Aquaman #44

Totally worth it.

This issue begins with Aquaman creeping on Mera while she sleeps.

I guess you can draw erect penises in comic books as long as you tell the censors, "No! No! That's not a boner at all! It's totally something else that isn't a boner. Seriously. Not a boner."

Speaking of censors, you can tell they must all be really old fuddy-duddies. Have any of you been watching Scream Queens? That show should be blowing the censors' minds! But all of the disgusting language is said too quickly and with words they're not used to for them to be bothered noticing. At one point, Chanel #1 calls the other Chanels a bunch of gashes. She may as well have called them cunts. In fact, calling them cunts is less disgusting than calling them gashes! It's just that everybody is trained to react negatively to hearing the word "cunt" as opposed to hearing a perfectly ordinary word like "gash" and being all, "Oh, yeah. That's cool. Much better to call a woman a slang term for her private parts which is truly descriptively horrific than to have them called the C-word!" It's moments like that in the show that make me hate it less than I'm desperately trying to hate it. I'll be watching it going, "Oh for fuck's sake! Are the writers really going to be that lazy and write the scene where a guy tells a woman to smile and then the woman kicks the shit out of him?! That's like a rock star playing a concert in Cleveland and screaming, 'Cleveland is the greatest city in America!' It's money in the bank!" But then Chanel #1 will call all the women "gashes," and I'll be saying, "That'll do, TV Show. That'll do." Suck it, old censors! You can't muzzle the youth! You can only look around confused until you finally just sign off on the show rather than admitting you didn't understand fully three quarters of it.

Just talk? The erection says otherwise.

Aquaman asks Mera why they're fighting. Luckily for Mister Master Cullen Bunn Esquire, he showed the readers that Mera is actually her evil twin Siren. Otherwise Mera being upset with Arthur about how he will destroy everything they've built together wouldn't make any sense. Because Mera didn't build anything with Aquaman when it comes to Atlantis. All they built together was a comfortable little home in a lighthouse with a dog they eventually abandoned. She also decides to be angry instead of calmly trying to work through the problem with Aquaman. Unluckily for Mister Master Cullen Bunn Esquire, he's writing Aquaman so that Aquaman doesn't have any problem with Mera acting this way. I'm just a comic book reader who isn't in love with Mera (probably) and I know this is totally out of character. So Aquaman should also realize this is out of character and that Mera isn't making any sense at all. Almost as if Mera doesn't know what she's talking about because it isn't Mera! I suppose eight pages later, Aquaman can say something like, "I know that can't be Mera! I must get to the bottom of it and save the woman I love!" But that probably won't happen because Mister Master Cullen Bunn Esquire is writing a variant version of Aquaman and Mera that he created to destroy everybody's love of Aquaman! See, Mister Master Cullen Bunn Esquire works for Marvel and they've never been happy with Aquaman having stolen Namor's thunder.

Aquaman tells Mera all about the alternate Atlantis called Thule which is totally boring because I read this comic book last month and already heard all of this shit. I bet it won't even convince Mera since she's actually Siren which means I'm hearing all about the wizards of Thule again for no good reason! Why are new readers more important than me?! Let them scour the quarter bins for the previous issues of Aquaman if they want to know all of the little details! Don't make me reread the same shit every month!

Aquaman decides he doesn't care that Mera is acting like an unfeeling jerk because he's got a huge boner that needs satisfying.

Those are Sea Roses! They bloom best in salt rich and high pressure environments!

The Sea Roses aren't the only weird part about living underwater in Atlantis. Mera's royal bedchamber isn't in any kind of bubble so she's just sleeping completely submerged in water. Along with her mattress. And her blankets. And her pillows. And the couch in the corner covered in sopping wet throw pillows. It really seems like a truly uncomfortable place!

After they have sex, Aquaman says "Well, that was..." and Mera finishes with "A mistake?" So far, that's the only moment that's struck me as truthful according to my experience!

After Aquaman puts his clothes back on, Mera transforms into Siren. Am I supposed to be angry about this because it was rape? I think I'm supposed to be mad about it. Right? I'm trying but the only thing I've really been offended by in this comic book so far were those roses underwater!

I can't wait until Mister Master Cullen Bunn Esquire writes the scene where Mera gets upset at Aquaman for not realizing it wasn't her when he was being raped by her sister! That'll be a classy moment!

She wouldn't!

Siren stabs Aquaman in the chest so he teleports away. But since he wasn't concentrating while teleporting, he winds up on another planet. What a shocker of an ending! And by that, I mean what an ending that was obviously thought up simply to end the comic book in an unexpected way which has nothing to do with the story at hand. It's a real "I'm One-Face now!" shocker of an ending!

Aquaman #44 Rating: -1 Ranking. If you're an Aquaman fan, don't bother reading this book. If you're a Mera fan, don't even look at this book. This book is a disaster. DC Comics may as well have just shipped out a bunch of baggies with dog shit in them and stuck Post-It Notes on them which read "Aquaman #44." Hell, I probably would have gotten more for my money if they'd done that.