Superman TAS S03E09 Review: So I Heard You Talk To Fish

Superman: The Animated Series, Season 3, Episode 9: A Fish Story

Death will rise! From the tides!

I didn't realize (or forgot) that Aquaman had an episode in Superman: TAS before his debut in Justice League. I rgew up during the 2000's era of comics, so Aquaman for me has always been the shirtless, bearded, long-haired viking-Poseidon warrior holding a trident with a hook arm (and am immensely pleased that they actually went with that vesrion of Aquaman for the live-action movies). Meanwhile, Challenge of the Super Friends have kind of turned the orange-and-green suited Golden Age portrayal of Aquaman as kind of a dunce and not a viking badass.  

But, you see, Aquaman was always a badass, Viking getup or not. It's just that Cartoon Network's Challenge of the Super Friends (which I probably have to get to reviewing sometime) ends up portraying Aquaman's sole feature as someone who can only talk to fish as his superpower, and since they aren't allowed to throw punches... it makes Aquaman easily the most stupid and useless member of the Super Friends. Add that to his honestly quite unflattering name, and poor Aquaman just can't catch a break. 

Come Superman: TAS, and it attempts to bring Aquaman back in all his comic-book glory. He's not just some dude in an orange shirt that can talk to fish. He's the goddamn king of Atlantis, ruler of the seven seas, able to summon killer whales and great white sharks alongside literal armies of underwater warriors.

Which gets me back to this episode. It debuts Aquaman, and while it's definitely unfortunate that he shows up as a hero in distress, being stuck by Luthor's minions into a little test tube for experimentation, we quickly learn -- via the eyes of Lois Lane -- that Aquaman's a certified badass. Like the Green Lantern episode a while back, it's not an exact science as we try to balance introdump with actually telling an interesting standalone story, and thankfully, Lex Luthor is happy to return as a villain this time around to menace Superman and Aquaman, acting as an eco-terrorist who just can't be bothered to bother about the urban legend that is Aquaman or Atlantis, because profit and science are far more important. I did like how Aquaman is quickly introduced as an urban legend so we don't have to waste time dealing with an origin story -- later episodes in the DCAU would alternate between introducing already-established superheroes or devoting entire episodes for an origin story. 

I did like how the episode acts a bit like a throwback to the older Golden Age stories, and indeed, Aquaman spends a good chunk of the episode just talking to fish, being friendly, being an ecological hero, and all that jazz... up until the finale, where he summons Atlantean battlecruiser, which neatly bridges together the older and newer versions of Aquaman. Suddenly he's not just an environment-friendly hero. He's a king of the ocean, with enough army to actually tell both Superman and Luthor to piss off. It's a neat way to still make Aquaman sympathetic, while still portraying his 'staunch defender of the ocean' trope very well. 

Of course, sadly, I also felt that this robbed a good chunk of the earlier parts of the episode from the badassery that Aquaman can and should be, since we're so concerned with trying to depict and/or deconstruct the Golden Age era Aquaman, and the action scenes that Superman and Aquaman get into -- or the interactions between the two heroes, for that matter -- ended up being sidelined. Overall I feel that this is an episode that tried to do too much than it pprobably should. Still, not a bad one in my opinion. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Aquaman, a.k.a. King Arthur Curry, a.k.a. Orin, is the son of a human lighthouse keeper and an Atlantanean princess, and is one of the longest-running superheroes in the DC comics as well as a founding member of the Justice League (and even led it for a while). The Aquaman seen here is him in his Golden Age (and post-New-52) appearance, with the orange-and-green suit. We'll meet Aquaman in a subsequent DCAU episode, where he would use the post-revamped Viking underwater king Aquaman look.