By Steve Baxi — “Sometimes I wonder if they make anything of us at all. Perhaps it is comforting to think they do. Like hearing the idle whispers of God, and mistakenly thinking that he is talking to you.”

Ram V, Chrisitan Ward, and Aditya Bidikar are an all-star team of creators, and each could individually be the reason to pick up any book on the stands. Having them together is just a slam dunk. At the same time, Aquaman has been around since 1941 and there are noticeably few collections or ever-green stories to recommend for him. You can probably count the number of available iconic Aquaman material on one hand, and quite inversely you would need more than ten digits to count the number of reasons to follow this creative team. Aquaman Andromeda is a thoughtful maelstrom of comics’ best working through one of comics’ most neglected, and the result is a storytelling philosophy that perfectly captures each creator’s strengths.

Ram V has discussed in the past that opportunities for story interest him more than specific legacies or characters. If there is a gap in the history of a character for a story worth telling, that desire nags at him until it manifests in a project. Aquaman having so few famous stories, despite being nearly as old as the Trinity itself, represents the ideal scenario for a Ram V project. There’s a massive gap that needs to be filled, and the runway is clear from any entanglements that might compromise the artistic vision at play. DC Black Label books are designed for this very thing, taking characters and creators who have strong ideas that needn’t be bound up by continuity or main universe expectations. Allowing Ram V to do a quintessential Ram V story is the selling point.

As such, Andromeda is a Lovecraftian existential horror book, musing about the human condition. Traditionally, the vastness of the open sea is a metaphor for freedom, for limitless potential and transformation. We enter and exit the water as profoundly different people. But equally so, the endless sea is a source of madness, mystery, and of a scope we can never completely understand. A baptism in the ocean is a romantic idea on one end, but the sheer insanity inducing depths of the open water, à la Moby Dick, is a much more real expectation of someone who toils by the sea. Day in and day out fishermen and Atlantians alike work next to an entity they can never hope to completely grasp. That contrast is painted here as we muse on the indifference of massive Gods we confuse as loving. Putting meaning into our relatively insignificant routines in the face of cosmic horror is, frankly, always a compelling idea. 

The opening act of Andromeda places front and center the need to interrogate our projects and desires. But more than that, it throws into question the meaning of these projects in the face of power behind our wildest dreams. Are we imposing meaning on our lives as an act of freedom, or are we merely coping with a meaninglessness we cannot accept? In this framing, Andromeda is an exciting companion to Ram V’s work on The Swamp Thing which interrogates humanity’s potential for violence, and features the opposite dynamic where we see the intimate side of a cosmically powerful being. 

The key to this story’s success lies in its ability to address how to make Aquaman fighting sea monsters not only thematically compelling but uniquely exciting in the larger landscape of superhero fiction. Christian Ward then has a very difficult task, crafting the uncraftable, giving life to things beyond our scope. And he is more than up to the challenge, designing a world so rich and awe-inspiring I found myself often lost in the details of the water droplets. If the core premise of this series is to take the open metaphor of the sea, and channel the maddening scale of it, I think Ward perfectly captures how quickly we can be lost in what we mistake to be majesty. We insert feelings of awe and purpose onto beautiful double page splashes of the sea that eventually turn into dark, larger than life creatures. It’s a masterful work of horror as the slow paced, confined characters build us up to see things with a level of fear we wouldn’t otherwise have.

Aditya Bidikar is invaluable here, as the lettering choices reflect the characters we follow but maintain a consistent understated quality. When for example we switch to the perspective of a scientist, we’re reading through a simulated word processor bubble. But the type face, and the lettering throughout in dialogue and in other internal monologues, remains consistently small, tightly packed and just a little quiet. As if every character is subconsciously whispering, and that hushed tone allows each terrifying moment to disrupt the silence. When combined, you have the delivery of dialogue that questions the meaning of our lives in the face of indifferent gods spoken quietly, that then contrasts against the visuals which tend to be dynamic, at times unsettling and difficult to fully understand. 

Overall: Aquaman Andromeda is engaging on every level, and operates as the platonic ideal of what a DC Black Label book should be. From stunning art, to subtle lettering choices, to high concept thematic material, it delivers everything you hope for and more. 10/10.

Review: Aquaman Andromeda #1

Aquaman Andromeda #1
Writer: Ram V
Artist: Christian Ward
Letterer: Aditya Bidikar
Publisher: DC Comics
Price: $6.99
Deep in the Pacific Ocean, at the farthest possible distance from any land, sits Point Nemo: the spaceship graveyard. Since the dawn of the space race, the nations of the world have sent their crafts there on splashdown, to sink beneath the silent seas. But there is something…else at Point Nemo. A structure never made by man. And that structure seems to be…waking up.
The crew of the experimental submarine Andromeda, powered by a mysterious black-hole drive, have been chosen to investigate this mystery. But they aren’t the only ones pursuing it. Anything of value beneath the ocean is of value to the master pirate Black Manta…and anything that attracts Black Manta attracts Arthur Curry, his lifelong foe, the Aquaman! But heaven help them all when the doors of the mystery at Point Nemo swing wide to admit them in…
Bringing a bracing cosmic-horror sensibility to the world of Aquaman, rising superstars Ram V (Venom, The Swamp Thing) and Christian Ward (Thor, Invisible Kingdom) team up to put Arthur Curry through an exercise in psychological terror that could break the will of even a king!
Buy It Here: Digital / Physical

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Steve Baxi has a Masters in Ethics and Applied Philosophy, with focuses in 20th Century Aesthetics and Politics. Steve creates video essays and operates a subscription based blog where he writes on pop culture through a philosophy lens. He tweets through @SteveSBaxi.