Aquaman #1

Aquaman is lame. And I'm not talking about the over-cliched version of Aquaman. Aquaman as he really is, is lame. Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis do their best job to convince us otherwise this issue, putting all of Aquaman's best strengths on display. Many other comic readers bought into this intent, coming away from reading it thinking about how badass Aquaman really is. I did not share their reaction.

Fact is, I'm not interested in a story of a guy who looks like a Abercrombie model dressed in fish scales and holding a trident. He looks like a wimp, but whose just very angry and uptight all the time. Also, I could not care less about Atlantis, or being telepathic with fish. Yes I get it that his muscles are much stronger because he's underwater constantly and yadda yadda yadda, but I still don't care.

I gave this title a chance because I heard rave reviews about it. And when you hear a recommendation from those you trust, you give it a shot. And that's why I picked it up, even though I wasn't originally planning on it. (The other two titles I did this with were Swamp Thing and Animal Man, the former decently good, the latter very strong).
Big Mistake. To be fair, this book isn't bad, I just don't find it interesting. It's Aquaman bitter against the world that thinks he's somehow a lesser hero (he is) and a joke (try wearing a better costume?). He finds himself at an identity crisis, deciding to leave Atlantis behind as he thinks they'll never think of him as one of them (well there goes the most interesting thing about him, that's not a good start).

So this book successfully destroyed the only interesting part of the Aquaman mythos, and doesn't set anything in motion for future issues besides some weird fish-monsters we're told nothing about. To be fair again, Johns books move slow. He likes to pack a lot of action in, and dialogue takes him forever to develop. It's short and sweet, or it takes the whole issue. So really, his plots advance really slow if you're measuring it by-issue.

You shouldn't talk to people either.

But at some point, when one has said "well I don't like this book, but it has the redeeming qualities of A....B....C...." it gets to be a moot point. It can only redeem itself so much. For example, Ivan Reis is a strong artist, so no qualms there, but if I see another Aquaman sneer I'm going to puke. Aquaman comes off as an egotistical jerk with no patience and no empathy, which is exactly how Geoff Johns wrote him. So great execution team, but why do I want to read this book?

What I liked: The more I think about it, the more I didn't like this comic. I can't think of anything I truly enjoyed about this. Though I did enjoy how Reis drew the annoying man in the restaurant as a hipster. Hipsters suck.

What I didn't: The character Aquaman.

Conclusion: I'm pretty lenient on most number ones, but I find it hard to believe I'll be picking up issue #2 of this. I think I'm going to continue to read all the others I reviewed, but I'm going to have to be in a very good mood to give this issue another shot, I give it a 6.4/10 (F).