Story: Dan Abnett
Art, Color and Cover: Stjepan Sejic
Lettering: Steve Wands
Cover Price: $3.99
On Sale Date: November 15, 2017
**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE
BOTTOM**
Do you think the Atlantean resistance has a fight
song? All sports teams and military coups should have a fight song. “Over coral
and giant oyster shells/ Through the deepest trides of the sea…” It just seems
correct. You have to assume the Atlantean military has a song or two to sing. Here’s
my soundless review of Aquaman #30,
listen up!
Explain
It!
One of the most frustrating things about social
progress is that it often happens so slowly. The eternal quest for justice and
equity is continually undermined, redefined, and back-burnered throughout
history for a variety of reasons, so that you sit reading this, after
nine-thousand-plus years of human civilization, and people are still held in
slavery in parts of this world. Weren’t robots supposed to be handling this
type of work by now? I think the robots have already taken over, and they’re
keeping Third World slavery camps in business to obscure their methods!
This “resistance” arc in Aquaman…it’s been going on for a while. Like, since July of this
year. And while I think it was conceived initially as a twice-monthly story, it
doesn’t forgive the fact that the last two issues were pure filler that nudged
things along so slightly that it couldn’t be measured with an electron
microscope. Add to this the changing cover images from solicit and release, and
what I think happened is that the story had to be switched around quickly for
some forthcoming reason. Because what we have here, folks, is nonsense. The
book opens introducing a whole new group of rebels, calling themselves The
Undercurrent, led by Jurok Byss—an Aquaman
character, but not one introduced in this arc, and certainly not heading a
squad of resistance fighters—and these guys basically save the day. They’re
introduced at the eleventh hour, and that’s pretty lame for all the folks
following month-to-month, expecting a more cumulative story.
Otherwise, Mera is incapacitated by walking through
the Crown of Thorns with a busted amulet, and she gets captured by King Shark.
He’s gunning for giant crab-man Krush’s position as crime boss of the Ninth
Trides, so now we have a new fish-faced hoodlum to find out about. Aquaman and
Dolphin reveal themselves to The Undercurrent, and Arthur agrees to lead them
to victory against Corum Rath. Vulko and Delphine show up with the magic
trident. I mean, it feels like we’re heading towards a great conflict next
issue, but everything begins basically from here and we spent three issues
treading water for no great reason. Hey, “treading water!” I made a funny and
didn’t mean to!
Bits and
Pieces:
Here, at what was intended to be the conclusion of this story arc, some new elements are introduced that render previous parts to the story pointless. So if you've been waiting to hop on the book, now's your time! But if you've been reading it regularly, you got hosed.
6.5/10
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