Week four into the countdown to the release of the Aquaman movie.  This week’s volume was quite a bit different and not the best way.

A huge portion of San Diego broke off and fell into the sea and Aquaman must find out why in AQUAMAN: SUB-DIEGO.

It was a normal day for the city of San Diego until a sonic earthquake began to rumble the city.  People were quickly overtaken by water as a large portion of the city began to fall into the sea.

Aquaman quickly began to try to rescue as many survivors as he could.  However, as he searched through the ruins of San Diego he saw only death.  As rescue divers and other first responders planned to enter the ocean Aquaman emerged.  He told everyone he looked through the rumble and found no survivors.

The final count was 400,000 people dead or missing.  This was the greatest disaster the nation had ever seen.  The president went on TV to announce that they know nothing about what happened.  It could be a natural disaster, a terrorist attack or an alien attack. They have no idea what happened or why it happened.

A few days later a young boy emerges from the water and dies before an ambulance can get to him.  Aquaman sits in on the autopsy and they discover the boy had grown gills and survived by eating raw fish.  The boy died because he could only breathe while underwater.

Aquaman knows there must be others alive underwater and he must find them and find out how they survived.

AQUAMAN: SUB-DIEGO was written by Will Pfeifer with art by Patrick Gleason and Nathan Eyring.  DC Comics published the volume in 2015.

I was excited to see how Aquaman would handle such a huge tragedy.  This event would really test him as a hero and a person. 400,000 people fell into the sea and the sea is his domain.  I felt like he would take this as a huge failure to protect people and he would feel guilty.

However, what I got was completely different.  He feels bad about what happened, but he isn’t taking any responsibility for it.  Aquaman doesn’t really show any emotion at all about it for most of the volume.

In the other Aquaman comics I’ve read Aquaman is charismatic and fun.  However, in this he is boring and devoid of any emotion for most of the volume.  The only emotion he ever shows is anger, but it is getting extremely angry out of nowhere.  

I am not familiar with Aquaman during this time period so maybe there is a reason he is acting like that.  However, he seemed like a robot in the volume.

It was very difficult to get into the comic with such a dull character.  What is funny is the people and events around him were exciting and interesting.  I was interested in how people got gills and why San Diego fell into the ocean. However, when Aquaman came into the scene he sucked all the fun out because he was so boring.

I really liked the story and the premise of a major city falling into the ocean and some people developed gills.  All that stuff was really cool and interesting. What I didn’t like was Aquaman’s scenes which is bad because this is an Aquaman book.  I think the book is worth reading, but don’t expect the same kind of Aquaman.

Rating:

3/5

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