Aquaman, From Super Friend To Surfer Dude: The Bro-Ification Of A Hero

Let's get the bona fides out of the way up top.

This post is about some of the sweeping changes that the DC Comics superhero Aquaman (Swift and Powerful Monarch of the Ocean! King of the Seven Seas!) has undergone on his way to this weekend's blockbuster movie Aquaman. Inevitably, it will elide many details important to ardent fans of the character, and open its author up to charges of not knowing whereof he speaks, of a willful ignorance of the character, of simply echoing stale observations hastily ransacked from the Aquaman Wikipedia page.

The defense humbly (okay, smugly) presents the following evidence.

Exhibit A: That photo atop this post? That's the author's collection of aqua-memorabilia. Kindly do not refer to it as a shrine, as it is simply the by-product of what happens when the author's lifelong obsession with a fictional character intersects with his husband's insistence that said obsession not take up more space in their tiny apartment than the top of one friggin' dresser.

Exhibit B: I've written about the connection I've always felt to the character in this space before. Here's an excerpt:

I was, from a very young age, a competitive swimmer. My teammates, in fact, nicknamed me wasn't) but because I could never dive off the starting block without sinking too near the bottom of the pool.