New "Facts Page" for this issue

SUMMARY:

John Wilson has been diving around the world for mysterious purposes for longer than Aquaman has been living underwater, so Aquaman goes to find out why.

OVERVIEW:

Old John Wilson has spent his life looking for seven colored disks in the seven seas, and Aquaman joins the hunt as the fifth disk is found, then stolen by Rocky Logan. Aquaman goes alone to find the next two disks, and runs into Rocky and takes back the stolen property (as well as destroying the bad guys' ship in retaliation).

With all seven disks, John Wilson and Aquaman find a treasure, but Rocky appears to steal it. Luckily, Aquaman had thought of that possibility, and already contacted the police. When Aquaman expresses disappointment that the lifelong search of John Wilson was for gold, John explains that his real name is Teach, and he's a descendant of John Teach aka Blackbeard the Pirate. His goal was to find the money and return it to the descendants of the victims of Blackbeard's piracy.

COMMENTS:

The story sets up a spectacular treasure hunt, and it is as disappointing to the reader as it was to Aquaman that the end is only a pot of gold. It seems unlikely that Blackbeard could've set up the treasure hunt (taking into account all the places the disks were at), and just as unlikely that the pieces would still be there after all that time. Still, an interesting premise.

Blackbeard's name was Edward, not John.

Edward Teach was known to have had at least a dozen wives during his career as a pirate, though most weren't considered terribly legal. John Wilson and Rocky Logan could easily have been his descendants, as they are in this story.

Wilson's desire to return the treasure to the descendants of those it was stolen from is a little silly, when you consider the history of the time Blackbeard roamed the seas. Privateering was considered, if not entirely a clean occupation, at least a valid one. In some places in North Carolina, Blackbeard has never been considered a villain. Also, it would take Wilson as long to find those descendants as it did for him to find the treasure itself, assuming that the treasures even belonged to individuals and not to various trading companies and such that no longer exist.

The disks can only be read when placed in a specially prepared telescope aimed at the planet Mars.

This review was made possible by the Microcolour microfiche reprint of this issue.

Notables in this issue: Ads for All-Star comics #15 and Comic Cavalcade #1, a two-page text story "Enemy Advance" by Cary Glenn, and a message for the Junior Justice Society of America in the Dr. Fate code.

CONCLUSION:

Promising start, but a disappointing ending.