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Sunday, July 15, 2012

Adventure Comics #190 - July 1953

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Comics Weekend "The Hunter of the Seven Seas!" by George Kashdan(?) and Ramona Fradon.

It's Adventure Sunday!

I really like this month's cover, for two reasons: it's very sweet, very iconic--plus, Aquaman gets mentioned on it! He would still have to wait another seven years before he ever got anything more than his name on the front. *sigh*

Anyway, like last issue, this month's Aquaman adventure opens with a grabber of an image:

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Aquaman's finny friends escape, and the now-free whales almost tip Lundgren's boat over. But he refuses to give up, assuring Aquaman that he will be the great hunter's next trophy!

Lundgren and his assistant Bill climb into their bathysphere, where the chain lowering it down promptly snaps, stranding them on the bottom of the ocean:
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...and with that, so ends another adventure for Aquaman!

I feel like this story has such a great basic premise--a bored big-game hunter deciding that the Sea King would make a great prize--that it could be dusted off and used today, it's so primal and exciting. Of course, this was the plot of the 1932 film The Most Dangerous Game (itself an adaptation of a story), so it's use here was hardly original. But it works anyway.

Because there are so many big action set-pieces crammed into this five and half page story, there's not a lot of room for Ramona Fradon to give us anything other than establishing shots, which (IMO) robs the story of some of it's drama; I guess we have to settle for the splash page, which like I said above is gangbusters.

4 comments:

Anthony said...

Interesting that the story seems to frown upon big game hunting, despite being written at a time when I assumed people weren't as concerned about such...

Yes, a nice cover. Also note the cover now describes "your favorite superheroes" (Green Arrow, Johnny Quick, Superboy, and you-know-who); maybe they wanted to match the similar description being used for "World's Finest" and its various characters at the time (just before it became all-Batman/Superman team-up stories)?

Re: Superboy: Superboy's plot: A teenager from another world lands in Smallville and gives Superboy problems with his high-tech gimmicks.

Unknown said...

Viva Adventure Sunday!

I could see this story being updated with the hunter as a dangerously obsessive psychotic. It probably has in one form or another. This would've made another great episode of that mythical 50's Aquaman show in my mind.

James Chatterton

rob! said...

"that mythical 50's Aquaman show in my mind."

Sundays at 8, right after The World of Disney!

Unknown said...

If only, Rob, if only.

james Chatterton