It's been a few years since the cancellation, so I guess it's time for another doomed Aquaman series. Veitch starts off the series with an unusual concept, that Aquaman has been banned from the water. It's unusual, and certainly different from what has gone before, but so far it's just not all that interesting. The first issue is spent largely dealing with the biggest effect of his last series, leading me to wonder if maybe each new Aquaman opening story arc can result in something to do with Aquaman losing or gaining a hand. Maybe in about ten years he can lose another extremity in another shocking opening arc.
Part of the problem for me is that Aquaman is built on a shaky foundation, the tail end of JLA's "Obsidian Age," which I honestly didn't really enjoy. Kelly's take on the Atlantis of old and the villains who were running it left me cold, and so I found myself not really caring how the story ended, even though I liked the modern day segments of the story. Unfortunately, Veitch starts this story off assuming every reader has read the "Obsidian Age" and knows exactly what Aquaman did to so anger all of his people, including his former advisor and ex-wife, so much so that they're willing to murder him.
That's a fairly big stretch, and the punishment that the Atlanteans have come up seems harsh enough without it being carried out by those who were loyally serving Aquaman, or even extending feelings of friendship or love, the last time I saw him. So a bunch of half-explained nonsense about how he sank Atlantis again and "murdered their myth" just doesn't cut it. There's been no previous indication that the Atlanteans were at all unhappy about their underwater existence at this point, and while it would have been possible to sell the idea, Veitch doesn't put any time into it, he just asks the reader to accept his outlandish premise and move on.
If you can do that, you'll be treated to a sequence where Aquaman encounters another fictional character with a strong tie to water. Actually, while I found this encounter to be somewhat bizarre and coincidental, and yet another example of things that Veitch didn't bother to lay any foundation for, I like the basic idea. Tying this Arthur into the other King Arthur is not unheard of, but it's been lightly touched upon if at all, and the use of the Lady of the Lake is a clever element from the Arthur mythos to bring into Aquaman's world.
Yvel Guichet and Mark Propst provide some solid artwork for the book, getting much stronger in the latter half of the book when they're on a more land-based setting, which make them seem an odd choice for Aquaman if that didn't fit so well with the direction Veitch is taking the book in. While I found the work on Arthur and the reef a little sketchy and unimpressive, everything from the moment of the hook landing in the water on was effective and attractive. I especially enjoyed Guichet's take on the Lady of the Lake.
