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13 comments:
Kiss ass, Arthur!
Did you not mean to say "Kick ass"?
Ah, sanctimonious Aquaman. My least favorite version of Arthur.
Heh, There's no pleasing the geeks. :)
Have to agree with Shellhead, this is just too political for me. I dislike when comics slap you in the face with current events & politics like this. I like comics to be a little more subtle and timeless than this.
OMG... I totally missed my error! Damn!
Yes, I meant KICK ASS.
Damn, Damn, Damn.
I don't consider oil spills (or at least oil drilling, water pollution, etc) as just a "current" event. These issues have been prevalent since the 60s, and in existence since the Industrial Revolution.
And I like seeing Aquaman getting all up in somebody's business every once in a while. He's gotta "breathe" the crappy water, so it's not surprising he doesn't want to get lung cancer swimming through the Gulf. His indignation comes off as much more sincere than that of say, Superman.
I hope there's at least a little of this integration of "real world" problems (and not just super villains) in the new book. Done right it can be quite compelling and result in a classic run (like the GL/GA team-ups of the 70s).
@Brent--I find those "relevant" comics of the 70s a little heavy handed and silly, passing off superhero noblesse oblige as real commentary or solution for change. Environmental disasters do happen, and it's fair game for superheroes to deal with, but Aquaman's endless lecturing on the subject gets tiring to me, as well. Regular people can't get around the world at supersonic self-propelled speeds or run cities on Atlantean magic, so Aquaman's "I don't need it so you don't need it" philosophy comes across as a little grating. Was Aquaman seriously saying here he's shutting down every offshore operation in the world? I really don't know how I'm supposed to feel about that.
@David - I think exactly the same things. Doubt I could have summed it up quite as well as you have. Thanks!
I would enjoy seing that sort of thing explored--the kind of conflicts of interest that must eventually arise sometimes between superbeings and the "ordinary" populace they spend a lot of their time defending. There's no rule that Aquaman has to be 100% on the right side of every issue; in fact, it would make for richer dramatic story-telling if he wasn't.
Current-event-topical-issue themes can be heavy-handed, but they can also be done well, as with Alan Moore's run on "Swamp Thing."
Personally, I think Aquaman would have more of a problem with overfishing and bottom-trawling fishing methods than with oil spills.
@Joseph--the thing is, even when Aquaman is in the right on these things he's sanctimonious and hard to relate to. I think Aquaman's biggest problem would be those Texas-sized gyres of churning, floating plastic garbage islands we accidentally created in the pacific and atlantic--but in the real world there's not actually anything we can do about those right now, so I'd rather not have my favorite superheroes talk down to be about it haha...
(What's more, in the DCU, Superman could scoop all that stuff up and bury it on the moon--we don't have solutions like that available to us so lets just pretend it happened behind the scenes and ignore it maybe?)
If Arthur was ever pragmatic about this sort of thing I wouldn't have a problem, really--but in the past whenever it's come up he's only seen it in black and white.
@David -- I don't necessarily want to read the lectures of a sanctimonius superhero either, which is why I felt the bottom-trawling issue would have more dramatic energy than the oil spills or, as you've noted, the garbage islands. Those two things are just what you've called them--accidents. Nobody wants them, even the people who've created them. And in a universe crawling with Green Lanterns, it would be a simple matter to solve those probs with a little applied will power. Bottom-trawling on the other hand, while contribuing to overfishing and the decimation of non-food fish species and wreaking other environmental havoc, is a legally sanctioned practice. I think it would be interesting to see Aquaman caught between, say, U.S. and other national interests, and a group of young, upstart Atlanteans (it's often the young who get their dander up about these things) who go out and sabotage the nets and trawling boats. The dramatic struggle would be with Aquaman having to decide on who he sides with and how best to handle the situation. Torn protagonists with divided loyalties are the most fun to read about.
@Joseph--all good points, and being caught between corporate interests (US or otherwise) and atlantean eco-terrorists is something I actually WOULD like to read about in Aquaman. I'd love that, really.
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