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Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Dark Knight Returns

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I finally got around to watching the animated adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns (which I enjoyed for the most part), and of course it made me recall just how brilliant and (still!) fresh the original comic series was.

I was fifteen or so when it came out, and the buzz about it (in those Paleozoic, pre-internet days) was huge. I used to get my comics in the mail from a subscription service, and I still remember getting off the school bus, knowing the first issue was waiting for me, and running as fast and hard as I could to get home so I could read it. It didn't disappoint.

When I first read the series, this page--where Superman muses about what happened to the other Justice Leaguers--always kinda bugged me, because Aquaman is not mentioned, nor is he in the entire series*. Now, I realized that there was no plausible reason for Aquaman to be involved in this story at all, but of course the Aqua-Fan in me wondered what ol' Arthur thought about what had taken place with his former friends.


The obvious answer is that, like Diana and Hal, Arthur
permanently abandoned humanity, surely retreating to the safe confines of Atlantis. The 1970s/80s Aquaman always had a particular chip on his shoulder, so if Frank Miller had bothered to map out what happened to the rest of the DCU during this series time frame, Atlantis was most likely his answer.

But I was curious--anyone else have any other ideas? Did Aquaman go anywhere else? Could he have? Let us know your thoughts...




(*Of course, I was perfectly happy Miller left Aquaman out of The Dark Knight Strikes Back)



5 comments:

Rock Roche said...

I'd like to see an Aquaman in this era/timeline. No hook though.

Randy Meyer said...

Since the Earth is like 70% water and Arthur most likely hasn't seen all of it, most likely he also could have just simply gone exploring uncharted (unswimmed?? unswummed???) territory.

Michael Bailey said...

I would assume he went back to Atlantis as well. That's where Mark Waid and Alex Ross put him in KINGDOM COME and while the two stories have little in common outside of taking place in a vague near-future and having plot points that would eventually show up in the "real" DCU it makes sense that Arthur would have said, "Peace," and gone back to Atlantis. For all we know something really bad was going on there that needed his attention and when he popped back up on land and saw how everyone had quit he would have either returned to his home or become a nomad roaming the ocean and helping where he was needed.

Earth 2 Chris said...

Just count your blessings. As great as DK was, DK2 was an abomination. I'm still not convinced it wasn't Miller flipping DC the bird and taking their money at the same time. See also "All-Star Batman".

Chris

Sarah Park said...

My kid goes crazy over dark knight.