Last week, the creative team of Cullen Bunn, Trevor McCarthy, and Guy Major debuted their new direction for AQUAMAN, which just hit issue #41. With the new creative team came a new look and a new status quo for the character.
Before we delve into the actual issue, let's take a look at the character. Although a lot of people remember Aquaman as the King of Atlantis and a man wearing an orange shirt and green pants, the character has gone through more changes that stuck for a long period of time, moreso than most DC characters. Aquaman spent quite a bit of time, with long hair and a beard, with a hook hand. Aquaman also cleaned up his act and hand said missing hand made of mystical water. Right after that, he was a squid, that died, while his protege, Arthur Joseph Curry, roamed the seven seas with a sword. Then, the real Aquaman came back to life as a Black Lantern. Ok, the Black Lantern bit didn't stick long, but you get the point. Aquaman is a character that is always evolving and changing. Change is a big part of the makeup of this character, who doesn't fit in with humans and doesn't fit in with Atlantians.
There are a lot of changes here as well and they're thrown at Aquaman fans pretty quickly. It's a bit daunting and confusing, since the readers don't know the context just yet, but Bunn is setting the scene.
First off, Aquaman doesn't have his traditional Trident. He's got a knife that turns into a trident, Sword of Omens style. Well, that's not the first change you'll notice. Arthur's complete look as changed quite a bit. Check it out.
The traditional outfit is gone and it's replaced with something that is a mixture of a little bit of the old and whole lot more of the new. More than anything else, the top half of him has more of an Atlantian look that ever before, while still paying a bit of homage to the past. The gauntlets remind me of what Arthur Joseph Curry wore during SWORD OF ATLANTIS and the top matches that as well. His look and trident aren't the only changes though.
It turns out that Atlantis is on the hunt for Aquaman and he's wanted (waaaanted!) dead or alive. We know some time has past between issue #40 and #41, but what could have Aquaman done that resulted in not just one, but numerous people from Atlantis hunting him down? We get some
There's a whole bunch of people, from Atlantis, and they've been hidden away in the Amazon. It seems there's been a split with the Atlantian people: those who are loyal to whoever is in charge in the current regime in Atlantis, which may be Mera, for all we know, and those hidden away in the Amazon that are still loyal to Aquaman.
Aquaman did go in a very interesting direction and there's a lot of mystery as to how this all happened. Looks like we'll have to keep reading to find out how this all went down. What did you think of the new direction? Let us know.
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