On Friday at New York Comic Con, we got a chance to speak to Geoff Johns, Chief Creative Officer at DC Comics about anything we wanted to. The chosen topic? Aquaman. Aquaman hasn't always been the coolest superhero on the block, but issue #1 of the new Aquaman series, penned by Johns, showed off a cool Aquaman that was willing to confront his detractors and kick some ass. He's a different Aquaman, for a new day, and with no Aqualad of quirky animal sidekicks in sight, this book is one to watch over the next few months.
Paul Furfari: So
Geoff I want to talk to you about just Aquaman.
Geoff Johns: Awesome, I love talking about just Aquaman.
PF: Aquaman has never been a favorite character of mine; no
idea why, he's just never connected with me, until I read issue #1. It's easily
my favorite comic of The New 52. Aquaman feels relevant to me now. He was funny
without trying too hard. One of the
things I noticed in the book was that there was a bit of wink, wink, nudge,
nudge going on with characters that interacted with Aquaman...it felt like they
were purposely poking fun at readers and Aquaman's previous iterations. How
conscious were you in breaking the fourth wall?
GJ: It was a very conscious choice, but what I wanted to do
was take...basically try to make the books as accessible as possible, because
everyone's heard of Aquaman. You may not have read him before, but you've heard
about him. I wanted to everything everyone knew about him, but that also
includes the misperceptions and the jokes. So in order to really connect with
an audience that knows Aquaman and maybe doesn't really read the comic, I
wanted to include all that in him and I felt like one of the themes of the book
is responsibility and just being who you are and accepting that and Aquaman has
had to do that over and over, so it just all kind of made sense when I
approached the book to make sure that that was part of his world and part of
what he deals with.
He is the biggest underdog superhero in comics right? Probably
in fiction. If you say "Who's the worst superhero?," most people will probably say Aquaman.
PF: He's got a lot of going against him.
GJ: Yeah, because they've (fans) have never heard of... most
people have never heard of Namor or haven't heard of the little wings on his
feet, or they haven't heard of all these other characters that we might
perceive as lame characters, but everyone's heard of Aquaman. I think he just
has a stigma against him, so I wanted him to have to deal with that as much as
the writers and artists do.
PF: Now you said responsibility is kind of a big thing for
Aquaman. There are lines in the first issue about him giving up the crown of
Atlantis already, so we have some back story, some history. How much are you really
going to go into that (in future issues?)
GJ: Everything that is presented in the book will be brand
new, so we will go into the history that's never really been revealed and we'll
go into his relationship with Atlantis. It's very complex because he's an
outsider; he's an outsider to us, he's an outsider to them, he's right on the
coast. That coast is a line he has to walk. That's why there's that lighthouse
(in issue #1) because he's trapped between these two worlds, so he doesn't have
a home anywhere and he's trying to make a home here (on land) because he feels more
connected and more accepted here, even if it's as a joke. At least he's still
doing some good here. And with Atlantis
we'll come to discover that his isn't so...they might see him as their king and
recognize that, but that doesn't mean they like him.
PF: Is Boston going to be his home base?
GJ: That will be his big city, but he'll really be in
Amnesty Bay, where the lighthouse is. So the coastline, all up and down there.
PF: By the end of issue #1, you have this horror bent. There's
these mermen that come up from the trench and there's this horror aesthetic. Is
this a conscious choice to make it more horror and will that pervade the entire
series? Is it just this story arc?
GJ: Well, I was researching the deep sea and sea animals,
the ocean in general, and the angler fish are pretty nasty creatures. So the trench is sort of based, you'll learn
more about them. They are a glimpse of the horrific world at the bottom of the
ocean and beyond that Aquaman has never faced, that we have never really
encountered. They are still learning and meeting new species every day, so I
wanted to go as horrific and bizarre as I could. And you haven't even really
seen how bizarre these creatures can get. They are pretty nasty.
PF: Where do you want to take Aquaman from here?
GJ: I plot long term, so I have a long-term arc. Really the
genesis of the first year sends Aquaman on a quest to see who sank Atlantis,
because he learns it wasn't an accident. Someone did it and that someone is
still around, so that's the underpinnings of this first year, learning about
his Atlantean heritage, but still staying on land.
PF: Well, that's all my questions for now. So I want to
thank you, I know you're a busy man.
GJ: I have to give a shout out to Ivan Reis (penciller on
Aquaman) and Joe Prado (inker on Aquaman). The artwork is just breathtaking and
these images of Aquaman and colors are really beautiful.
PF: Actually one more question, about Aquaman and his
powers. He has telepathy that he can use to-
GJ: it's pushing their primitive brains to make them do what
he wants them to do.
PF: But he also deflects a bullet at one point.
GJ: Well, if he can take the pressures of the ocean, he's
got to have, not indestructible, but really tough skin. He's super strong. You
see him leap away a few times. His skin can be pierced by bullets, like nicked,
and if he gets hit by a bazooka shell, it's going to burn him and screw him up
a bit, but he could still walk around.
So I wanted to make him tough and I think the best way to show that is
to have him hit by that bullet and that look on his face tells you everything. When he looks up, and he's got that blood
(coming down from above his eye), he's got a look that says-
PF: Game on.
GJ: Yeah, game on.
Before he disappeared into the crowd of people at New York
Comic Con, Johns briefly talked about scenes that we'll be seeing in upcoming issues,
including a touching scene of Aquaman remembering his father on the ocean's
shore. Aquaman's father was a lighthouse keeper, who fell in love with an Atlantean and Aquaman was the result of that forbidden relationship. Once separated, he on land, she in the sea, he promised to go to the same spot on the shore every day and wait for her. Aquaman recalls his father going to the beach every day to look for a "whale," he says, that just never comes. Touching stuff for a superhero everyone has slammed over the years.
If you haven't had a chance to read Aquaman #1, do yourself a favor and check it out. It's among the
best books of The New 52 and worth checking out, even if you never liked the
character Aquaman. Look for the new issue of Aquaman to hit Oct. 26.
