New "Facts Page" for this issue

SUMMARY:

Aquaman meets an undersea hunter, and eventually learns the extent of his illegal activities.

OVERVIEW:

Outside Aquaman's own lair, a poacher is trying to capture fish for his underwater zoo. The poacher, Pike Peers, retreats from Aquaman. However, Peers has some strange peers, and one of them has just escaped from jail. Rogan wants a piece of the action from Peers zoo, but before they work out the details, the police arrive and Rogan hides in Peers' bathysphere. After the police leave, Peers tells Rogan that he's leaving him down in the bathysphere until he runs out of air.

Enter Aquaman, who recognizes the bathysphere, and rescues the unfortunate Rogan. Reviving him in his lair, Aquaman listens to Rogan tell a tall-tale while checking his television for true information. After a brief fight, Aquaman dons Rogan's clothing and returns to the bathysphere to trick Peers. Rogan wakes and goes after him, and eventually Aquaman captures both crooks (and Peers' two henchmen) and turns them over to the Coast Guard. He then takes the ship out and sinks it, freeing the zoo of underwater creatures.

COMMENTS:

I really like the splash page to this story. Particularly the large fish right under the main text box. Peers is diving from his bathysphere in the background, while Aquaman swims up from the ruins of Atlantis. But that fish really pulls this image together for me, with its muted brilliance of orange, red, green, black, and white.

The splash page proclaims Aquaman "The Man From 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea!" Considering that one league is about 3 miles, and the diameter of the Earth is less than 8000 miles, I think somebody didn't do their research. The classic title "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" refers to the distance the narrator of that story traveled in the Nautilus before escaping, not the depths to which that famous submarine could go. While I don't doubt that Aquaman has traveled that far underwater, it seems like a silly way of saying it. Perhaps the writer got fathoms (1 fathom = 6 feet) confused with leagues.

Rogan was in jail because he "helped Black Jack on the sea-kidnapings!" I wonder if this is a reference to the events in More Fun #77, or one of the later More Funs that I still don't have access to? This book probably came out about May, which would be the same time More Fun #79 arrived on the stands. The text box at the end of this story says "The Sea is wide and deep, and even Aquaman does not know all its secrets! A strange and terrible mystery confronts him in the June issue of More Fun Comics." That would be More Fun #80, which also appears in the in-house ad as "Now on sale everywhere!"

Aquaman has a "Radio Television" in his lair. The lair is described as "an ancient temple of lost Atlantis, long submerged and forgotten, where he keeps his stock of scientific equipment!" Indeed, Aquaman uses that equipment in this story to determine that Peers was capturing fish, not killing them. There is a panel of him holding a beaker over a flame. The lair can't be far from the surface: Keoki in the second story and Rogan in this story were both able to swim safely up from it.

Peers' ship is very odd. The bathysphere docks in his office, and there's a trap door in the middle of the specimen room leading to the sting-ray tank.

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

This story's title was taken from the opening text box.

Need I say that this is one BIG comic book? I bought the microfiche, and discovered that they didn't have quite enough room for every page, so they left out the inside cover ads and filled the entire fiche with story. And man-o-man, there are some good stories in this one. The Superman story features a very young Jimmy Olsen, and a man in a metal suit by the name of Metalo. In addition to all the stories listed above, there are two text stories: "Strange Prophecy" by John Hilton and "Killer's Slip-Up" by Eric Carter, and a couple of short cartoons.

CONCLUSION:

Great Comic Book, good Aquaman story.