Aquaman Annual #2

What use are the breasts of a part-bird, part-snake woman?! Aside from the titillatingly obvious use. I guess that's why her breasts don't have nipples. Although what use are nippleless breasts for titillatingly obviousness?

Trying to make Aquaman cool is one of the worst ideas DC Comics keeps coming up with. Not every hero needs to be super powerful, or stoically majestic, or grim, gritty, and probably insane. Some heroes can be fun and whimsical! I really do miss the whimsical Aquaman who forced Sea Horses into harnesses and saddles and rode standing up on the backs of flying fish. Please stop engaging in this campaign of perverse propaganda to make Aquaman cool, DC! People are buying into it which means they won't stand for Aquaman doing anything silly now! But he was meant for silly! If you want a good example of what's wrong (and possibly right but right now I'm trying to make a point that I probably don't totally agree with, actually) with making Aquaman cool, just look at what they did to Topo!

Silver Age Topo.

Reboot Age Topo.

This is the greatest sin of the Reboot! I want the old Topo back! The one that served Aquaman's dinner and shot arrows as well as Green Arrow shot them and attached itself to the head of some coma patient to control it psychically. I'm not sure about that last part but it would have made Topo more useful while still being whimsical! But no. DC can't have fun things anymore. So now Topo is a monstrous sand flea monster thing of a monster. He's dangerous and bad-ass and smells so bad that Aquaman wouldn't ever want him at the dinner table.

I don't really blame DC Comics for this. I blame all the people that fall for propaganda but think they're too smart to ever fall for propaganda. Idiots! You think propaganda is blindingly obvious bullshit that only morons fall for? If you vote regularly and believe that we live in a democracy where voting for the handful of choices you're allowed to vote for, you've fallen for the greatest propaganda campaign of all time. Your vote has no power. But they want you to think your vote has some kind of power so that you continue to fall for the other propaganda campaign they've got running: the happy home life. If you believe that voting enables you to make a difference, then you won't notice that they've convinced you that a home and a family with at least two children (and hopefully more) is something you should strive for and something you would inherently want no matter if you were raised by wolves in complete isolation. But capitalism needs people in debt. It needs people that need a certain amount of money continuously for eighteen plus years as they raise one child, and hopefully more years and more children as well. They need you desperate for constant income so that you won't leave that job that steadily erodes your power, that slowly drops your pay, that increasingly takes away all benefits for the sake of shareholders and the bottom line. You believe that if you vote in all the right people, life will get better. But as long as you have a mortgage and children to take care of, you've already become a slave to the system. You are inextricably bound to making money for the elite. So you desperately cling to the belief that voting works! That you are doing your duty and that you have a voice and that you, we, hold all the power!

Yeah, yeah. Go on. Keep believing. Believing in the Democracy is just like believing in God. You have a desire for the thing to be true and so you rally to it. You shame the apathetic assholes that refuse to participate. You look down on those that believe only in themselves and refuse to participate in a sham. Cheer your war heroes. Kiss your spouse. Pat your children on the head while you stand in line for your sporting events. Or you can join me! Sitting alone in a dark room, bitter! Angry! Insane from existential quandaries! But free! I'M FREE DAMMIT! I'M CHARLTON HESTON ON THE BEACH! BUT NOT AT THE END OF THE MOVIE ON THE BEACH! I'M CHARLTON HESTON FREE FROM THE APES JUST BEFORE HIS ENTIRE WORLD CRUMBLES BEFORE HIM! I'M JUST GOING TO KEEP HIDING IN MY DARK ROOM SO I NEVER HAVE TO SEE THAT PART WHERE THE TRUTH COMES CRASHING DOWN UPON ME! WHY AM I YELLING?!

Seriously though. We all fall for propaganda no matter how smart we think we are. That's the whole point of propaganda! Civilization is no more real than a western movie set. It's nearly impossible to separate yourself from the culture you've grown up in. Knowing your true loves and hates, those that you'd still have without cultural influence on your being? Forget trying to figure that shit out! It'll drive you into that dark room I pretended I live in for effect! If you really want a happy home full of laughing children? Go for it. If you like to keep your armpits shaved, just believe that you like it because you like the aesthetics of it and not that you've been manipulated by the patriarchy. Because you'll never know which is actually true. What the patriarchy really wants is for us to demand that other non-powerful people just like us think the exact same way we do. They want us in a constant state of bickering about things that don't matter.

And with that final thought (meaning that last sentence in that last paragraph), realize that when I state my piece, when I rant and rave about things I believe, it doesn't mean I think that you should believe them too. I'm not here to convince you that your way of life is wrong or that my way of life is better. But I am trying to say this: everybody's way of life is right for that person's way of life if that person is trying their best to be true to what they believe. The things I write in this blog are (generally) the things I believe and I (generally) stand by them and live accordingly. This is all just infotainment (oh God. We really are living in the end times when Spell Checker accepts "infotainment" but rarely accepts a polysyllabic word which I've turned into an adverb by adding -ly)! Anyway, let me end my rant on a Two Line Play I wrote about rebellion! Does that sound good? It'll cheer us all up before reading Aquaman!

Authority Figure: "Do you want to fight for what's right and save the world, possibly dying for that cause?!"
No Authority Figure: *SHRUG*

Hmm. That was a lot of shit to get through just to read the part of the review where I constantly call Aquaman a loser. I hope some people stuck around! Especially those that disagreed with everything I said.

Uh-oh! Somebody is about to eat?! Don't worry! Aquaman will put a stop to it!

What is up with Jeff Parker and eating? Every single one of his stories since he took over Aquaman has revolved around eating. First the Karaqan was eating Icelanders so Aquaman had to stop them. Then the monsters that appear in this Annual began eating people and Aquaman had to stop them. Then some sharks tried to eat Coombs, so Aquaman had to stop them. Then Chimera pointed out how Aquaman only thinks about killing in order to eat the things killed. And now this issue begins with dinner! And being that Aquaman and Wonder Woman are going to have to stop this dinner, you can guess what's on the menu! Jeff Parker might be obsessed with food.

Does Jeff Parker have Prader-Willi Syndrome?

The story of Aquaman and Wonder Woman versus the monsters begins in Carcassonne, France, where the monsters have taken over a field, a church, a road, and a half-finished city.

In Parker's world, just having food should keep one happy.

That hag might be Lois Lane! The Monsters have found some mystic something or other that allows them to feast on the life essence of people instead of digging right in and sucking out their marrow. Monsters really love marrow, don't they?! It's like the jizz of life! Was that redundant?

Et tu, Wonder Woman? There is more to Aquaman than talking to fish and riding sea horses and stopping everything on Earth from eating.

I've been watching Rome again! I think Titus Pullo might be one of my favorite characters of any show ever. And not because I approve of everything he does! I don't! I just think he's a spectacularly good example of an actual human being caught up in things he can barely comprehend and just trying to keep his own self intact. Lucius is much the same way, of course. It's just that I'm not sexually attracted to Lucius Vorenus. Too Gallic for my tastes.

Which cell phone company sells completely water and pressure resistant phones? One of them must because this is Aquaman's phone!

Aquaman and Wonder Woman soon meet the monsters and the battle begins. Hopefully it goes on for many, many pages because annuals are long and I've already written too much for one commentary! I should be playing Titanfall!

Wonder Woman and Aquaman eventually succumb to the main monster's song, begin fighting with each other, and are encased in webbing as seen in the earlier panel where the monster mentioned how hungry they all are all of the time. But now they have a handy meal, vacuum sealed, and everlasting! The monsters are victorious!

But wait! An archaeologist has brought a magic stone to the fight! And you know how bad-ass archaeologists are! It's the most adventurous profession in America!

I know Hollywood never shows the reality of any profession but I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb to say that archaeology has attained the widest gap between the reality of the job and the Hollywood fantasy life of tomb raiding and artifact hunting. And by Hollywood, I'm including comic books because this archaeologist comes into the monster's midst and begins kicking more ass than Arthur and Diana did! And all he needs is his magic stone he dug up somewhere.

Great Evans of Archaeology? What's the big deal? He stuck a magic trident in a hole and nearly ended the world. That's not so great.

Once the Great Evans uses his magic stone on the monsters, they disintegrate because they really shouldn't exist anyway. Or something. I think there was a lesson to be learned but I'm immune to learning lessons. So instead, I'll just turn the page to read part two where Mera has to deal with the Giant Born that went into the sea.

Now Mera gets to work with Wonder Woman. It's fitting since this series really should be called Aquaman, Husband of Mera.

Yeah, yeah. I know they're not technically married anymore thanks to a decree by Dan DiDio. But what else am I going to call Aquaman? Non-Certified Spouse of Mera? Ridiculous!

Yeah! I mean, uh-oh. Just wait until the oysters get a champion and they come after us!

Wonder Woman suggests that maybe the monsters should try to find another way of living that doesn't involve eating. The monsters respond, "Are you stupid?" Then Mera says, "Well, that's that! We tried to be diplomatic. I guess we have to kill them now." That's what I like about Mera! She doesn't quibble over intellectual discussions about their right to kill monsters. She just kills the monsters and goes back to being awesome.

And adorable.

Aquaman Annual #2 Rating: This was a good annual! Because anybody could pick it up and enjoy it. It didn't follow DC's "fine tradition of making annuals essential reading." It just told a tale that spawned from the main title which the regular readers didn't need to read if they didn't want to. And it highlighted both Aquaman and Mera which the comic book does itself. I'm glad Aquaman is aquaman enough to share his comic book with Mera because she can always use more panel time.