The Good
What AQUAMAN AND THE OTHERS does well is give these characters a reason to come together as a team. The biggest worry about this book was that how would these characters come together without it feeling really shoehorned.
Spoilers ahead. What's really going on here is that the Others, who are all working on their own, find that their talismans are faulty. They're not working any more. On top of that, a mysterious group of men are trying to steal the artifacts from a few of Others. They learn that the talismans slowly lose their powers, the longer they are apart from each other. It gives these characters multiple reasons to work together.
What makes this first issue a lot of fun and intriguing is that this book explores four relatively new characters: Prisoner of War, The Operative, Ya'Wara, and Sky Alchesay. They may be tied, in a sense, to the Aquaman mythos, but the reader is really treated to something very new here. Writer Dan Jurgens starts off this series with a bang and really gives readers something to sink their teeth into.
On the art side of things, Lan Medina (pencils), Allen Martinez (inks), and Matt Milla (colors), do a great job at delivering a visually appealing book. Medina does a fine job at setting up characters within the panel and delivering incredibly fresh pages.
What's really cool about this is that is ties into to something much bigger that many people are looking forward to in upcoming months. Nope. Not spoiling it, folks, but that last page is awesome.
The Bad
It's a good start to a series, but not great. Fans of the AQUAMAN series will really enjoy what's going on in this issue because of its ties to The Others storyline, as well as AQUAMAN ANNUAL #1; however, this new series may be a bit tough for new readers to jump onto. They may not want to pick this up thinking that it's too deep (no pun intended) into Aquaman's world, but it's really not. Readers will miss out a little on who these characters are and their powers, but Jurgens does a good job at giving newcomers enough to keep new folks invested.
The Verdict
AQUAMAN & THE OTHERS #1 is quite a bit of fun, and it really starts to flesh out some characters created in the New 52 that haven't been around. The reason these characters are teamed up does not feel forced and the story Jurgens presents the reader is something that will keep this book going for a while. Overall, this is an impressing start to a new series.
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