Aquaman (Mini 2) #4
Title: In The Tide Of Battle
Cover Title: -none-
Cover Date: September 1989
Plot and Layouts: Keith Giffen
Script: Robert Loren Fleming
Pencils: Curt Swan
Inks: Al Vey
Colors: Tom McCraw
Lettering: John Costanza
Editor: Barbara Kesel
Cover: Curt Swan and Al Vey
Cover Price: $1.00
Continuity: IN
OVERVIEW:
Now Atlantis is under siege. The situation is grim, and Aquaman is in mourning for his wife.
He spends some quiet time alone with her body, laid in a casket. She hears him talking, and attacks, not dead at all. She claims that it's her different physiology, from being from another dimension. She says that if she'd had a child with one of her own kind, he would've survived. She then leaves him, goes home. He concludes that his world drove her mad, then begins to sob at all he's lost.
The invaders wait, hoping to completely demoralize the city.
The general in the city decides to attack. Aquaman thinks he's nuts, but realizes that waiting isn't doing the troops any good, either. He decides to help, and formulates a plan.
COMMENTS:
The cover is... spooky.
Mera, poor Mera. What on earth made her go so mad? Aquaman thinks it was the environment, him and the city, the pressures, maybe even the fact that she wasn't in her home dimension. Of course, in the next Aquaman series we learn that Thanatos nabbed her, and Thanatos specializes in making people go mad.
The jellyfish are back. The ones inside the city died, but the ones outside are intent on taking the city back, and presumably finishing their program of extremination.
Jellyfish?
CONCLUSION:
Rating: 6
Mera goes away, Aquaman suffers, and the city is about to die.