see here soon!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

... And, of course, the Legend of Aquaman and Time and Tide retoolings of Aquaman's origin essentially negated what Pozner did with Orm.

Bitter? Me?

Anonymous said...

Rob-

I'm not that familiar with this side of the story, but it sounds a bit like the Thoe/Loki dynamic?

-Craig

Anonymous said...

(That's THOR, of course!)

rob! said...

it is similar to Loki/Thor, except that Orm hates Arthur because, since Arthur was "gifted", their father showed only love for his first born.

and the way Pozner wrote it, that turned out to be true, which i thought was a true-to-life, heartbreaking detail. you could understand why Orm is so mad, yet he's still a villian.

and, yes, then it was all undone in the next series of minis.

*sigh*