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Sunday, May 29, 2011

Adventure Comics #124 - Jan. 1948

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Comics Weekend "The Sea Serpent!" by ? and Louis Cazeneuve.

It's Adventure Sunday!

After years of patrolling the seas, Aquaman finally encounters a beast from the ocean depths...or is it?
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Aquaman slathers himself in oil (provided by BP), and jumps into the sea. He sends out a mental command to all his fluorescent finny friends to follow him.

Off in the horizon, the sea serpent sees an almost-blinding light. Thinking it means he food, it heads toward it, only to find Aquaman! The King of the Seas escapes the serpent's attempt to chomp down on him, throwing a live grenade into its mouth!

The serpent then tries a different way to grab its prey:
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...and so ends another adventure with Aquaman!


As you can guess, there are so many things wrong with the mad scientist's plan, not the least of which is trying to breed giant minks. Minks are pretty mean, nasty little critters, so the last thing you'd want is giant ones.

Once again, Aquaman POV on justice is on display here: he gives little thought to Leach's broken neck: "Justice punished him for murder!" Its really too bad Aquaman and the Golden Age Batman never teamed up; they really would have gotten along! (Just as an aside: dying while on the back of a giant rabbit--goofiest bad guy death ever?)

This story is one page shorter than the usual Aquaman segment; luckily this was only temporary.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Viva Adventure Sunday!

Yes, as I always suspected, Aquaman is the sea sleuth slathered in oil.

What ever happened to that giant rabbit? Did he keep chomping carrots until the crisis wiped out Earth Two?

James Chatterton

Joseph Brian Scott said...

Wow, rob! Out of respect for your feelings, I won't probe into the trauma you must have experienced at the paws of minks.

And yeah--what happened to the rabbit? Hasenpfeffer, anyone?

Any bone thrown as to why he couldn't communicate with a water snake? Oh well, it doesn't matter. At least it was a genuine sea monster this time and not an elaborate hoax.

Anthony said...

*Geez*...broken necks, grenade thrown down a sea serpent's throat to blow it up, etc! Wonder what parents (or kids) buying this story in 1948 must've made of all this alongside the more-light-hearted antics of Superboy, though I guess the also-popular crime comics of the day *were* way more violent than Mr. "Justice punished him for murder"... :-p

Hmm... this story calls him the "Sea Sleuth", not a nickname I've heard elsewhere. Though it seems to fit for these earlier stories (without the more supernatural or "outlandish" elements and figures of the Silver Age through the present).

Re: communicating with the sea serpent: guess it didn't occur to Aquaman to try? Or the growth serum made him immune to telepathy? Or at this point, they seem vague on how Aquaman's able to communicate with sea creatures as it is (they seem to waver between "some secret language of sea creatures" and outright "telepathy")?

Re: the giant rabbit's fate: well, assuming Arthur (or someone else) didn't turn *this* animal into hasenpfeffer, I guess since Earth-Two's back (sort of) nowadays, maybe there's some Galapagos Island isle that's full of his giant bunny descendants (that got cast in those cheesy 50s B-movies, or as extras in some SyFy Channel film)? :-p

Re: Superboy: Superboy helps reform two reform school boys, in order to encourage the warden of the-town-not-yet-named-Smallville reform school to not quit his job.

rob! said...

James--I assume the giant rabbit made its way to that Captain Carrot planet.

JBS--Thank you for understanding.

Anthony--I assume that since WWII was still in people's memory, they figured kids could take a little more brutal violence in their comics. Dr. Wertham was so worried about the ECs, I bet he never gave Aquaman a second look!

Anthony said...

@rob!: "That Captain Carrot planet" was the parallel Earth named "Earth-C" (where Captain Carrot works for his world's DC Comics writing "fictional adventures" about "Aquaduck" and the rest of his world's "JLA"), though don't recall the Zoo Crew fighting any giant rabbits. They did fight an extraterrestrial rabbit with vast mental powers once, though (and if Starro could wind up on Earth-C...). :-p