The Aquaman Shrine 2.0 Project

Back when I started the Shrine in October 2006, my "official" goal was simply to profess my love of all things orange and green, and show off my collection of Aqua-stuff, which was growing at a prodigious rate. But I did have another mission, which only really developed over time.

At the time, the classic Aquaman I knew and loved had been shunted aside in favor of a new version in Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis. While I liked that book just fine (and it has grown in my estimation over time), I was upset by what I perceived as DC's indifference--if not outright disrespect--for one of their flagship characters. So while Aquaman was the subject of a perfectly fine fan site at the time, I hoped that maybe, just maybe, my efforts could keep the homes fires a-burning until Aquaman returned to the pop cultural prominence I and others thought he deserved.

Well, seven years and change later, a lot of great stuff has happened to Aquaman: back with the Justice League, headlining two books, live-action TV debut, video games, tons of merchandise, Batman: Brave and the Bold, and now he's poised to become a full-fledged movie star! I'm not qualified to say how much (if anything) the Shrine's relentless efforts had to do with any of that, suffice to say that my "unofficial" goal way back when has been met, and then some. And for that, this Aqua-Fan is deliriously happy.

 

So I've been feeling that all this new found prominence demands the Shrine change its approach, it's raison d'etre if you will, and up its game significantly. Blogger has become increasingly difficult to work with, and at times has hampered our efforts to expand and improve the Shrine's usefulness. So we're working on overhauling the site from top to bottom, and launching a new Aquaman Shrine so we can be up, running, and ready for character's 75th birthday and his debut in Batman v. Superman. And that's where you come in.

One of the things I have been proudest of when it comes to the Shrine is the community we've built up over the past seven years. I've made lots of new friends, many of them the very professionals whose work on Aquaman I loved and read and inspired me to start the Shrine in the first place! The Shrine has benefited from the occasional guest post, plus work by Correspondents Russell Burbage and Andy Luckett, not to mention Joe Slab, who took the Shrine's Twitter feed and turned it into an active, thriving source of Aqua-Fandom all its own. There's also The Fire and Water Podcast of course, co-hosted by me and my pal The Irredeemable Shag, which helped move the Shrine into an exciting new medium. But we want to do more: We want the Shrine to be both visually appealing and easy to use, where the Aquaman Fan can keep up to date on the latest Sea King info, read reviews and view art, search the archives, access both the fan and creator community and much more!

So, to that end, the Shrine is looking for a small team of Aqua-Fans who are looking to add their professional skills to what we're calling The Aquaman Shrine 2.0, and join the team in an ongoing capacity. Currently we're looking for people with experience and interest in:

• Technical (Web Design & Maintenance)
• Promotion (Conventions, PR work, Advertising) 
• Content (Reviews, Posts, Sightings, Interviews, etc.)

If you have these skills and would like to apply them to the ever-growing Aqua-Fandom via work for the Shrine, please send an email to me at aquamanshrine@comcast.net, put the field(s) you're interested in in the subject line, and we'll get into the details. There are so many of you out there with so many talents that I'm really excited to see where the Shrine can go from here with your help. Aquaman's a great hero, and he deserves a site that's equally great.

Thanks everyone! Semper Aqua!