Locking down Aquaman

Aquaman illustration by Paul Gutierrez.

DC, on the other hand, is having a hard time figuring out what to do with its aquatic superhero. Last month at Toronto's Fan Expo, Dan Didio talked at length about the challenge of making Aquaman good. There's been one recent appearance of Aquaman in Final Crisis, but other than that: nothing since Kurt Busiek's undersea fantasy version failed to bring in readers. Didio says that's for a reason:

My problem with us is that we reboot the characters too much. What happens is that if a character doesn’t work, we go, “We got a brand new direction to put him in! We’re moving him into something new! We’re going to try something brand new and different! We’re going to throw everything out and start over again!” We make that mistake, but what that does is, it alienates fans.

Our biggest mistake is that we don’t continue and build on. What we should be doing is let it sit for a while and then come back with a good, strong story with what’s going on. That’s what Geoff [Johns] does. That’s Geoff’s secret weapon. He doesn’t throw it all out and start all over. He builds on what’s existed and makes it better. We get too worried about the minutia. All we should be doing is telling great stories with our characters.

What we’re doing coming out of Final Crisis ... is that we’re locking our characters down. We’re going with a good interpretation, and we’re staying with it. That’s why you don’t see Aquaman right now, because we want it to be clear what it is, who he is, and what he’s all about.

Artist Ethan Van Sciver also mentioned that we'd start seeing Aquaman again in the upcoming Green Lantern story Blackest Night. I'm not a Green Lantern fan, but I reckon I'll be checking that out.