Aquaman #48 Review and *SPOILERS*

Is You Is, Or Is You Ain't My Baby?

Written By: Cullen Bunn

Art By: Vincente Cifuentes, John Dell, Juan Castro, Guy Major, Tom Napolitano
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: January 27, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

This is it all you Aqua-fans, the end of Thule and this strange, strange run of our King of Atlantis.  Everybody always talks about how weird and out of sorts Batman and Superman became after Convergence, what with Batman being Jim Gordon in a robot suit and Superman becoming powerless and being outed as Clark Kent, but what people don't seem to realize...... or at least talk about is that Aquaman has suffered even more.  The dude didn't only just get a costume change, but a whole new power-set, while being hunted by his own people........ on top of having an alien world force itself on our world like some kind of inter-dimensional rapist.  Shit is all over the place, but hopefully now that Arthur has gotten the help of the Justice League and Mera has freed herself from her shape shifting captor, things will be able to get back to some kind of semblance of normalcy and we all can get back on the Aquaman trolley again.......  This was just a weird run, but it will be okay.......... I gotta keep telling myself that it will be okay.......... it's over now........ Alright, let's jump into this issue and see how the Thule invasion ends and hope to whatever god you want to believe in that Mera doesn't find out that Arthur banged her doppelganger and holds a grudge against him for it.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Aquaman immediately getting the trust of his people again, when he saves an Atlantean woman from being crushed by rubble........... which I kind of think he caused when he called in giant sea monsters as his backup, but nonetheless, he saved her and when he's confronted by an Atlantean elite team known as The Drift, which consists of Garth, Tula, Swatt and Murk, a fight is held off when after Arthur explains that Mera has been replaced by a shape shifter, the entire group see Mera bust through a tower fighting her doppelganger........... which she immediately takes out and we never see Siren again in this issue or find out why she was working with Thule or why she's Mera's sister in this continuity.  Yeah, things are getting a bit rushed here.  So yeah, Mera and Aquaman are reunited and with that it's time to finally stop Thule.

Now up until this issue I really thought that Entriax was the only one in Aquaman's camp who could open a portal to Thule, but it appears that with the power of Poseidon, Arthur can do it as well and Mera and him go to this dark mirror-verse and quickly take down all threats stopping them from getting to the heart of this place and Aquaman plunges his trident into it, sacrificing the powers that Poseidon blessed upon him to reverse the affect of Thule.  You see, instead of Thule leaking over into our world, poisoning it and consuming it, now our world is doing the same at an accelerated rate.  It's weird though because the big lead into this issue is that Aquaman would have to sacrifice something in order to stop Thule and while he did sacrifice the power that was given to him....... it was really built up to be something huge that he wouldn't be able to give up.  So yeah, Aquaman saved the world and instead of having the power of a god, he simply has his power that rivals most of the Justice League instead........... not a bad trade off really.

In the end, the world is saved, the Justice League stroke each other off in congratulating themselves on a job well done and the sacrifice that Aquaman made, while not much of a sacrifice is immediately shown not to mean shit when Wonder Woman says that she'll talk Poseidon into blessing Aquaman with his powers again.  So yeah.......... sacrifice.  As our issue closes, Arthur seems a bit overwhelmed as he sees all the refugees from Thule that the Justice League and him have saved throughout this story arc and realizes that his kingdom just got a whole lot bigger.

That's it for this issue of Aquaman and for all my complaining about how quickly and at times disappointingly this issue was rushed together to force a conclusion, I have to say that this is still one of the most entertaining issues of Aquaman since this story arc started.  Right off the bat I found myself excited for it when I saw the awesome cover by Brett Booth and very early into this book we see Mera's return, which to me kind of signaled the return of normalcy to this series and I don't know if that was just it, but I rocked my way through this issue having a dandy of a time.  Like I said though, this was rushed and having Siren do absolutely nothing in this issue except get her ass beat and not show up again was very disappointing and the final solution to freeing the world from Thule's invasion had the excitement equivalent to turning a light switch on because really, it came off that easy and there was no consequence in doing it.  I don't know if Aquaman will get his god powers back when Dan Abnett takes this series over next issue, but for the most part I didn't mind them and wouldn't be opposed to seeing them again as long as this series uses them to become fun and interesting because for the most part, that's what this story line lost in it's duration.  Like I said before, even with the quickness of this conclusion, I had a fun enough time and half of that was because of how good the art looked and I'm happy as hell that Vincente Cifuentes is continuing on this title because even though I wasn't a fan of this story line, my interest peeked up a bit when he started on pencils.  

Bits and Pieces:

Even though this conclusion to the Thule story came off very rushed and had little to no consequence, I have to say that I found myself enjoying it for what it was............ and while some of that might have been me simply knowing that this was the end of this story arc, it's still a decently fun read with excellent art all the way through.  Don't go doing something silly like jumping on to this title here if you've been staying away, but for those of you who have been trudging through this story arc, it's a decent enough way to end it and knowing that we'll be moving on to something new next issue might hype that excitement up a little. 

6.5/10