Aquaman #35: Confusing guest star and a lot of fighting against pointless villain. Neutral. $1.75/$2.50Cn

"The Buddy System" Award to Aquaman #35

Aquaman "Sight Unseen": I think the biggest problem I had with this Animal Man crossover, aside from the gratuitousness of it, was that the current Animal Man bears very little resemblance to the on I last read about, circa #45 of his title. "The Red" instead of the morphogenic field, long black and white hair and beard instead of the short blond hair. His name's the same, the basic abilities are the same, and Maxine's in the mix, but there wasn't really a "connect" to the character I last read about, and I think that hurt the story, made it feel even more gratuitous.

Anyway. Poseidon deliberately blinded Aquaman so that no mortal man would see the defeat of his son. Oh, he could have just whisked everyone away from the scene, but Greek Gods are spiteful buggers. Don't worry, though, it's just flash-blindness, Aquaman's sight is returning by issue's end. It was mainly an excuse to force Aquaman to figure out what senses he had other than sight.

And this sonar sense he develops has gotta be a new development, not something he's been carrying around and ignoring all this time. Why? Because there ain't no light as deep as he and Black Manta were a few issues back...and if blindness was enough to bring out his other senses, they would have emerged then (or much earlier).

Oh, and there's a fight scene against a cyborg hunter called the Gamesman, no clue whether he's linked to Animal Man's continuity or if PAD plans to bring him back to Aquaman. I suppose someone will post if he's part of Animal Man's book.

I was kinda underwhelmed by this issue.