Letters to Aquaman #9

Jesus, where'd this come from?



Brandon, you're back with avengeance! A fantastic cover by Ramon, and I think it's a good enough place here to comment on his amazing banner! Astonishing stuff from one of our best talents here, and look, Dinah's not got bumpy boobs!



Wow, you packed a lot in here, didn't ya? Can't way for your next issue, because so many seeds have been planted about this so called "Lost Adventure"! The return of Atlan! Mera giving birth! Arthur with a beard... What's up with that?

You pulled one hell of a story off after a brief hiatus Brandon, don't keep us waiting again!

First, a big huge thanks to Ramon for the cover. It's awesome by any standard and was a huge help to me on delivering this on time.

Second, anyone who's read any of my stories knows that you don't get the "finished" version until the next morning when I've had time to do the "next morning fix". So all the typos are grammatical problems are fixed now for anyone who's already read and noticed them.

Thanks a lot for the compliments guys. This one was a bit of a challenge, as David knows for sure from Wonder Woman these big battles aren't easy to write! I hadn't really played the "summons all the sea life to his aid" card yet so I figured this would be a good place, and it was fun to have the parademons find out the hard way that they had really been outnumbered all along. I also thought this would be as good a place as any to have the Aquababy finally be born and hopefully I didn't tread to harshly on the "birth in the midst of death" cliche. But you just know that a trustworthy friend like Orm will be taking a special interest in Arthur Jr.

I really hope that I don't confuse everyone with the Lost Adventure stunt. I really wanted the continuity to work this way (so much so I'm releasing the issues out of order) but just didn't have time to get that story out in time. For anyone wondering about why Aquaman and Aqualad seemed to literally jump into the middle of the Crisis and where they may have been to get all scrubby, please check out next month's Issue Eight. I promise it will be a worthwhile read and unlike any Aquaman adventure you've read before!!

the stuff you put in there is always over my head....

anyways, thanks for the compliments on the cover, I actually really did want to do it a lot because it had been a long time since drawing Aquaman and because I realized I had a mere two covers for IXE, two is unacceptable, three is liveable, so thanks brandon.

Thanks a lot, Brian!

Thanks Susan.

I played a few of the half dozen subplots I have going into the story and hoped it would maybe work to get people curious about the book. Sorry if it was a little off-putting.

Thanks for the comments, Batarang, and glad you enjoyed it.

Thanks John. I really appreciate your comments.

The Lost Adventure will come out soon and be the events in Aquaman continuity just prior to the Crisis. But it's really an offbeat tale and should easily stand on its own. Plus, it will answer the burning question, "where did the beard come from?!"

Thanks for you comments, Mark.

The mysterious Atlan has been established as coming to aid Atlantis in its time of need in two other issues. Most importantly in Issue Zero being shown as manipulating the battle with the Egyptians. There is some set-up to his appearance also in the Lost Adventure which is running out of sequence. Again, there is a lot of sub-plot from the series woven into this tie-in story. The pro is that it could get people interested in the book, but the con is that if you don't read this series or intend to it could just serve as extra story that you aren't really in on.

I think Aquaman has a lot of moments in the story, but technically they lost the first battle so he wasn't supposed to come out looking good in that one. Also, over the course of this series I've rarely had Aquaman come off as the shining and flawless hero as he's taken a lot of beatdowns and had his butt saved a number of times. I like to have all the characters have a moment to shine.

As far as Atlan's participation in the second battle, he played his role inside Supertown and as he stated to Lightray... "Have faith young luminary, King Orin will prevail." Atlan knew it was his son's moment and didn't need to join in. The last minute save by Aquaman's aquatic friends could be explained as his needing time to rally those forces, but more importantly, I felt it just worked better that way for the story's dramatic tension. If he had brought in the sea life in the opening battle I don't think it would have been a very interesting story at all.

Thanks again, Mark. And I'm looking forward to your Doom Patrol story in the coming months.

My two main goals with the book were to try to make Aquaman cool and/or bad ass again, and to write the kind of Aquaman stories DC just hasn't been telling. So reading a comment like your's, Speeddemon, warms my heart and it makes it all worthwhile.

Thanks so much, Scott! You are a proven Aquaman writer yourself so I really appreciate the compliment. I know you are a man who knows his Aquaman!

I left Mr. Miracle's motivation there up in the air on purpose. That scene starts with Scott watching the battle and knowing that Darkseid's forces would never stop until he was caught. (So did the parademon army retreat in defeat, or because they knew Scott Free had been captured?) So did he give himself up for the good of everyone else? Did he do it for Barda? Did he suddenly have a sense of his role in the grand scope of things and it was just his time? Or yeah, did he feel a disturbance in the Source and headed off to the Death Star Apokolips? I just figured it would play better if could you read into it instead of me trying to make it a complicated explanation thing.

Thanks again for the comments, Scott!

Thanks a lot for reading and commenting, aquaman119! There should be more adventures for Aquaman and co. coming very soon.