You know, I have some friends who have seen Aquaman when press was recently flown out there for a special screening, sadly I am not one of those people as of yet – and while I’m still trying to read their faces like Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm; I, like you, have to tide myself (get it?) over with the latest trailer, which..dare I say it? Looks pretty solid. If nothing else, it looks very colorful, which is a nice showcase of how far we’ve come with DC on film in these recent years.

James Wan, the man has visual chops, there’s no denying it. There’s an impressive amount of design work being done here, and the action looks pretty top notch. The script will tell the tale, but it’s clear this will be a “see it on the biggest screen you can” type experience. Also, Patrick Wilson as Ocean Master gave me serious heart-eyes.

We’ll see if I make the press screening for this one. I’ll be in Hawaii right around the time it’s supposed to come out. Fair trade, yeah?

7 COMMENTS

  1. Right before Stan died, I started reading the Namor stories from TALES TO ASTONISH.

    It begins with Krang taking the throne to Atlantis and Namor going on a quest to get a trident to make him the undisputed king of Atlantis.

    I’m just saying …

  2. Agreed. So much of this is more like a Sub-Mariner story than Aquaman, – and Subby was first! I really wish Marvel had gained the movie rights back to Namor earlier. They wuz robbed.

  3. Been finally reading the Golden Age Sub-Mariner stories by Bill Everett, and they’re pretty wild. Dorma is Namor’s cousin and has the huge bulging eyes of a fish. Namor kills cops and innocent bystanders, is tried for murder and sentenced to death — but survives the electric chair!

    Like I said, wild stuff, and highly recommended — and much better written and drawn than Carl Burgos’ Human Torch stories that also ran in Marvel Mystery Comics.

  4. George, I did something like that about a year ago through Marvel Unlimited, and while that first Namor story looks like sludge due to bad printing, Everett was no slouch, that’s for sure. Pre-Kirby finding his stride in the Romance comics, Everett might be my favorite of the Golden Age guys.

  5. Kyle: Everett’s art got even better in the ’50s (and, to be fair, Burgos also improved).

    Namor was really the first anti-hero in comics. Someone once described him as “the Black Muslim of comics,” which makes sense: in some of the early stories, he explicitly names “the white man” as his enemy.

    Fortunately, he was soon able to unleash his violence on the Nazis and Japanese, which nobody complained about. Namor was fighting Nazis as early as Marvel Mystery No. 3 (dated January 1940), which was on newsstands almost 2 years before the U.S. entered the war. And he and the Torch were fighting the Japanese in MM No. 17 (March 1941).

    And they were NAMED as Japanese. In the China-set “Terry and the Pirates,” Milton Caniff was forced by his syndicate to call them “the invaders” until Pearl Harbor. Marvel was pretty fearless in letting readers know exactly who the bad guys were.

  6. As for those “Tales to Astonish” Sub-Mariner stories (1965-68), mainly by Stan Lee and Gene Colan, they’re a lot of fun. They’re all collected, in glorious black and white, in “Essential Sub-Mariner Vol. 1.”

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