A hard-fought series of battles brings the storyline to a close.
Creative Staff:
Story: Steve Orlando
Art: V. Ken Marion, Sandu Florea
Colors: Andrew Dalhouse
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
The final showdown between Aquaman and Scorpio!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With several issues of itnerconnected stories that also managed to standalone fairly decently, Aquaman: Deep Dives brings things to a close in a pretty engaging way. Steve Orlando has done well to capture the voices of these characters early on and even bringing in some new ones at the end keeps it all fully realized, making for a good final act. At the same time, Ken Marion and Sandu Florea get to really flourish here with a lot of good action pages and an expansion on the page count to twenty-five with this one since it wraps things up. I love the look of it and just how well they present various parts of the undersea world, particularly through Dalhouse’s color design that really hits a sweet spot with the blues.
With the Scorpio group having been revealed to be involved, there’s a lot of chaos coming from the operation they’ve put into motion. The big thing is that they’ve exploited the existing tensions in Atlantis with those that support Aquaman and those that aren’t in favor of him. With his recent victories now listed as near-defeats through what Scorpio’s able to do, it’s almost turning into a civil war there and that forces Arthur to head there and deal with it. While he does that, the Sea Devils get an assist from Tula as the group tries to figure out where Scorpio is based on the data they’re trying to break down from Torpedoman. It’s a good setup and with the extra pages it’s not as compressed as it might be otherwise, allowing it to breathe and to show Tula in the dynamic a bit. I’m not fond of introducing a new character at the end but it is handled well enough here.
Scorpio, an organization I’m not familiar with, also reveals its “number one” when the mask comes off and it’s Kaydox, an exiled older Atlantean related to Aquaman but only kept alive through dark and disturbing magic. He’s here for revenge and chaos so the book ends up delving into that a lot as we get the personal fight with Aquaman but also the other group as they come across him first. It’s all solid stuff and I really like that his fight with Arthur is elevated to a whole other kind of sea, giving it a mystical element and showing that Kaydox missed the boat in the end by the fact that he spent his time in pursuit of harm instead of learning to connect with the world around him. Harmony in existence is always a big part of the Atlantean run of stories and I’m glad to see that included here as it’s been a part of the storyline overall to varying degrees.
In Summary:
I enjoyed this storyline a lot as Steve Orlando brought in a favorite with the Sea Devils and had some fun exploring a bunch of things in a fairly self-contained way. While I’ve preferred the one-off stories more in these kinds of projects, a solid three-part storyline like this works great because it doesn’t have to deal with the larger world or any repercussions from it, just the tale itself. And it’s a tale that was incredibly dynamic thanks to the artwork from Marion and Florea, particularly thanks to Dalhouse’s color design with all the undersea elements. Everything was firing right with this and the big action pieces were great and just the inclusion of the Devils was a delight. I’m really glad I was able to read these stories that if they were kept in the Giants I never would have seen.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Kindle
Release Date: June 4th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
