Aquaman #28 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (story), Paul Pelletier (pencils), Sean Parsons & Andrew Hennessy (inks), Jeromy Cox (colors)

The Story: With any luck, Arthur can avoid getting Carrie-d at this high school function.

The Review: Geoff Johns did a lot of great things for this series, but one of the best things he did was firmly establish Arthur’s life in Amnesty Bay: holing up in his dad’s old lighthouse, getting fish and chips at the local diner, adopting a dog.  It was too easy to laugh at Aquaman when he was the undersea foreigner who visited the surface on occasion; you’re less comfortable poking fun at someone who genuinely wants to fit in.

As a big fan of a superhero’s out-of-costume moments, I’ve loved each development to Amnesty Bay as much as I’ve loved the purely Aquaman bits, like the Others or Atlantis’ troubled royal heritage.  You can thus imagine how much I’ve looked forward to Arthur’s high school reunion, which on paper is just a great idea.  School reunions are just so rife with dramatic possibilities; even for us regular folks, there’s a lot of baggage that comes from confronting that particular part of your past.  Imagine adding the weight of a secret origin on top of that.

What’s interesting about Arthur’s experience with his former Amnesty High classmates is that, despite his Atlantean background, despite a boyhood incident which he definitely attributes to his teenage isolation, his high school life wasn’t all that different from anyone else’s, and neither is his reunion.  To be sure, there’s some initial awkwardness that naturally arises when one is the most famous person in a room full of less-than-success stories (“Working at the cannery,” “Me too.  Cannery,” “Lobster boat,”  “I run a B & B!”  “Cannery.  And some lobster running.”).  But otherwise, Arthur’s reception is quite friendly, and he soon realizes he made more connections with people than he thought.  In that regard, his is the typical story of a person who allowed his adolescent angst to color the rest of his life.

Although most of Arthur’s former relationships are neatly resolved in somewhat sitcomy fashion by the end of the reunion, one is left noticeably open-ended: Danny, with whom Arthur was supposed to start a fishing business of their own before the truth about his parentage came out.  Bitter at the financial hardship he suffered after the sudden dissolution of their partnership, Danny snarls a few Atlantean epithets at Arthur and leaves.  In real life, this is the kind of relationship most people will find not worth salvaging, but Arthur is a superhero, and superheroes don’t really do loose ends.

But any reconciliation with Danny will have to wait a while, at least until after this discovery of Triton Base is dealt with.  With tensions already high between Atlantis and the surface, this unrepentant incursion into their territory is basically a big ol’ F.U. from the U.S. of A., angering Arthur nearly as much as his subjects.  To make the situation even more volatile, you have the idiotic, presumptuous provocation of one Mr. Blythe, clearly designed to push the Atlanteans over the edge.  Perhaps the most worrisome figure of Triton is the sunken-eyed, sallow-faced Dr. Orson, who sees the silver lining in a mortally injured crew member as an ideal guinea pig.

Pelletier has proved himself a thoroughly competent artist, and for lighter issues like this one, his friendly style makes you feel right at home.  If there’s one man who can get away with giving Arthur an overt blush as his high school sweetheart reminisces with Mera, it’s Pelletier.  But when it comes to the more action-oriented scenes, the age of Pelletier’s linework shows.  I admit this may be a reflection on the modern reader’s demand for spectacle, but Pelletier’s effects are distinctly old-school and clumsy, not quite on par with the sleek flash and bang of the average contemporary artist.

Conclusion: Fun, sentimental, heartwarming, and thoughtful, if not revelatory, just the way a high school reunion should be.

Grade: B

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – I’m delighted that the good people of Amnesty Bay use the decidedly East Coast “wicked” frequently in their vernacular.

– I like that Mera shows up to the reunion dressed for prom while everyone else is in either business-casual or cocktail wear.

– You have to admit, the fact that Arthur wooed his high school girlfriend with daily gifts from the sea is pretty adorable.

– Letterer Dezi Sienty strikes again!  This time, he not only transposes dialogue to someone else, he doubles it.  Notice that both Mera and Arthur say the same line (“I didn’t really do…”) in one panel, only Mera’s clearly not supposed to be saying anything.  It’s gotten to the point that anytime I see a dialogue error in a comic, I just assume it’s Sienty at work.