Unlike those characters, Aquaman had never ceased publication at the end of the 1940s. Readers remained familiar with him from his appearances in the popular new title Justice League of America, and from backup stories in Adventure Comics in a feature that had, since 1951, been graced with the sumptuous pencils of one of the few female artists in comics, Ramona Fradon.
 |
| Here's the original house ad. |
Aquaman’s brief stories had done little with Atlantis before Showcase 30. In fact, Aquaman had never even visited his exiled mother’s birthplace until that issue, when scaly amphibious aliens seized control of the domed underwater city. They threatened to take control of the whole planet with flying submarines armed with heat rays that could melt skyscrapers, so Aquaman and Aqualad had to try to stop them, despite the long odds.
“From 1958 on, the Superman family under (Aquaman creator Mort) Weisinger's editing started building up a complex mythos,” recalled comics historian Michael E. Grost. “There are signs that during 1959-1960, something similar was attempted for Aquaman.”
“Just as Superman came from the advanced planet Krypton, so do Aquaman's ancestors hail from the advanced civilization of Atlantis, although Aquaman himself was born on the Earth’s surface. Just as the bottled city of Kandor represents a survival of Krypton on Earth, one that can be visited by the characters, so does the domed undersea remnant of sunken Atlantis represent a continuation of that magnificent civilization.”
Scenes like that seemingly endless army of loyal sea creatures parading past teenaged Arthur Curry were arresting to me in 1960, and remain vivid in memory even now.
No comments:
Post a Comment