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Sunday, December 09, 2012

Adventure Comics #212 - May 1955

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Comics Weekend "The Giant Tropical Fish" by Jack Miller(?) and Ramona Fradon.

It's Adventure Sunday!

For those of who you can't make it out, the stamp on the cover says: "For Cheap Reading, Trade This At Miles Second Hand Store. Tools, Furniture, Etc. 512 Brady St. Davenport, Iowa." Any FOAMers hail from that neck of the woods?


While we sort out that mystery, Aquaman faces some of his finny not-necessarily-friends:
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Aquaman heads to the surface, where he sees a giant human boy with his feet dangling in the water. It's then he realizes that neither the boy or the fish are giant--it's he who has become very, very small!

Aquaman tries to escape the fish who see him as food, and gets sucked into a whirlpool. He struggles to free himself, but can't. He believes this is the end, and no one will ever know what became of him:
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...and with that, so ends another adventure for Aquaman!

Not sure why the writer (Jack Miller?) felt the need to work in the "It was all a dream" schtick, when by this point Aquaman had been involved in some definite sci-fi settings. I mean, once Aquaman has taken a fantastic voyage, why is this story so unbelievable?

On a separate note, storing your rare, valuable tropical fish in glass cases right by the waterline seems like a mediocre idea at best.


4 comments:

Aaron said...

Yikes! Aquaman is being confronted by a mix of semi-aggressive to aggressive tropicals!

The splash panel is nice. It's like a mock up of how I'd like to decorate our aquarium.

Anthony said...

Note Aquaman's back to yellow gloves in this story (versus last issue's green gloves), as he'll switch colors back and forth over the next several years...

Also of interest is he has to verbally speak his commands, keeping with the Golden Age version I suppose (versus telepathy).

Re: Superboy: When Superboy gets amnesia from stopping a runaway comet with strange chemicals (and goes missing for a few days), the Mayor of Smallville and a professor try to substitute a robot Superboy in his place. Obviously written before they introduced Superboy robots into Superboy's stories (which Ma and Pa would've just activated)...

Joseph Brian Scott said...

Transitional Aquaman's greatest peril was laryngitis! Or at least a nightmare about having laryngitis.

I think Aquaman may actually be a drowning man DREAMING that he's having all these underwater adventures in which he dreams fantastic things happen to him. "Aquaception at Owl Creek Bridge"!

Anonymous said...

Viva Adventure Sunday!

Are we absolutely sure that this isn't an Earth-1 story circa 1960? "Cause those tiny footprints sure seem like one of Ray Palmer's little pranks. I guess we'll never know.

Some nice tropical fish work from Ramona Fradon here. The color palette seems strangely muted, though. Was DC trying to save money on ink?

James Chatterton