Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

Aquaman #8


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By Hervé St-Louis
October 5, 2016 - 17:54

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Black Manta and his organization N.E.M.O. have launched a creature that cannot be destroyed against Atlantis. As the creature, older readers will recognize as the Shaggy Man, marches on and destroys everything in its path, Aquaman and his Altantean army appear powerless. With Mera out of service, while she learns how to be a queen, who can help Aquaman save Atlantis?

It’s seems apparent that a running theme in both Marvel and DC Comics is that of the unstoppable opponent pitted against a hero or a team of heroes. Through some trick, it has to be defeated while dealing with the very quality, that of being undefeatable. Marvel’s Thor has the Destroyer armour, but DC Comics is the one that has made the most of this idea of an enemy that cannot be defeated.

I probably had heard the name ‘the Shaggy Man’ before but never was exposed the character or his variants and clones. So when I read the comic the first, time, before his name was mentioned, I thought that writer Dan Abnett was pulling a Doomsday on Aquaman. It’s the same trick. It’s a brute that cannot be destroyed and that only becomes stronger after each attack. It’s like the Hydra of Lerna, or some of the modern version of another Justice League villain, Amazo. He could absorbe all of the powers of the Justice League.

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Thematically, Abnett has been playing with Aquaman’s place in the world and worth as a Justice League. How Abnett achieves his plan to pit Aquaman against travail worthy and greater than him was by first pitting him against the US military, than Superman, and now the Shaggy Man. Think of each challenge as something akin to Heracles’s twelve labours where the hero should prevail against an impossible odd. Past Aquaman writers have similarly pitted him against Starro, another villain worthy of the entire Justice League.

It’s interesting to see Abnett play with myth-making while he tries to elevate Aquaman to another realm, that of the hero proving his worth through a series of labours thrown at him by his opponent. So, as a reader, you may mock the Shaggy Man or find his inclusion in this story a bit ludicrous, but upon analysis, Abnett has a definite plan for Aquaman and that should make you rejoice.

Scot Eaton draws good super hero fight scenes, although his underwater world seems a bit blank. His work seems more fitting of a Marvel Comics and this is not a criticism. This is DC Comics making a concerted effort to hire more dynamic artists. I cannot complain. It is a good decision.

Rating: 9.5 /10


Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12

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