DC’s Problem With a Splashier Aquaman is Namor
Today the online site for the Hollywood trade publication Variety ran an article about how DC is making a big push to make Aquaman ride a bigger celebrity wave. The author cites the “Smallville” spinoff attempt that never made it past a pilot, and the fact that Aquaman was the butt of many jokes on the HBO series “Entourage.” Noticeably missing was the many Aquaman disses delivered by the wonderful folks at “Robot Chicken,” but it all boils down to the fact that many people think of Aquaman as a joke.
DC has plans to change this, the article notes, and it quotes current Aquaman scribe Geoff Johns (also the chief creative officer at DC) saying “He’s a priority character for the company.” But despite that “priority” status, the only new project featuring the ruler of Atlantis is a new animated DC movie special headed to DVD and streaming.
Why is Aquaman having a difficult time being taken as seriously as other TV and movie crossover hits like Batman, Superman and Green Arrow? He’s just not that interesting — at least that the conclusion by author Peter Coogan, who wrote the book “Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre,” who said in the article “Aquaman’s root problem is that he’s boring.”
He is only boring in comparison to his main competition at Marvel, Namor, the Sub-Mariner (in case you don’t follow Marvel, he does not actually travel around in a submarine, he lives in a submarine environment, also called Atlantis, like Aquaman). Namor is Marvel’s most charismatic badass. He is haughty, arrogant, alternately hates or tolerates the “surface dwellers” and moves between being a villain and an anti-hero more easily than Magneto. Namor has invaded both New York City and the Black Panther’s country of Wakanda (laying waste to the capital city when he was possessed by the Phoenix Force). He has even kidnapped Sue Storm of the Fantastic Four to show his love (not an enlightened feminist, Namor).
DC even went so far as to give Aquaman Thor-like long golden locks and a beard, and lopped off his hand (before the New 52 retconned everything at DC). Still he wasn’t close to being as badass as Namor. And that is Aquaman’s ongoing problem — nobody has managed to come up with a way to make us interested in him enough to be shocked, even when his hand gets lopped off and he jams an Atlantean pirate hook on the stump.
But, Aquaman has his own title still, whereas Namor hasn’t had a comic book that bears his name since Namor: The First Mutant in 2011. That gives the edge to Aquaman in at least one aspect, but really only one. Until DC figures out a way to make a character that is a ruler of an enormous undersea empire a truly epic, imperial character, he will still remain, if not the butt of jokes, a second-tier character at best.
