Aquaman not only returns to active duty in the DC Universe, but gets an ongoing series (again) to boot. I wondered if a new creative team and a new direction might spark my interest in the character once again. The answer, unfortunately, is no, but on the other hand, I'm still curious about what this new direction might prove to be. While Veitch fills new readers in on the title character's new status quo as undersea persona non grata (there's my Latin quota for the month), he doesn't exactly hook the audience with anything particularly new.
The people of Atlantis are outraged. The perpetrator of the greatest crime the magical nation has ever known -- the sinking of the fabled city -- stands revealed, and it's none other than their king, Aquaman. He is sentenced to death by dehydration, and his attempts to survive are twarted by Atlantean soldiers. Even the surrounding sealife rejects him, and it appears all is lost... until an inland source of water comes into sight. But it's not the water that saves him, but the magical woman who emerges from within the pool.
Guichet's angular style manages to capture the supernatural and organic elements of the plot nicely. Eyring's colors are vibrant, but they don't detract from the more serious nature of the story; of course, that should come as no surprise to those of us who enjoyed his work on Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's Transmetropolitan. And Alex Maleev's cover, though it gives away this issue's ending, is eye-catching. However, the interior art reinforces the sense of the alien that's established in the script and that makes it difficult to relate to these characters.
The highlight of this issue is how elements of legend serve as catalysts for this new direction in the title character's life. The sinking of Atlantis is a natural, but the incorporation of an Arthurian myth works surprisingly well too. The socio-political attitude of Atlantis are intriguing as well, but I get the impression we won't be seeing much more of that, as this title seems to be about an Aquaman in exile.
The problem, though, is that Veitch reinforces the more alien aspects of the characters here. There's nothing to which the reader can relate. The flip, colloquial tone that Peter David brought to the character the last time a new series was launched helped to overcome that, but here, there's nothing grounded about character or his circumstances.
