Aquaman #30

Aquaman! Aquaman! Not as cool as Spider-man! Talks to fish! Can't spin a web! Stoically boring! Wish he were dead! Look out! Let's go read something else!

Hopefully Aquaman only has one pair of orange Atlantean Armor-Tights. Unless that means he's going to get into his underwater camouflage suit from the 1980s. That suit was awful. Also, that mini-series was awful. I owned it for over thirty years before finally reading it a few months ago. It was basically Aquaman weeping uncontrollably in a therapy session. That makes it sound more entertaining than it actually was. But here's a secret: I always make comic books sound more entertaining than they actually are!

Last issue, an archaeologist had this pet theory. The theory amounted to his belief that magic was science and science was not magic. It makes sense if you're an idiot. Like the archaeologist. If an advanced civilization from outer space had to judge our professions by our popular entertainment, they would think archaeologists had the most exciting and dangerous job ever conceived on the planet Earth. They would wonder why every depiction of archaeologists on the job omitted the armed security and legions of soldiers that would inevitably be needed to contain whatever mythic or alien or biological disaster was about to be released by the old people and students digging in the dirt. Obviously something was going to go wrong! Why aren't they ever prepared?!

The archaeologist's theory just happened to release the monsters of Greek legend. Duh! Forget advanced civilizations! The archaeologists in comic books should have noticed a pattern by now! You fuck with ancient ruins, you're going to release unspeakable terrors and lots of people are going to die! Fuck fiction! It even happens in our reality! People are still dying every day due to the Curse of the Mummy!

Also released due to the archaeologist's idiocy? Hercules! And he's pissed off! And drunk! But not horny because he had plenty of Gorgons and Harpies and Nagas to fuck while imprisoned in the Atlantean Phantom Zone. Unless he was fucking the satyrs and the centaurs and the big dicked dick monsters. I think Scylla was one of those, if I'm not mistaken. And I rarely am, so you should probably believe me. Remember how I nailed the facts with that Mummy's Curse thing last paragraph?

Meanwhile in Triton Base, Creature King was busy undergoing his Reboot Origin. He'll probably be called Dr. Orson's Monster which will eventually just get shortened to Orson which will piss off all the assholes that can't help pointing out when other people (who aren't worried about appearing stupid) are technically wrong.

Forget about Creature King for now! Aquaman will stop him from eating things in a future story arc. For now, Aquaman has to keep Hercules from attending a buffet at Golden Corral. Not because people will die but because franchise buffets are awful. They must be the worst place anybody can ever eat ever! I've never eaten at a Golden Corral but I have eaten at Casa Bonita which technically isn't a buffet even if they serve you as much food as you want and that food is barely edible. But at least Casa Bonita has cliff divers and puppet shows and fire jugglers and racist stereotypes! I did once eat at Izzy's when I first moved to Portland because I was a complete and utter idiot and much, much younger than I am now. I also figured, "How bad can all you can eat pizza be?" Well, let me tell you how bad: I don't actually remember! But I do remember that there was a family of four eating nearby. The parents were forcing their kids to get as much pizza down their throats as they could. So much so that at one point, I look up to see a panicked, chubby ten year old girl running down the aisle toward me. Right before she gets to my table she stops and projectile vomits across the aisle. Barely chewed pizza, soda, and a general orange half-liquid mass sprayed across the floor and tables and seats and a poor couple that happened to be sitting one booth ahead of me. The man stood up and shouted some obscenity as vomit streamed from his leather jacket. He slammed his cup down on the table, grabbed the arm of the woman seated next to him, hauled her up from the seat, and stormed out without paying. The young girl, already embarrassed from vomiting, now shamed by the man's outburst of anger, ran crying into the sanctuary of the bathroom where she had planned to relieve the pressure in her stomach in the first place. The Non-Certified Spouse and I paid, walked out, and never returned.

Way to go, genius! You actually used observable science to figure out a problem for once! As opposed to the mystic mumbo jumbo you usually use! "Let's see. When I put the trident in the hole, it opened the evil gate. Maybe...maybe...if I remove it...!"

So Dr. Smart Guy Archaeologist closes the gate. But the monsters and Hercules are still on the wrong side of the portal! This looks like a job for Wonder Woman! Aquaman should just pack up and go home since this conflict is taking place on land. He's useless on land! That's why his name isn't Landman! I guess it could be Terraman but that name is already taken by a space cowboy or something.

Hercules sees Dr. Dumb Dumb holding the trident and decides to squash him. Aquaman saves him for some reason and then asks him his professional opinion on opening mystic portals.

Yes? How the fuck do you know?! You were merely guessing that putting Aquaman's trident in a trident-shaped hole would do something in the first place! Now you're a fucking expert on opening scientific portals?!

Aquaman wrestles Hercules in the Greek style. Probably because that's the only way Hercules knows how to wrestle! He doesn't know about all the advances in wrestling like the Camel Clutch or the Figure Four or diving on somebody from the upper turnbuckle! He only knows the boring style where you escape and reverse and then escape and then escape and then reverse and then somebody gets pinned. Between all of the escapes and reversals, the one opponent or the other is constantly touching the other person's junk.

In the Mera sitting as acting Queen on the Throne of Atlantis subplot, Mera is almost assassinated by forces from her home kingdom of Xebel. But she's rescued by Aquagirl! She's simply known as Tula right now because she hasn't been given the vaguely racist name of Aquagirl yet by the landdweller's media outlets.

Back to the main story, Hercules places Aquaman in the sea because Hercules falls for Aquaman's ruse that he doesn't want to drown. Hercules hasn't gotten any smarter over time. He has become more schizophrenic though. He keeps hearing a voice in his head telling him to kill Aquaman. The voice also calls him fat and ugly. It also points out that Frankenstein lasers on the moon built by Jews are controlling his thoughts.

Between the voices and Aquaman's super underwater powers, Hercules begins having a hard time dealing with life.

Notice how Hercules' voices compare Aquaman to the big dick monster? Those green pants are pretty tight.

Once Aquaman stops Hercules by nearly drowning him, he takes him back up on land where Dr. Doody Head has reconfigured the portal to open up on the Labyrinth. Hercules is tossed in and the portal is closed and everybody (except Hercules) lives happily ever after. Also except other people on Earth since the children of the Titans have fled to all corners of the globe to eat people. I guess Aquaman can deal with that later.

Oh, I guess later will be in July.

Aquaman #30 Rating: No change. Jeff Parker seems to write comic books in a way that I remember comic books being written back in the 80s except better because those comic books I remember fondly usually don't live up to how I remember them. It's light and entertaining and he's not trying to break any boundaries with his concepts. It's enjoyable! It's like enjoying a pint on the porch on a sunny, slightly breezy day. But distilled in comic book form. And different.