Requiem For A Series

Aquaman and the Others 6-11
DC Comics
Dan Jurgens, writer
Lan Medina, Allen Martinez and Wayne Faucher, artists

Both work and personal demands have kept me away from the blog of late, but as I alluded to in a previous post, it is not just the time to write blog posts that has been suffering. I haven't had time to read many comics of late either beyond a stray trade or random issue here or there or what little time I have spent in the past few months trying to go through issues from my collection deciding what to sell and what to hang onto. Bottom line: Its been a busy few months, and I am waaaay behind on current issues of the comics I'm buying.

How far behind, you ask. Well, while most of the current comics-reading public is diving head-first into Secret Wars or getting ready for the very near windup to Convergence, the last "current" comics I read were the various Future's End tie-in issues DC did more than six months ago. Yeah, I'm a little behind.

One perk of being so far behind is being able to read several issues of a given series at a time. It's almost like trade-waiting, but not really; trade-waiting would have been cheaper in the long run. It's also kind of a bittersweet perk when what you are reading is the very last arc of a title canceled much too soon.

The Others were first introduced in the second Aquaman story arc in his own New 52 title. The international cast of characters came together with a common purpose before the Justice League was formed, and Aquaman served as their leader in a quest to locate and safeguard several Atlantean relics. The Operative was an American, but Ya'wara hailed from Brazil, Vostok from Russia and Kahina was an Iranian. The final member of the group, Prisoner of War, was also an American, but he contained within his own body the souls of many fallen soldiers, maybe not all of them American. That was just one of the many avenues open for exploration with these characters.

The Others showed up again in Aquaman No. 20 and the first New 52 Aquaman annual, adding new member Sky Alchesay, a Native American, further spicing up the international flavor of the group. It was also no secret that these stand-alone stories were try-out issues meant to gauge interest in the group prior to them getting their own ongoing title, which launched in 2014.

This final story arc of the very short-lived Aquaman and the Others title pits the group against a similarly diverse group of assassins and mercenaries, some of them new creations for this story, as far as I know. Mayhem brings together the New 52 versions of Cheshire and former Soviet spies KGBeast and NKVDemon. Rounding out the cast of villains is a trio of new creations of undetermined nationality — Maelstrom, Stranglehold and Braze.

I'm not saying the "Alignmernt: Earth" story arc is perfect; there are some missteps and plot deficiencies. For example, none of those three new villains is fleshed out beyond a name and a basic character trait displayed in the fighting. The one exception is Maelstrom, whose heart doesn't quite seem in the fight during the final battle, but even that glimpse of something more never goes anywhere. Now, to be fair to Dan Jurgens, a talented writer and artist whose work I quite enjoy most of the time, maybe that is because once the series had been canceled, he didn't see much point in developing the other villains more only to have them fade away.

I also think the conflict between the Operative and Prisoner of War in this arc could have been resolved much more quickly than it was. But again, maybe Jurgens initially had more in mind with some of his moves here that the cancellation cut short.

Obviously, I was a fan of this series and was willing to continue to support the ongoing adventures of the Others. Now that the book has been canceled, however, I am reminded of an oft-repeated refrain on the Internet that some characters just aren't meant to support an ongoing series. Some characters, commentators say, are better suited to a miniseries or series of recurring finite stories.

I hope that at the very least, DC opts to go that route with these characters. They still show much promise, much potential for great storytelling. And I like how they interact with each other and team leader Aquaman. If the Others can't have an ongoing title, I hope Jurgens and company will at least trot them out from time to time with guest appearances or even their own mini, as time and inspiration allow. If I can't have a monthly dose of these characters, I at least want to visit them frequently.

Please DC, make it so.

This Is A Spin-Off That Should Happen

Aquaman 20
DC Comics
John Ostrander, writer
Manuel Garcia, artist

This issue of Aquaman is a fill in -- it interrupts the main storyline and subplots, and another writer and/or art team step in to give the regulars a break or allow them to catch up if they're behind. Fans tend not to like fill in issues simply because they are an interruption. This fill in is no exception in that it interrupts the flow of the story being told in Aquaman in the issues before and after this one. But Ostrander is a skilled enough writer that he takes pains to ease the interruption a little bit.

Aquaman appears on two pages of this issue that instead features the surviving members of the Others, the team Aquaman belonged to before the formation of the Justice League. In the recent fight with Black Manta, two of the team's members, Kahina and Vostok, were killed. The remaining Others -- the other Others, if you will -- are the Operative, Ya'Wara and Prisoner of War. Aquaman gathers these three to help track down one of the missing Atlantean artifacts -- a power glove -- lost in the Arizona desert, not a place easily accessible for Atlanteans. The search for the other missing artifacts is part of the main story being interrupted.

This issue also introduces Sky Alchesay, a young Native American woman of undetermined age, possibly Apache, although that also is not specifically mentioned in the story. Sky is a medicine woman with the ability to converse with the dead and some other unspecified abilities, as well as apparently being the inheritor of Kahina's former talisman, an Atlantean seal. It turns out that when the Others join forces with Sky and track down the missing power glove, it is in the possession of an evil skinwalker using it to try to break down the barriers between the Living World and the Ghost World.

Along with Sky, we are also introduced to her brother, Victorio, a local law enforcement officer on the Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona. There is also Sky and Victorio's grandmother, also a shaman, and the person who taught Sky most of what she knows about being a medicine woman. We also get to meet Sky and Victorio's mother, although she died when Sky was small. Sky's abilities allow her to regularly converse with her mother, and we as readers could see the woman's ghostly image, although her words were not visible to us. Victorio doubts Sky's abilities are real and does not approve of their grandmother teaching the younger woman. We also hear a little about Sky and Victorio's grandfather and an uncle, both of whom prefer to follow Anglo ways to prosper in a white man's world.

Much of this issue is devoted to Sky and the people around her as she is the newest element and likely a new member for the Others, but Ostrander also fleshes out the individual personalities of the Others, especially Ya'Wara and the Operative, a bit more. When the Others first appeared, in the second story arc in Aquaman, there was some Internet chatter about a possible spin-off series featuring them if they proved popular enough. Here they are again, featured prominently in this fill in issue, and again in October's Aquaman annual No. 1, the story is supposed to center around the possible return of Vostok and feature the Others yet again. Rumor has it that sales on that upcoming annual will help determine if an Others ongoing series is in the cards.

I hope the team makes the cut. I know it is hard to make a new team of characters stick and find an audience sometimes, but these characters have proven themselves popular in the pages of Aquaman. Rather than the usual America-centric cast, this team offers a potential international flavor. Ya'Wara is from South America. While they are dead now, Vostok was Russian and Kahina was of Middle Eastern descent. Hopefully, they can be replaced by new members from other countries and cultures, as seems to be the case with the likely addition of Sky. That makes them unique enough to deserve a spot on DC's publishing schedule. There is still much to be explored with these characters.

She's A Calming Influence

Aquaman 13
DC Comics
Geoff Johns, writer
Ivan Reis, Joe Prado and Julio Ferreira, artists

After the detour of this title's Zero issue, discussed here, we return to the action of "The Others." Black Manta has stolen all of the Atlantean relics from the members of the Others team Aquaman used to be a part of -- all of them, that is, except for Aquaman's trident. Along the way, Manta has brutally murdered two members of the Others, Vostok and Kahina. Understandably, Aquaman is out for blood, and none of the surviving members of the Others is able to dissuade him from pursuing and exacting revenge on Manta. Aquaman's wife, Mera, however, is another story.

Mera has been learning about Arthur's past with the Others for the first time as the events of this arc unfold. She has also seen Aquaman grow more and more enraged with each clash. She forces Arthur to acknowledge that he really doesn't blame Manta for his father's death anymore. With time has come the clarity that the heart attack that killed his father would likely have happened even without Manta's attack. That realization only makes Arthur feel worse about his subsequently, mistakenly, taking the life of Manta's father. Mera gets Arthur to admit his shame, then reassures him that he is no longer the man he was six years ago when these events took place. Mera talks Aquaman down so that the final confrontation is not a one-on-one bloodfest, but rather a decisive but non-lethal take down of Black Manta by Aquaman, with Mera and the Others as backup.

On the negative side, this issue also reveals that Manta did not steal the Atlantean artifacts for himself. He was working for someone else who, at this point, remains in the shadows. Nice wrap-up to "The Others" saga, but Aquaman's story is far from over.

To The Death

Aquaman 10-12
DC Comics
Geoff Johns, writer
Ivan Reis, artist

This book is getting intense as one might expect from the subject matter.

Previously we have learned that Aquaman was part of a group called The Others before joining the Justice League. We also learned that all of these heroes had run-ins with Black Manta and that much of the Aquaman-Black Manta antagonism stems from the fact that these two men each killed the other's father. That's all pretty grim.

Aquaman gets some small measure of redemption in these issues as we learn that he did not mean to kill Manta's father -- he thought it was Manta he was lashing out at. The Marine Marvel was enraged at the death of his own father at the time. His father died of a heart attack during a previous assault on the pair by Manta. In a rage, Aquaman tracked Manta to a vessel at sea and lashed out at the vessel's sole occupant. Unbeknownst to Aquaman at the time, Black Manta was diving below the boat, and it was his father who remained aboard.

We also learn the "secret origin" of Aquaman's trident. It is one of six Atlantean relics discovered by The Others. Each member of the team took one of the artifacts, which once belonged to the first king of Atlantis, the individual responsible for the sinking of that ancient continent. We learn that there was actually a seventh relic and that this piece is what Black Manta is now hunting, along with Aquaman and his Others comrades. That seventh item is the Dead King's scepter, the very device that was used to sink Atlantis, and thus more powerful than the other six items. And Manta manages to uncover the scepter before Aquaman, Mera and the remaining Others can stop him. Along the way, Manta manages to slay another member of that team, Vostok.

Also, I'm certain it is no coincidence that the Dead King's scepter looks identical to the weapon Aquaman's half-brother, Ocean Master, used to wield in the old DC Universe. I think it very possible that we will see the debut of the DCnU version of Ocean Master before this arc is concluded in issue No. 13.

But before we get to that issue, it is time for DC's Zero Month. We'll have the first of those books to look at next time.