Hey Rajesh, it turns out Aquaman doesn't suck.

Aquaman a.k.a. Arthur Curry in all his orange and green glory in Aquaman: The Trench. 

If there's one DC superhero who's always gotten a bad rap, it'd have to be Aquaman.  When most people think of Aquaman they imagine the guy in bright orange and green spandex who talks to fish.  Aquaman's been the butt of many jokes about his apparent uselessness, from Family Guy to the Big Bang Theory.  Even for fans like me who always thought he was underappreciated, I found out there was a lot about him I didn't know.  When DC launched the New 52 to put a fresh spin on their most timeless characters, Aquaman got a much needed update at the hands of Geoff Johns. 

I got around to reading Vol. 1 of Aquaman New 52, The Trench, having already been familiar with the basic plotline after reading Vol. 3 of Justice League, Throne of Atlantis.  The events of the first volume provide a glimpse at Aquaman's struggle to make a life for himself and wife Mera with us land dwellers.  Like most of the New 52 stories he's worked on, Johns does a good job setting Aquaman in familiar, modern settings and one of the aspects that immediately hooked me was the story's self referential nature.  For instance, after Aquaman singlehandedly stops an armored truck robbery with help from his trusty trident, he stops at a seafood place and orders fish and chips for lunch, much to the shock of the mystified customers.  Soon he's confronted by a blogger who bombards him with questions about Aquaman jokes on SNL and then curtly asks how it feels to be nobody's favorite superhero.  I thought it was fantastic how Johns tackled Aquaman's lowly superhero status head on and in such a funny way.  I also enjoyed how Aquaman corrects many common misconceptions about his abilities; he clarifies that he doesn't talk to fish, but instead telepathically reaches into their midbrains and pushes them to help him out. Dolphins however, are another story he says.  Lines like that had me laughing while I was learning the actual truth about his abilities. 

Johns also makes Aquaman out to be a real badass in this book.   He stops the armored truck hijacking by ramming his trident into the grill and flipping the whole truck over.  While not totally bulletproof like Superman, bullets seem to do little more than sting him and he can leap incredible distances.  For those unfamiliar with Aquaman's origins, his father was a human lighthouse keeper and his mother was a Queen of Atlantis, yes the legendary ancient city that supposedly sank into the ocean.  Despite what humans believe, Atlantis does in fact exist, but at this point Aquaman, who is the rightful king of Atlantis, has no desire to lead but instead wants to live on land with his wife Mera, a fiery redheaded Atlantean.  They live in the lighthouse Arthur's father maintained, trying to adjust to a life on land.  Unfortunately, that's when a horde of flesh eating humanoid fish rise from the black depths of the mid-Atlantic ridge and come ashore, where they kill many people and carry others back underwater wrapped in special cocoons.  The overwhelmed police seek out Aquaman and Mera and together they beat back a swarm of the hungry creatures.   

The action scenes are dynamic and fluid, due to the incredible artwork by Ivan Reis, who's become a favorite of mine.  His art is incredibly detailed, down to Aquaman's intricate orange scale armor, but never feels cluttered or confusing.  The humanoid fish that rise from out the Trench are modeled after bioluminescent angler fish and look pretty freaky.  After forcing the creatures back to sea, Aquaman and Mera visit Stephen Shin, a marine biologist friend of his father's, to examine one of the dead creatures.  He determines that they came from the mid-Atlantic ridge and Aquaman and Mera descend into the black only to discover what appears to be an ancient Atlantean craft imbedded in a deep sea thermal vent.  The craft has primitive Atlantean symbols which confirm the craft crashed there long before Atlantis sank.  This begs the question, what were Atlanteans doing that far down in the ocean before Atlantis sank? Arthur and Mera are soon confronted by the queen of the flesh eating fish, but manage to carry the people trapped in cocoons back to the surface and collapse the Trench to keep the starving creatures from attacking again. 

The rest of the volume follows Aquaman as he works to unravel the mystery of the ancient Atlantean ship.  We also learn more about Mera, including the fact that she once was determined to kill Arthur years before she got to know him and realized he didn't crave the throne of Atlantis.  All in all, I found the details of Aquaman's backstory really interesting.  I think this book serves to legitimize Aquaman as a serious superhero who can stand toe to toe with his costumed comrades in the DC universe and in that respect, it succeeds.  The Aquaman within these pages is a certified badass who is worthy of a higher place in the superhero social hierarchy.  I'm anxious to see where this story will go in the following volumes and I'd especially like to see Aquaman face one of his established foes, because I know so little about his rogue's gallery.  Overall, this is a great introduction to a long overlooked and ridiculed yet important member of the vast DC Universe.  I hope this is only the beginning of Aquaman's comic book revival.