] type='image/vnd.microsoft.icon'/>

Sunday, January 06, 2013

Adventure Comics #216 - Sept. 1955

sg
Comics Weekend "The Invasion of the Sea-Men" by Jack Miller(?) and Ramona Fradon.

It's Adventure Sunday!

All right everyone, stop giggling:
sg
sg
sg
Making their way through a curtain of sea weed, the aliens find what they believe to be a throne room. Sitting on the throne is a goldfish, which begins to "speak" to the aliens (it's actually Aquaman, sitting nearby, projecting his telepathic thoughts)! 

The aliens reach for the goldfish, but are stopped by a field of electricity, which King Goldy claims comes from him. Then he does something even more impressive:
sg
sg
...and with that, so ends another adventure for Aquaman!


I love how the aliens aren't even fully gone before Aquaman decides to call it a day. What happened, Arthur? Have you lost your passion for this job? The 1940s Aquaman would have dropped a pile of burning rocks on them, or something equally brutal. Damn Wertham!

This story contains a small piece of development for the character--the idea that Aquaman can "project" his telepathic thoughts, so that others can hear them aloud. To my memory this story is the first time it was shown he could do that. And even after several decades of development hence, it's still not something you see Aquaman do very much.

Fradon Note: I love that last panel on page five: very iconic. If DC had ever done little cover corner symbols like Marvel, that would have made a great one.

  

4 comments:

Anthony said...

Guess a *bit* of progress on the telepathy front, even though it seems like Aquaman's surprised (again) at seeing aliens with telepathy/his sea creature communication still seems more "Dr. Doolittle"-like...

Re: "calling it a day," at least the aliens here had less sorry tech than the last "Adventure Sunday" installment's aliens!

Finally, Arthur has yellow gloves again in this story.

Re: Superboy: Superboy rescues a missing history museum professor, Prof. Mark Olsen, from the remnants of a Kryptonian city that's landed in Africa. Also an appearance by a preschool aged Jimmy Olsen (possibly his first Earth-1 chronological appearance, though I recall a later Superboy story where a toddler-aged Jimmy appears...).

Andy Luckett said...

I'm really fighting the urge to make a joke about the title of this Aquaman story. Ah, simpler times.

Another fun, goofy premise for an Aquaman tale, with the Sea King using his brain as much as his brawn to settle the villains' hash. I do like the alien weapons/traps; pretty creative. And that last panel on page five is totally cool/memorable, Rob.

Sean Koury said...

Invasion of the Sea-Men. *snort* :)

Anonymous said...

Viva Adventure Sunday!

Okay, so I'm late to the party. I'm really enjoying the gradual change from the golden to the silver age that we've been reading lately. This was an especially fun story, and reminded me of why I've always been an Aquaman fan.

James Chatterton