The Four Color Media Monitor

Here's somebody on Yahoo's news sections talking about an actor named Jason Momoa, who's going to play Aquaman in the Batman vs. Superman movie (another clue this'll end up being more of a Justice League movie), and once again, we have here somebody perpetuating the Aquaman-as-joke cliche:

Aquaman is famously a bit of a joke in the comic book world. His key ability is to telepathically talk to and control sea life, so, it’s not hard to see why he’s something of an easy target.

And Sub-Mariner didn't have the ability to communicate with fish and other sea life in the Marvel universe? How does Aquaman count as an easy target but not prince Namor? He's basing his whole claim entirely on the perception everyone was influenced by the Super-Friends cartoon. But what if Namor had been seen in a Marvel cartoon riding on the backs of orcas and seahorses? Wouldn't that make him look goofy too? What the writer's missed is that, if Arthur Curry is a joke, it's in the animation world, not the comics world, where in better days, Aquaman got better writing, even if some of the stories involved slapstick.

Jason Momoa, who will be the first man to portray the character on the big screen, has suggested people wait to see him in action before cracking any more jokes about the The King of the Seven Seas.

At Fan Expo Canada Momoa said: “It’s cute and funny. People make fun of him. There’s a bunch of jokes about him, but I’m like, ‘Just wait. Let’s just wait a little bit, and then you can make jokes.‘”

How about if he were to first quit making generalizations about fandom? I've mused about this before, and will again, but how does Aquaman keep winding up in discussions like these while Namor gets off scot-free? Momoa's claim is not helpful. Ironically, he also said:

Later that month Momoa told Entertainment Weekly: “The whole mythology of Aquaman is pretty amazing. There’s so many things to tell, and there’s a whole backstory that’s just amazing.

In most of the material published up to the turn of the century, yes (Bob Haney and Nick Cardy's Silver Age tales, for example). But if he recognized what a soggy mess DC's become by the past decade, he'd admit that modern scripting is a shipwreck. If there's anything that might qualify as a joke, it's recent stories, though they're so absurdly serious they're not even funny.

I've looked at the getup Momoa's wearing in the upcoming film, and it honestly doesn't look very appealing. Kind of like how Wonder Woman wears a costume in the film that's black and greyish, presumably because the filmmakers don't have what it takes to appreciate bright colors, just like DC's staff doesn't like optimism.

Labels: animation, Aquaman, conventions, dc comics, marvel comics, msm propaganda