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Sunday, April 27, 2014

Adventure Comics #280 - Jan. 1961

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Comics Weekend "The Lost Ocean!" by Robert Bernstein(?) and Ramona Fradon.

It's Adventure Sunday!

As if Aquaman wasn't busy enough...
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Aquaman and Aqualad are introduced to the show's creatures, made by the special effects department (ala Bruce the Shark in Jaws).

But when dealing with a fabricated prehistoric whale, something goes wrong and the creature becomes a real threat! Aquaman deals with the fake monster, and, watching from the sidelines, the show's director realizes he's filmed something amazing:
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...and so ends another adventure for Aquaman and Aqualad!


This angle has been briefly covered before in superhero stories--someone with super powers pinch-hitting for movie stunt men--and I would have loved to have seen that story thread pursued more, whether in Aquaman or with someone else. There was probably a lot of story potential there.
This issue's letters page features a letter from a young woman named Ann Winquist, whose favorite feature in Adventure Comics is not, like you'd expect, Superboy:
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...a girl after my own heart.

I have a really romantic image in my head from this letter--imagine being a young kid, living in the sunny Panama Canal Zone, reading Aquaman comics. Sounds like an amazing way to grow up. Ms. Winquist, if you're out there, please drop the Shrine a line!


Aquaman would once again spend time with the Justice League (fighting Kanjar Ro) and in Showcase (fighting pre-historic sea beasts) before coming back to Adventure Comics. He would not appear in issue #281, but returning for his penultimate appearance in #282, which we'll cover next week!


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Man, this is rather funny, but I was just reading an old issue of Flash that had the same basic plot! I think all of the Silver Age heroes went through this story at least once. It seems like every studio in Hollywood was making nothing but superhero flicks! The DC Universe must have seen some really awesome superhero movies much sooner than our world did! ;)

Anthony said...

>>It seems like every studio in Hollywood was making nothing but superhero flicks! <<

Completely unlike real life, then. ;-)

But yeah, the DCU does have its own superhero films... the Superman books in the 70s would occasionally feature/mention Gregory Reed, the lookalike actor who plays Superman in in-universe Superman movies/TV shows. Don't recall if Aquaman had a recurring similar actor...

"Sea Chase" I assume's the Earth-1 version of the classic TV show "Sea Hunt," which ran from 1958-61 in syndication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Hunt

Re: Superboy: Lori is a teenage mermaid girl (and future Superman girlfriend) who's prone to telling whoppers, which gets Superboy's attention. Superboy (*somehow*) maanges to use his super-brain to reform Lori into being an honest girl, which is followed by Lori's father erasing all memory of the two's meeting to keep Atlantis a secret.

This story seems to be the first one to acknowledge/try to reconcile that Aquaman's Atlantis and Superman's Atlantis didn't mesh, by revealing there's two Atlantean cities (one with merfolk, the other with humanoids). Tom Curry, Alanna and a very young Arthur appear in one flashback panel in this story.