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Saturday, March 26, 2011

Aquaman (Vol.7) #7 - Aug. 2003

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Comics Weekend "Twilight of the Rhine" by Rick Veitch, Sal Velluto, and Bob Almond.

Aquaman and Tempest are on their way towards the mystical "power spot" of the water spirit realm:
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"I'm a squirrrrrrrell!"--that needs to be on a t-shirt.

Anyway, Aquaman and Tempest take down the giant lizard guy, which impresses the army of women warriors. These women are such warriors that they feel compelled to test the mettle of these "Men of Atlantis", by tossing them some weapons and then attacking!

Aquaman and Tempest defend themselves, until Aquaman tells them to hold, "By the golden garter of the Lady of the Lake." This mollifies the warriors, and they lay down their weapons.

Our heroes hop aboard the winged steeds of some valkyries, and commune with the Rhine Sister, to warn her that The Thirst is after her, as well, after drinking the vitality of the Elbe.

Meanwhile, in Atlantis, the ruling council--led by the scary-looking, menacing Hagen--decides that Dolphin and her son Cerdian shall suffer an "accident" due to their connection to Arthur and Garth. Two sorcerers are commissioned to create a creature that will do the job, while Vulko watches passively.

Back on the surface, The Thirst continues his slow march toward The Rhine:
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Aquaman's water hand may be addled, but as he points out to The Thirst, he has another, which he uses to wallop him off his feet. The Thirst retaliates, and they're off!

The Thirst's men also attack, and Tempest tries to hold them off. At the same time, The Thirst's giant zombie Elbe sister begins to break down the dam holding the slag water from the Elbe itself.

Aquaman sees this and stops fighting The Thirst long enough to step in, but the water Arthur dives into is turning into gold, the legendary "Rhine Gold" that is the true treasure of the Elbe Sister. She is aghast that her secret has been revealed to man, and orders her warriors to lay down their weapons, for "Gotterdammerung is upon us!"

A few moments later, Aquaman emerges:
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...oh man, Glenn Beck's gonna love this! To be continued!


Trying to make sense of the all mystical argle-bargle that goes on in this storyline is tough enough, but trying to encapsulate it for these posts and have it make any sense at all is even tougher.

If these issues leave you Aqua-Fans with a slight headache, I completely understand. I appreciate Rick Veitch trying to do something a little different this time around, but after so many issues of crazy sorcery stuff I kinda wish Aquaman would just punch Black Manta or something.

Be back later today for Aquaman #8!

4 comments:

Wings1295 said...

Totally agree. It was like way too far into that deep, mystical end. Maybe too far too fast.

David J. Cutler said...

I had such high hopes for this relaunch but almost nothing in it works for me until Sub Diego (which I quite enjoy minus a few things here and there). King Shark, Manta, Orm, Piranha, Eel, Fisherman--DC has no shortage of cool aquatic villains for Arthur to fight, so why is he being turned into gold?

JD said...

Loved Sal Velluto's art, I wish he would have been the regular artist on this whole arc\relaunch, it would have been more tolerable.

KJ Sampson said...

OMG. I wish I could say I'd forgotten how wretched this take on Aquaman was, but I CAN'T forget (short of amnesia, God forbid)!

Part of the reason is that I once wrote a post-mortem on Veitch's run. Here's an excerpt:

You'd think more scantily-clad women in a book littered with them would be a good thing. But when they all speak purple prose and have really nothing to do with water, not really, one wonders why they should be here. And where are all these aquahand powers coming from all of a sudden, from a guy with no training? Opening parallel dimensions? OK, there's potential there. But what's in them? A "dragon" who's literally as much a pushover as any Aquafoe over the years, and...

a Freaking.
Talking.
Squirrel.

It's as if Veitch got so mythology-happy that he picked the most obscure European myth he could find. For some reason. It just boggles the imagination that he thought this was a good idea. And how annoyingly pointless are these valkyrie chicks?