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Saturday, April 18, 2015

Convergence: Aquaman #1

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Comics Weekend "Fish Bowl" by Tony Bedard, Cliff Richards, and John Rauch.

In the domed city of Metropolis, two citizens are accosted by a mugger, only to have the crime stopped by the urban vigilante known as...Aquaman?!?

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Many heroes who happened to be in Metropolis when the dome went up and now trapped there, making the city safer than Kinshasha, Zaire during The Rumble in the Jungle. Local reporter Cat Grant is doing a TV report on the hero who seems the most out of the place, the Sea King. We learn that Aquaman fought Chemo which, while leading to his (its?) defeat, it also left Metroplois Harbor poisoned, which is about the last thing Aquaman wanted.

Having talked S.T.A.R. Labs into making him a prosthetic hook for a hand, they are about the only people he's now bothering to converse with:


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Aquaman decides to relax with a rejuvenating shower, only to have it interrupted by a message broadcast across the city. The disembodied voice warns that the dome will be coming down, and all the heroes will have to enter into a competition for survival. Even more shocking, it becomes clear that Metropolis is not just domed, but has been teleported off planet!


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Across town, at the Dept. of Paranormal Operations, an armed commando creatively named Deathblow shows up and starts shooting up the place, killing many. He does some research on various meta-humans, stopping on...Aquaman. To be continued!


I'm still not sure I grasp the point of these "Convergence" books, though I will say I enjoyed this one a lot more than last week's Justice League. The art by Cliff Richards reminds me of Paul Gulacy (and that's a good thing), and Becky Cloonan's cover is nifty (hopefully this is not the only Aquaman we ever get from her).

I can't say I missed Angry Loner Aquaman--at all--but in this case he has every reason to be prickly. It's mentioned that there is no fresh water for Arthur to access, so he's getting by with bottled water. That's not cheap!


5 comments:

r duncan said...

Ever heard of Deathblow. Is that the best they could do?

rob! said...

Yes, yes it is.

Earth 2 Chris said...

Did DC pull a bait and switch with Convergence? I thought they were supposedly revisiting "real" published versions of the characters, not new Elseworlds?

Chris

Martin Gray said...

Good grief, I looked up Deathblow - apparently, in Wildstorm terms, he's a hero. Honestly, he's not fit to share a book with even grumpy Aquaman.

I get soooo sick of people in DC realities nowadays using that reductive description of Aquaman as 'the guy who talks to fish'. At this point in his career he's saved the world dozens of times with the JLA, he'd be more respected than this. Heck, he's even led the JLA. (I suppose we should be glad the insult isn't 'Hey, it's the guy who led Justice League Detroit'.)

I liked Cliff Richards' and John Rauch's art lots, great observation re: Gulacy. And while I'm a Becky Cloonan fan, this cover didn't work for me - it reminded me more of Joseph Aquaman than Arthur.

Lucien Desar said...

This issue was OK, but I felt the writer wanted to not write about the character of Aquaman as much as other characters. I liked the style of artwork though so kudos to the artist.