Aquaman #33: Okay story by Peter David, good art by Calafiore. Mildly recommended. $1.75/$2.50Cn

"It's Not So Good Ta Be Da King" Award to Aquaman #33

Aquaman "Vision Quest": In order to get at the corruption in his roots, Aquaman is advised to face his greatest fear by Swamp Thing as part of a vision quest. What this amounts to is popping out to the desert in a ship with no name and baking until he starts to hallucinate, or until Atlan shows up to help him along. Either way, he has a vision of Kings Past, both human and Atlantean. He meets the original Orin, who fought against Kordax, and he meets Kordax. Neither matched the legends...Orin was just a man doing what he had to for his people, and Kordax was in many ways the same. Apparently he didn't become an evil monster until much later.

The lesson Orin learns in the process of de-scaling himself (although he keeps webbed fingers) is that it's not the throne, it's the man sitting on it. Kings are not somehow special because of where they sit, but where they sit gives them a chance to make much bigger errors and have much bigger successes. And he also learned that the morality of the superhero doesn't apply very well to kings, yet he had still clung to it, believing deep down that he needed to be punished for crossing the line.