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Sunday, May 01, 2011

Adventure Comics #120 - Sept. 1947

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Comics Weekend "Aquaman Goes To College!" by Joe Samachson and Louis Cazeneuve.

It's Adventure Sunday!

Ooh boy, I bet Aquaman faces off against a crusty old Dean who wants to shut down Chug-a-Lug House in this one! Let's see:
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Aquaman...er, Mr. Waterman (*snicker*) tries out for the swim team. The coach is dubious, but is of course impressed when Aquaman shows he's a whiz underwater. He even decides to reveal his identity, and the coach realizes he's got a ringer!

During the first meet with Aquaman on the team, he wins the race easily--meaning that millions bucks is a sure thing, right?
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...and so ends another adventure with Aquaman!


Might this be the craziest Golden Age Aquaman story to date? I say yes:

1)Why do all superheroes (and supervillains, for that matter), when they assume a temporary secret identity, try to get cheeky and use a name that anyone with a working frontal lobe could figure out was a clue? Mr. Waterman, Prince Namtab, Joe Kerr, etc.

2)Why did Weston College put Rip Van Winkle in charge of their fundraising?

3)Aquaman is going to learn more about the seven seas from a college professor than he would, oh I don't know, living underwater every moment of his life?

4)At the rate Mr. Reed casually offers a million bucks reward for each little favor he needs, I would hope that Weston has other donors lined up. (Reed later took over Goldman-Sachs)

5)Considering how competitive college sports is, I can only imagine Aquaman joining the Weston Swim Team led to a rash of colleges offering sweet deals to superheroes to get them to enroll. Think of the amount of wins The Flash or Green Arrow could rack up on Track and Archery teams!

6)Why no scenes of Aquaman on a panty raid? That's what they do in college right, or did the movie King Frat* lie to me?



*BTW, anyone who can explain the Aquaman connection to King Frat wins a prize, or something.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm in college now for the first time, in my 40's. so I actually identified with this one a bit. But yeah, it's the goofiest of the goofy golden age so far. And I enjoyed every panel of it.

That eel should get a special commendation at the next "Aquaman's Pals Awards Ceremony".

The only thing missing from this tale was ol' Blackjack.

James Chatterton

rob! said...

Blackjack was Weston College's chug-a-lug champ for three years running, 1922-1925. True story!

BTW, James, I think that's great you're going back to school. Good for you!

Russell said...

KING FRAT was filmed in Florida. Is that the same town where they filmed the Aquaman pilot?

David J. Cutler said...

I think Mr. Waterman is pretty funny. It'd be even better if he want with Eugene Aquaman or something and pronounced it Aquamin, like that Friends bit about Goldman and Mr. Spiderman.

Joseph Brian Scott said...

I like how A-man swims around in everybody's drinking water, like the girls in "Petticoat Junction."
(And what's with the "mortals" crack? Is he not supposed to be mortal?)

Shellhead said...

The most interesting part of this story (and I'm surprised you didn't note it, Rob), was the fact he spend almost an entire day out of the water. So while Golden Age Aquaman was beginning to get uncomfortable on land after all that time, he certainly didn't have a one hour limit.

Anthony said...

Well, the Golden Age Aquaman was a human who learned to live underwater (per his original origin story), versus the Silver Age Aquaman being half-Atlantean. Of course, he could've been drinking glasses of water between panels to keep going even if he *did* have such a limit...

I was thinking of Petticoat Junction too in that scene!

Wonder if Aquaman ever finished his college education (or that class he was taking, anyway)?

Re: Superboy: This issue's Superboy story features a young Perry White (apparently the first Earth-1 appearance of Perry) get a job at the Daily Planet, then both face the "Ringmaster and his crime circus". (No relation to the Marvel version, presumably...).