Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, & Joe Prado
This issue opens with Aquaman dropping from the sky and crashing into the desert. Then we flashback about 24 hours later in the middle of the night when some military dude calls him up and tells him they were studying some thing from the "Trench" that Arthur and Mera brought up from the end of their last fight. We then cut back to the desert. Aquaman rips some shrapnel out of his leg and starts stumbling along through the desert. We then cut back to the military facility (which Aquaman just arrived at) and the place comes under attack. Some guys in armor come in and take an "Atlantean Crest" which is the symbol that people think are Arthur's symbol. Arthur chases after them, grabs onto their helicopter/plane thing and we cut back to the desert. Aquaman is starting to see his father who is tearing into him about how Arthur's mother gave her life to make him ruler of Atlantis and that Arthur just tossed it away. He then, for some reason, uses his little telepathy to call out and a little lizard crawls up. Back on the helicopter thing, Aquaman busts in and finds out the attackers are Atlantean. They then blast Arthur out of the ship in a rather amusing blast. Aquaman finds the wreck of the ship when it crashed, finds the crest, puts it in water for some reason, and it shows an OLD Atlantean General/Soldier dude who is talking about how someone (some unnamed person/persons) are attacking Atlantis to sink it. Then a military helicopter comes and finds him. He returns home to find that Mera has "went to town for dog food." And the little tease of next issue was "MERA vs. THE WORLD"
Thoughts
I really liked this issue. Granted I was interrupted halfway through by my friend who looked at the little ad for the Catwoman series longingly for about 5 minutes, but whatever. I'm super excited to see Mera do her thing for an issue. It should be super cool. I can't wait! But as for this issue, I liked the little story about Atlantis (as that was the only relatively "major" reveal in the issue) and I found it amusing that he managed to get lost in the desert.
9/10
(Remember a few months ago when I said that I hoped Geoff Johns could step up and get Aquaman up to the level of quality that Green Lantern and Justice League are (or were, respectively)? Well we're there!)
