Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #40

Of all the DC "One Year Later" titles, this is the one that seems the most pronounced in its shift to the new creative team. For one thing, it's got a spanking new subtitle. For another, it reads for all intents and purposes like the first issue of an all-new comic book that shares little in common with Aquaman beyond the title, the costume and the odd continuity back-reference. My wife teased me for buying this comic, because I spend a lot of time teasing Aquaman. He's a ridiculous superhero. He's like a police officer for the ocean, only how many muggings are there among the toothfish and the sturgeon? When he's with the Justice League, it's almost impossible to give him something worthwhile to do. Many writers have tried to improve the character in various superficial ways. They killed him off for a while. They cut off his hand and gave him a hook (y'arr!!). They gave him a magical hand made of water. Occassionally some writers even experimenting with writing decent scripts for the guy. All to no avail. Aquaman just doesn't stick, and he doesn't appeal. I'm not sure what the record is for the number of re-launches of a superhero character in America, but Aquaman has to easily make the top ten. The readership just doesn't care enough about it, but he's too old and famous for DC to ever let him retire. So here we are again. A new writer - Kurt Busiek - with a new artist - Butch Guise - and an all-new wrinkle on the character. This time around a young blonde guy named Arthur Curry falls into the open ocean after a storm and discovers he is destined to be Aquaman. He's joined by an old wizard and a humanoid shark warrior-king. This is an odd book. It says it's "One Year Later" but it could easily be 100 years earlier, or in another universe altogether. It's hard to pinpoint it, and this makes it a pretty frustrating read. Hopefully future issues will clear things up a bit - as long as the readership is patient enough to keep spending money on each month's issue. Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis is a bold gamble, turning a mediocre superhero comic into an underwater sword-and-sorcery book. Guice's art is beautiful: I'm pretty certain they're directly colouring his pencils, because it's way too gentle and sketchy a look to have just been inked. Busiek writes a reasonably engaging script, but it suffers from being all questions and all prologue. Is this comic going to be worth your while? Right now it's difficult to say. I'm just confused.