Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Characters Case File #461: Arthur Joseph Curry, The Other Aquaman

DC Comics, these days, has more than one Batman, more than one Superman, maybe a half a dozen Flashes, two Green Arrows, a Wonder Woman or three, and who knows how many Green Lanterns.  Sometimes they run all at the same time, but other times, well, not so much.

But for whatever reason, they’ve never been all that successful about replacing Aquaman.  DC sure tried once though.

The year was 2006, and after the Infinite Crisis, DC did something called “One Year Later” where the various comic series’s timelines jumped forward one year.  That meant there were mysteries and changes, such as why Superman was, a year later, still powerless and why Batman had left a cured Harvey Dent in charge of protecting Gotham for some bizarre reason.  But then there’s Aquaman, and he was, well, missing.  Or, more accurately, there was a new one.  Aquaman had, in his own title prior to the time shift, replaced the 90s era hook hand with one made of enchanted water courtesy of the Lady of the Lake, but he was nowhere to be seen when his series resumed “one year later.”  Instead, it got a new title and a new creative team.

Oh, and this was writer Kurt Busiek and artist Butch Guice, both of whom are no slouches in the storytelling department.  As such, when Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #40 came out in May of 2006, there was a new Aquaman.  And this guy looked an awful lot like the old guy only maybe younger.  His name was Arthur Joseph Curry, and Busiek’s idea was to essentially do a sword-and-sorcerery type of story with a new character who basically had Aquaman’s Golden Age origin of a young man whose powers came thanks to scientific experiments from his father.  Or so he thought.  It’s a wee bit complicated, but thanks to this mutagenic serum developed by his dad, this Arthur could do more or less the same sort of stuff as the original Aquaman without having the history and the like.

Arthur was washed out to sea while his tank was ruptured by a storm.  His treatment, given to him by his scientist father when his mother died in childbirth, made him better equipped to the sea than the land anyway, and he soon found himself being contacted by a mysterious, hooded figure called the Dweller of the Depths.  Said Dweller hailed Arthur as “Aquaman,” gave him a sword and a costume, and sent him off to deal with King Shark as one does.  The Dweller, for his part, issues some prophecies that sound an awful lot like the old Aquaman’s history, and there’s a reason for that even if the new guy didn’t figure it out right away.  Instead, Arthur, with King Shark, the Dweller, and a new Topo set off to have adventures of their own.  During that time, Arthur would have encounters with a number of allies and enemies of the original Aquaman, and eventually, Arthur was even named King of Atlantis.

But wait, where was the original Aquaman?

He was the Dweller the whole time.  During the missing year, he had used his water hand to try to magically restore “Sub Diego” back to the surface, a process that warped him into a being made of even more enchanted water, a process that also made him largely forget who he was.  As the Dweller, he was eventually killed, leaving Arthur to be Aquaman full-time.

Or he would have been had the series not been canceled.  In the last issue, issue #57 to be precise, the Lady of the Lake showed up to explain that Arthur was originally saved as a baby, in part, by getting a piece of Aquaman’s soul.  He then took on the man’s name and identity, even his job, a fact that caused Arthur to declare he wouldn’t use another man’s name.  He would henceforth go by his middle name Joseph.

Or he would if he stuck around.  This Aquaman was briefly considered for a role on a new Outsiders team and later battled the World’s Finest team when they were trying to rid the world of Kryptonite.  After that, Tempest went down to Atlantis and found Arthur Joseph Curry had ditched the costume and crown, never to be seen again since the original Aquaman was revived during the Blackest Night.  When the New 52 happened, this guy was essentially forgotten.

In fact, most of the images I found of the guy were covers for that 17 issue period when he was, well, Aquaman.

Maybe one Aquaman is enough.