The following contains spoilers for Aquaman #4, on sale now
I was talking to Mark Waid recently about the reveal of the identities of the mysterious Inferno in the pages of Justice League Unlimited, something that occurred after just five issues, and when I asked him about the speed he was moving the plot, he noted:
You know what? This is 2025, we don’t have time to set the stage over and over and over again and with so many characters to service. You know, we’re making the Legion of Super-Heroes look like a coffee club in terms of the breadth and scope of the membership. So there’s no time to waste, we have got to get moving.
I was thinking about that when noting the rapid pace in the latest issue of Jeremy Adams and John Timms’ Aquaman, which burns through a lot of plot in this action-packed issue, but it also makes me think about how the previous issue was extremely exposition-filled, so I almost wonder if the book is still trying to find a balance between filling us in on TOO much information, and having an issue that is almost ALL action (plus one of those classic, «I can’t tell you the truth because…reasons» answers from a character)
In Aquaman #4 (by writer Jeremy Adams, artist John Timms, colorist Rex Lokus, and letterer Dave Sharpe), Adams is clearly continuing down the path of «If I want to make Aquaman work as a comic book character, I need to make him as badass as popular while keeping the classic aspects of the character present, so that we can celebrate the actual classic character and not some completely different version of the character» that he started in the first issue, and it really IS working, as Aquaman comes off as extremely badass in this issue, although, oddly enough, the scene depicted on the cover wasn’t in the actual issue itself, soo…that’s weird (and the cover was really cool-looking, so you’d really WANT it to be in the comic, ya know? Unless the mermaid is meant to symbolize Lori Lemaris?).
How does Adams bring Mera back into the series?
One of the biggest concerns that Aquaman fans have with this series is the same concern that they have with most Aquaman runs, which is that most Aquaman writers have determined that the best way to highlight Aquaman is to take him away from Atlantis, and that’s what Adams has done, as well, but fans obviously are big fans of Mera (note that, like, half of the variant covers for this series so far have been Mera covers), and so Adams cleverly uses a dream to bring Mera back into the book briefly via a flashback to how Aquaman first met Mera (notably, Adams is going back to the classic first meeting of Aquaman and Mera, thus retconning the various retcons depicting alternate versions of their first meeting).
This dream does more than just find a way to get Mera into the comic, though, as it serves two other purposes…
1. It serves to remind the readers that Adams is a fan of Mera, as well, and that Aquaman is still devoted to her, so you don’t have to worry about Aquaman finding some other love interest. It’s all about Mera, and….
2. It reminds Aquaman to think outside the box with his new powers, which he received from Mera, and that shows up in a big way in this issue.
What are the ways that Aquaman is badass in this issue?
In the previous issue, Lori Lemaris and a group of fellow mermaids (remember, all of Atlantis has been stolen away to another dimension, and some time has passed since it happened, so a lot of bad stuff has gone down while they were gone, leading heroic characters like Lori Lemaris to become mercenaries) took Aquaman captive, and are bringing him to Dagon, an old Aquaman villain (who had powers like Mera) that Adams has brought back (after Dagon had just a single appearance many decades ago in an issue of Justice League of America).
The first badass moment was Aquaman using his new water powers to remove all of the water from the wood in the boat he is being held on, thus making the wood dry and easy to break. That was such a clever use of his powers by Adams (and this is the same dude who had Aquaman control his own blood and turn it into a blade in issue #2, so he’s all about badass usages of Aquaman’s powers). Aquaman finds Arion and the Lady of the Lake, and they’ve created a new weapon for him, and Aquaman unleashes it in an epic sequence where he basically cuts the pirate ship of Lori and the Mermaid’s in half.
The ship, by the way, was traveling on a strange, like, water highway through the sky, and there is an awesome moment when Aquaman dives into that water, and sees a shocking upside down city in the water. Timms and Lokus are doing an outstanding job on these epic moments, as it really elevates the whole series in a big way.
Meanwhile, Dave Sharpe had a particularly good job on the lettering in this issue, with some epic word balloons showing how badass Aquaman is at the end of the issue where he is now armed with his magical weapon that is bound to his soul. The «Dark Tide» concept has been a big part of these early issues, and by the end of the issue, you can really see where Adams is going with it, and it is very cool.
