Aquaman (Current Series) #15
Originally Presented at Comixtreme.com.
Quick Rating: Good
Title: American Tidal Part One
San Diego has fallen into the sea… hundreds of thousands are dead… and only Aquaman can find out why.
Writer: Will Pfeifer
Pencils: Patrick Gleason
Inker: Christian Alamy
Colors: Nathan Eyring
Letters: Jared K. Fletcher
Editor: Peter Tomasi
Cover Art: Alan Davis, Mark Farmer & Nathan Eyring
Publisher: DC Comics
Review: If I’m not mistaken, this is the first issue of Aquaman’s new relaunch (a whopping 14 issues after the previous relaunch). It also has the distinction of being the most gruesome Aquaman story I’ve ever read… and one of the best I’ve read in a long time.
Once you get past the cheesy title (c'mon, Pfeifer, "American Tidal?" What were you thinking?) the book opens up with the horrifying revelation that some cataclysm has plunged the city of San Diego beneath the ocean, killing four hundred thousand people. Nobody knows what happened, and President Pete Ross (what happened to Lex Luthor?) is trying to calm a nation afraid that a second devastating event could occur at any moment. Their only clue is a young man who comes stumbling out of the ocean a month after the devastation… and promptly drops dead.
You get the sense that this is the sort of story that will culminate in a time-travel event or some other such thing to restore a drastically-altered status quo, because it’s hard to imagine DC letting Pfeifer destroy a real city (unlike the destruction of fictional Coast City some years back) - not to mention that Luthor is unaccounted for. Despite that, though, it’s an engaging mystery, and you get the sense that only someone with Aquaman’s unique talents can handle it.
Gleason has a good art style, reminiscent in some points of Mike Mignola. The underwater scenes are really good, including some really grotesque images of corpses in the water and an autopsy late in the book. It’s not bad enough to put this in the “mature readers” category, but it’s worth noting that the ol’ Comics Code seal of approval is absent from the cover.
Aquaman has gotten a lot of flack over the years for being a lame character without much to do. That’s only true if you’ve got a writer who doesn’t know what to do with him. Judging by this first issue, Pfeifer will not have that problem. This is the best Aquaman I’ve read since Peter David’s groundbreaking run on the character.
Rating: 3.5/5
NOTE: As it turned out the "what happened to Luthor" question was answered by the delayed Superman/Batman #6.