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Sunday, June 16, 2013

Adventure Comics #239 - Aug. 1957

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Comics Weekend "The Voyage of the Good Ship Aquaman" by Otto Binder(?) and Ramona Fradon.

It's Adventure Sunday!

This month, Aquaman teams up with...Shirley Temple! No, not really, but how awesome would that have been?
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One again, Captain Wakeley's attempt at a rescue ends in failure: the electronic flame thrower ends up hitting the ship he's trying to free, not the iceberg it's trapped in! Aquaman steps in once more, swimming in circles so fast that he creates a massive wave, big enough to break the ship free.

Wakely, in tears, realizes he's failed again:
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...and so ends another adventure with Aquaman!

Wow, is Aquaman a good egg! Despite Wakely's near-fatal mistakes (three of them!), he's there to comfort his pal, even finding a solution to his problem. And then on top of that, he makes like a statue just so Wakely can seem like a big shot! I think the Justice Society, the All-Star Squadron, and/or The Seven Soldiers of Victory really missed a bet adding him to their roster, he probably would have been a great guy to have around the clubhouse: "Look, everyone--I've brought lobster for dinner! Dig in!"

If DC ever asked me to write a comic (cause yeah that's going to happen), I seriously think I'd ask to write an alt-history series starring the Golden Age Aquaman. He's too nice a fella to be just wiped out of existence, especially since in some ways the other Earth-2 big shots found their way back into "reality" years after the Crisis anyway.


5 comments:

Anthony said...

Lobsters for dinner? Imagining the lobsters would probably not go along with *that* particular "command"... :-p

Given the Seven Soldiers wound up time-lost for years (until that JLA/JSA team-up), it's a good thing Aquaman *didn't* join!

Re: Superboy: This month sees Krypto (thanks to exposure to a meteor) gain the power to talk for 24 hours. Amusing cover (Krypto insisting the heat of *his* x-ray vision is soooo much better ;-) ).

Also of interest is at one point, Krypto records a version of then-current hit Elvis song "Hound Dog". Even the original Big Mama Thornton version of the song as a reference wouldn't have been set very far in the past before 1957. An example of Superboy stories in the 40s/most of the 50s often lazily taking place in the same year as published, though Weisinger would soon set Superboy firmly in the early-to-mid 30s. (Superboy makes it back to a 50s setting in the early 70s starting with the issue where he teams up with Aquaboy...)

Russell said...

How awesome is Aquaman? He's STANDING UP on an octopus as he saves those people on page one.

I'm betting Batman can't do that.

Joseph Brian Scott said...

He should've saved that figurehead to add to the nascent Aquacave trophies!

Yeah, nobody rides an octopus like Aquaman. Most octopuses won't stand for it.

Unknown said...

Viva Adventure Sunday!

You heard it here first, folks...radioactive statues and the high seas don't mix.

Anthony, was that meteorite red by any chance? What would be more amazing, a dog that can fly or a dog that can talk?

I had that issue of Superboy with Aquaboy when I was a kid. It's one of my earliest comic memories. Has the Shrine covered it yet?

James Chatterton

Anthony said...

Looking at it again, it looked reddish-orange, though the story presents it as just some random "weird meteor". Red Kryptonite is formally introduced about a year after this story, though.

Given DC's universe, hard to say which would be more amazing...

And yeah, the Shrine's covered Aquaboy meeting Superboy.