DCU Comic Book Reviews

AQUAMAN #10

Moon River

November 2003

Written by Rick Veitch

Pencils by Yvel Guichet

Inks by Mark Propst

Cover by Andrew Robinson

Synopsis

Aquaman dives into the mouth of Rainbow Serpent, following The Thirst for the search for the third water goddess.  Aquaman finds the Thirst ship, which has been damaged.  Bryhnhilde and Grymhilde are injured, but Aquaman uses his water hand to heal them.  The three of them find the Thirst, who in turn has found the water goddess at the end of the river of dreams, or Moon River.  Aquaman attacks the thirst and knocks the cup into the water.  Both dive in after it.  However, Aquaman is beset by emotions and the Thirst is able to get away to drink from the cup and take the essence of not only the water goddess, but also Bryhnhilde and Grymhilde.  The Thirst takes the third finger from Aquaman’s hand and then escapes, leaving Aquaman alone in the desert.  In New Atlantis, one of Hagen’s ministers is found dead.  Vulko confronts Man O' War and reminds him it was mistake to leave the body behind.  Suddenly, Hagen’s men come and accuse Vulko of plotting to overthrow the government, but they fail to find whomever it was Vulko was talking to thanks to an invisibility spell thrown by Tempest.  Meanwhile, Aquaman is slowly dying in the heat of the desert, cursing Black Manta for deserting him.  Suddenly, Black Manta appears; he had trouble finding Aquaman because he was dropped over 400 miles from where the originally started.  Aquaman thanks Black Manta and calls him friend.

Review

When I first picked up this issue, it felt bigger than usual.  Since this was issue #10, I thought that maybe it was an extra super-sized edition.  And then I read it and I actually enjoyed parts of the story and part of that, I felt, was that there seemed to be a lot of room to tell the story, especially the sequence with Vulko.  Essentially, the story read like it was bigger than the average comic book.  And then I counted the pages.  There were 22; normal size.  I am guessing the extra pages were all of the adverts.  I am not sure why I thought there were more pages than usual.  I am thinking that it is because there was plot movement, there was a flow to the story; nothing seemed extraneous or unnecessary.  So, yes, this issue was certainly an improvement over the previous issues. 

The dialogue was still very stilted, especially that of Bryhnhilde and Grymhilde, although I suspect their speech is supposed to be that way to show how of out-of-time they are.  But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.  Their presence in the story so far has not been needed, so I guess I am just not liking them at all. 

I did like the idea of Moon River.  I don’t like the name as I now have the song running through my head, but I did like the idea of the river and how its emotions played havoc on Aquaman.  The best moment was when the hatred boiled up and he raised his water hand to strike the Thirst, but had to let go because of what would happen, thus allowing the Thirst to get away and take the third water goddess. -- MRB

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