King Aquababy is kind of an asshole

[schmevil]

Absolute power corrupts even babies absolutely.



Aquapeople: just horrible.





Love the funeral wreath in the title. Classy.





Fire trolls. Avatars of comics fans? Hmm.

Oh, and then there's this Aquaman redesign by Katie Cook



This was part of a Project Rooftop series

Comments

[dr_archeville]

So it was the fire-trolls, not Bender's cigar, that burned down Dr. Zoidberg's house!

[mad]

FIRE TROLLS

I think Aquaman should always be written from the perspective that first and foremost, he is a jerk. Secondly, he is a friend to and cares about marine life. The rest will follow.

[schmevil]

There's just something about aquapeople. A natural and overwhelming assholery.

[mad]

But what works is that a lot of the time it's totally justified. Like, surface-dwellers are total jerks to the ocean. I'd be pissed too. (This is also my theory about Jason Todd.)

[valtyr]

This is also my theory about Jason Todd.

He's pissed off about pollution?

[schmevil]

He's actually the (Anarcho-Syndicalist)Red(Green) Hood.

[mad]

LOL, no, that the reason why it's easy to cheer for him when he does things outside the usual bat-rules, like killing people and being a jerk, is because when you think about what he's been through, you can sympathize with him and cheer him on, even if you don't agree with him.

[valtyr]

LOL, true enough. Like Magneto, too - it's hard to get too judgey when you see where he's coming from.

[mad]

Pretty much.

[schmevil]

No, I totally agree. (My cannibal mermaid novel got shelved due to lack of time, but I'll get back to it. It's very influenced by Namor and Aquaman stories--carnivorous mermaids organize to address humanity's ecological selfishness. Shockingly enough, they do so through violence). I'm surprised there aren't more 'eco-terrorist' characters.

[valtyr]

I'm surprised there aren't more 'eco-terrorist' characters.

I SO WISH they had done more of this with Ultimate Thor. I LOVED that aspect of him.

[schmevil]

My brother has decided that Ult Thor is the One True Thor. He's a hard drinking warrior with a mix of traditional and progressive attitudes, and godly in the sense of his being focused on the actual bigger picture.

[valtyr]

I cracked the hell up when Thor was all "Not helping unless you double the foreign aid budget, boo." In Ultimate Six he's with the team just to hang out, or something, because Cap keeps saying "Thor, will you - " and he's "No." He was so original a take on Thor, I loved it. :/

[stubbleupdate]

What should the reading list for Ultimate Thor be?

I;ve only read Ultimate Thor and Ultimate Secret

[valtyr]

Hm, well. His intro is in Ultimates, of course, where they establish his character and he has several cool moments. He has a major storyline in Ultimates 2 including a big set-piece battle. He's a bit part in Ultimate Six, but a fun one. He's in the ensemble in Ultimate War, and fights Ultimate Storm. I don't recall him being in Ultimate Origins, Ultimate Gah Lak Tus, Ultimate Human or Ultimate Hulk vs Wolverine at all. He's in Ultimate Power, Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum, but Loeb... wrote him oddly. Almost as if he hadn't read any Ultimates and just pasted in 616 Thor. In New Ultimates Loeb appears to have noticed the massive OOCness, and the plot of the series is basically Fixing It Through Epic Retcon And Exposition. It's a very odd story. He's not in Ultimate Avengers. In Ultimate Avengers vs New Ultimates, old-style Thor appears to be back, with no reference to the Loeb shenanigans.

He briefly appears in Ult X-Men at a party - just a panel or two - and in Ult Fantastic Four he comes to Johnny Storm's birthday party, again just a panel or two. I haven't read much of Ultimate Spider-Man, but in #150 he tells a story of when Spider-Man helped him out, and it's suggested he mentor Spider-Man a bit, which I'm really hoping to see. That's all I recall off the top of my head.

Is Ultimate Thor good? I'm tradewaiting right now, and Ultimate Thor+Jonathan Hickman is making me all hopeful.

[stubbleupdate]

He's in Ultimate Secret. He does the "You, military industrial complex girl, bring us beer" to Danvers.

Ultimate Thor is alright. It stretches itself quite thin by having three different timelines going on. There's some very good bits in there though.

[valtyr]

Oh, of course. He and Tony escort the Fantasti-car to the Triskelion, too. Another bit part, then.

[stubbleupdate]

Oh, Christ, I forgot Millar's President Thor stuff. That's horrible, and not just because of Land's art.

Is Ultimate War an X-men storyline? Amazon suggests that it might be.

[valtyr]

Oh man, I think I blocked that out! That was weird.

Ultimate War is an X-Men/Ultimates crossover, pretty sure it was a mini. In the same vein, Ultimate Six is a Spider-Man crossover mini.

[valtyr]

Oh, and don't touch the Ultimate Captain America mini. The only reasons to read that are a) you hate Ult Cap and want to see him written as a complete asshole* and then brutally abused b) you want to see lovingly drawn depictions of Cap in chains on his knees.

*How bad? Well, it's 'longing for the depth and complexity Mark Millar brings to the character' bad. No, really. That bad.

[mad]

Awesome.

Well, there's Poison Ivy, and in some depcitions, R'as al Ghul.

[schmevil]

Except they're usually portrayed as being Wrong. Valtyr brought up Ult Thor, who's an interesting counterpoint.

[mad]

True, and that seems to be a trend with a lot of supervillains, actually. Give them a sympathetic cause/background to flesh them out and make you interested, but they're Still Wrong.

It's really amazing how conservatively themed Batman mythos is when you think about it.

Though sometimes a thoughtful writer will include something like "and then Bruce Wayne donated blah blah to this cause that helps in a less destructive way blah blah", but that can also be kinda sketchy.

[schmevil]

Batman is a ridiculously conservative character (not in outlook necessarily, but in his basic makeup) that it kind of needs to be. If you're going to pit these people against a super-genius billionaire, anything more than a sympathetic reading is out of the question. Like, you can't actually have the socialist villain be right and capitalist Batman wrong. He's... Good King Batman, The Boss Who Cares.

[stubbleupdate]

We were discussing in our staffroom how Batman would be at the head of The Big Society if he was a) real and b) British.

He's a private citizen who volunteers his time so that the government don't need to spend more on public services.

Plus, he's a bajillionaire who beats up poor people

[psychopathicus_rex]

I'm reminded of the Bruce Wayne/Ivy meet-up in 'Batman and Robin', where she hands him a list of demands to make his companies more eco-friendly. Bruce looks them over and says that, while they'd work, they'd also be extremely unsafe and endanger his workers' lives; she says 'so what?' and things progress from there. (I mean, not that anything from 'BaR' should be put forward as a good example, but it does do a fair job of fleshing out their respective positions. I'd like to have seen just what was on those papers, though.)

[psychopathicus_rex]

I would replace 'jerk' with 'very grumpy and territorial', but otherwise, yeah.

[icon_uk]

Loving the Katie Cook redesigns!

[schmevil]

I thought you would!

[sailorlibra]

I love how they couldn't even find a funeral board long enough to fit his whole body on.

[stubbleupdate]

I love how it reminds me of the Alex Ross moment where Aquaman shouts "You have to support his head!"

[sandoz_iscariot]

oh silver age!

[misterbug]

"I'm Batman. And I 'm the only one who can 't breathe underwater."

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, let's see; the others are Superman - nuff said - Metamorpho - he's a shapeshifter; I guess he could grow himself gills or something - Wonder Woman - back then, she had earrings that let her breathe underwater - and Hawkman, who... actually may be wearing some sort of breathing apparatus, if you look closely. Note that bubbles are coming from his direction as well as Batman's.

[aaron_bourque]

UNDERWATER FIRE TROLLS

[punishermax]

"Hey did I ever mention how much I fucking hate going to Atlantis?"

"This'd make the twentieth time in the past two hours Ollie"

"Just keeping everyone up to date on it. So glad I get to spend my day saving Arthur from whatever great horror is attacking his stupid kingdom this week. And to top it off Diana and Dinah-"

"UNDER THE SEA!"

"UNDER DA SEA"

"DAHLIING IT'S BETTA, DOWN WHERE IT'S WETTA, TAKE IT FROM ME!"

"God dammit why won't these crabs play these fucking drums!? What good are they!?"

~Suddenly two Atlantian guards swim downward~

"HALT! By the order of King Aquababy you are all to come with us!"

"Wow, this is actually way dumber than I thought it was going to be. Thanks for surprising me universe."

~They are brought forward to see Arthur being chained up and forced to watch as the trident is raised to his chest. AquaBaby stands with Creepy Old Guy In Purple~

"So Arthur, you wanna explain how a baby kicked your ass or should we just make up our own back story."

"Mine has him throwing his used diaper on you, you gotta work hard to top that one"

"It's a long, complicated, and ultimately embarrassing story that I'm not going to relate. It has a morel though. Here it is : GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF THIS NOW YOU TOOL BAGS."

"Hey, none of us here got beaten by a baby. Maybe we need for you to relax before we get a toddler in here to really fuck you up."

"God why did I ever call you idiots"

"Why did you ever get your shit ruined by a baby? This is the question that truly needs answering. The people wants answers Curry!"

~The trident is raised as Aquababy giggles and points his thumb down~

"Okay so we need to save Curry but I'm not gonna punch a baby, that's something Batman'd do."

"When has he ever punched a baby? Except for Damien, but hes kind of a prick so it doesn't count"

"Diana could sing to him!"

"We want the kid to stop and not, you know, get horrific brain damage."

"A wise man once said: 'Ollie can go fuck himself'. Here. ~Dinah throws her keys at the baby, who catches them and coos happily. The Evil Purple Douchebag rages~"

"MY BRILLIANT PLAN OF USING AN INFANT TO KILL AQUAMAN IS RUINED!"

"Hahahahaha it's even better when said out loud!"

~Arthur gets away from the Trident holding hands and swims over~

"How long am I going to be hearing about this one?"

"How long is forever?"

"Way longer than it took for a baby to punch the shit out of you."

[blake_reitz]

Huh. That funeral one was the model for a later issue of the Flash (maybe Geoff Jones first issue?), which I did not realize until just now.

[schmevil]

Which issue?

[blake_reitz]

145, second issue of his run.
http://www.comicvine.com/the-flash-wonderland-chapter-two-the-lightning-rod/37-51403/
Features the Flash trapped in a warped world by one of his worst enemies! Wait...that sounds really familiar...

[schmevil]

DC recycling stories? Never!

Love that cover though. Has a bit of silver age weirdo feel to it.

[aaron_bourque]

COMICS recycling stories, tyvm

[psychopathicus_rex]

Some nice covers there - the 'Sea King's Funeral' one is actually rather beautifully done, with the lighting effects and everything, and there's a nicely kinetic feeling to the one with Aqua-Girl ("Wild, wet and whacky!") - you can really FEEL the way the sea's surging around.
Also, am I the only one to notice that, judging by the arms, Aquaman is apparently about to be offed by an UNDERWATER GORILLA?