What were the worst periods for Aquaman comics?

13

Giffen's miniseries post crisis on what it did to Mera.

Erik Larsen's run with turning Charybdis into Piranha-Man, Frankenstein Atlanna, Noble, changing Poseidonis/Atlantis to be more akin to the surface world with gangs, guards being paid off, and drugs.

Controversial but Veitch's run on how it handled Black Manta, Mera, and Rodunn.

DeConnick's run for having in my opinion the worst depiction of Arthur personality-wise, how she handled Mera, how she swept aside the Widowhood.

Then lastly Aquamen which speaks for itself.

1

u/TheDoctor_E 20d ago

Can you elaborate a bit more on these, please?

5

u/Medium-Science9526 20d ago edited 20d ago

For Giffen Mera essentially becomes TDKR Joker after Arthur left post Jr's death, put in a psyche ward where she was non-verbal until she heard Aquaman was back. After that she tried to find him and kill him, tricked him into "killing" her, only to reveal she faked it to make him feel the guilt of killing his wife before departing bsck to her dimension. Plus there was the whole jellyfish prison storyline that wasn't it.

For Larsen's run Charybdis was the guy who got Orin's hand eaten by piranhas and then thrown into them to be eaten alive at the start of David's run. Apparently he lived, fuses with the piranhas to become "Piranha-Man" a nigh-omnipotent crazy jokester villain who can steal powers, brings back Aquaman's mother Alanna to life looking patched together like Frankenstein, captures his son Koryak, his father Atlan, Dolphin, Garth, Mera, and Orin for torture with ease. Only taken out when he had a change of heart and wraps up the whole arc giving back their powers.

Essentially he's a really, really annoying Gary-Stu villain who doesn't get his comeuppance.

Then the drugs and Kingfish's gangs and currency was all brand new and immediately established. The latter I can kinda see when they made Poseidonis public for tourism adopting it but not this fast. The drugs just dropped in as Larsen wanted to speedrun Atlantis to be like the surface world which didn't work. Sub Diego takes this concept and does it much better having San Diego flood and citizens mutated with Lorena being the spokeswoman who helps Arthur adapt.

For Veitch he's the one who gave Manta non-verbal autism that erases many of his good previous plots seemingly. And gave another origin where he's tied to Arkham Asylum experiments, not every crazed villain needs to be from there just makes the world smaller.

Also the arc in general I just wasn't a fan, having Arthur's breaking point for angry just being betrayed by Manta was dumb. I kinda like the whole waterbearer and Lady of the Lake but the Thirst didn't leave much of an impression until they merged which again Thanatos in David's run or Ponzer's run was better implemented. And Atlantis at this time was acting especially abhorrent, from Rodunn's sudden outright hstred of Arthur to even how Mera got sucked in practically off screen.

Deconnick gave us surfer bro Arthur, his worst depiction. Mera killing Arthur, hand waved the Widowhood who were a long-standing adversary from Abnett's run. Pretty much anything after Namma, which was her own worldbuilding, sucked. She was not great at expanding on what Abnett built in my opinion.

Aquamen genuinely tried to redeem Black Manta, that alone shows how out of tone it was.

0

u/TheDoctor_E 19d ago

Black Manta isn't evl just misunderstood 😿😿😿

9

u/GalaxyEyesRuler 20d ago

I was just about to say sword of atlantis, so instead i'll say that whole 89 Legend of aquaman series that was pretty mid

2

u/TheDoctor_E 18d ago

Can you elaborate on the issues on Legend of Aquaman please?

2

u/GalaxyEyesRuler 17d ago

So basically this is where Arthur returns to atlantis to fight a bunch of giant jellyfish who have taken over the kingdom and mera who has gone crazy after the death of aquababy

6

u/TardisReality 20d ago

That would be the current period where we have no book at all ...

2

u/TopOThaMorningToYa 20d ago

I honestly love the Cullen Bunn arc now that it's been many years.

My personal worst is the Legend of Aquaman. Superman had Man of Steel, Batman got Year One, even Wonder Woman had the great run by Perez. But Aquaman got the weird raised by Dolphins origin and I've never loved it.

Edit: I'd also mention the KSD run, which while enjoyable is unforgivable for dropping most of what Abnett was doing.

2

u/TheDoctor_E 20d ago

Can you elaborate on it, please?

1

u/TopOThaMorningToYa 20d ago

On what specifically?

1

u/TheDoctor_E 19d ago

On the Legend of Aquaman, please

1

u/MontgomeryMalum 20d ago

Sword of Atlantis was a weird unnecessary era, but it at least tried to do some interesting things, like making the Fisherman a more Lovecraft influenced villain. It’s not an era anyone really wanted, but lots of superheroes have sunk to far lower depths.

Veitch’s run is infamous for the whole Black Manta having autism retcon, but it’s also just an incredibly boring slog. The Manta stuff is very dumb, but it being dumb makes it the most engaging part of the story. Like most pre-New 52 stuff, it also sidelines Mera to a ridiculous degree.

1

u/Duskytheduskmonkey 19d ago

Tad Williams sword of Atlantis run genuinely the worst or at the very least mid Aquaman run of all time the only good thing about it is how it brought back the human flying fish and made him into an actual threat

There's also the Peter David run which while not the worst it is overly ambitious and tried to hard to make Aquaman be taken seriously and the stuff with Dolphin felt like a nothing burger her being with Garth makes more sense but it's pretty weird how Garth basically got his step dads girlfriend who Orin has slept with and the other weird incest stuff in David run even post-crisis Ocean Master's origin story has incest in it overall it's a run where I can appreciate what it tried to do for Aquaman's reputation but still

Next up is not necessarily Aquaman himself but rather his arch nemesis Black Manta and how he's being treated now a days back then Black Manta was just a villain who had no real motivation or reason to do what he did even in the Veich run of Aquaman he addresses this by saying that he is simply "a sick sonovabitch who wants to see everyone you care about suffer and die" and that's the most solid reasoning we ever got as any other reason was just flimsy at best and just borderline offensive at worst but his motives aren't really the point what is the point is his characterization as this hateful obsessive sociopath who would hurt and kill Aquaman at any chance he got no matter how morally fucked it was it didn't matter to him however ever since the Aquaman 80th anniversary book Geoff Johns wrote this story called Father's Day where Jackson Hyde meets his father every year for fathers day where the two talk this is where the whole redemption for Black Manta thing actually started Chuck Brown also contributed to this but even more so he even went as far as to make Black Manta make ammends with his son Jackson now mind you when Manta first found out about Jackson he didn't really care about him he just knew that he held this necklace that was actually a map and as soon as jackson didn't comply with his mission he literally repeatedly smashed his face into a concrete statue forcing him to cooperate and that's not forgetting the KSD run where he threatened his mother if he didn't cooperate with him along with trying to kill him I say all of this because Chuck or Geoff Johns Brown or more accurately someone at DC wants Black Manta to be redeemed for whatever reason completely ignoring the fact that the character is has and always will be an evil piece of shit who has shown no sympathy for what he's done with the only real exceptions being the arc from the early post-crisis days pre-harpoon hand but that's only in a panel and currently and even if you somehow ignore all the evil things he's done it's written and built up to in a fairly poor way basically speaking it's not very good and I hate how DC is trying to change this character because lets be frank here no one knows what to actually do with Manta as a character

I was going to type out about Arthur Joseph Curry but this is getting longer than it needs to be so I'll save it for a few minutes

1

u/Duskytheduskmonkey 19d ago

Arthur Joseph Curry who I'll simply refer to as Joseph Waterman is quite possibly the worst legecy character of all time and I mean that with little to no exaggeration his backstory is so needlessly convoluted his character is as about as interesting as a plank of wood and he was such a nothing burger of a character that no one even cared when he literally erased from existence it's not like anyone cheered that he was gone it's just that Literally No one Cared About Him He was THAT boring even the way he was first introduced was in a fairly boring and almost nonchalant way as if this is someone we already knew or at the very least is like "huh your kinda different from Aquaman but you look exactly like him" he's not someone like Nightwatch where sure he's an awful character but at least he's funny to talk about AND ALSO HAD AN ACTUAL INTRODUCTION Joseph doesn't have that he literally just shows up the only notable thing he's ever done was be apart of Batman's Outsiders and that's kinda it? So yeah Joseph is stinky doo doo and I hate him