Oh, Aquaman...will you ever win?

It may well be passe by now to rip on Aquaman.

No, you know what? It's not. Sure, the aquatic avenger isn't the most original target of ridicule, but he's no less a legitimate one. I want to give the guy a chance, but things never seem to work out. I've been reading a bunch of DC Comics for the last 5 years or so, and I have no idea what version of the character is running around right now.

Part of the reason Aquaman gets no respect from fans is that he gets so precious little from the creators that make his stories. Reading the early issues of "Justice League of America" via the "DC Showcase Presents" trade paperback makes me think this has always been the case, with Arthur Curry an afterthought even then.

Take, for instance, issue #1, "World of No Return," in which Despero captures our heroes and transports them in groups of two (convenient how villains so often accommodated the series' format by splitting them into pairs that could each get their own chapters) to strange other worlds.

Aquaman and Green Lantern find themselves on "the water-world of Thanakon." Yep, "water-world." Not only that, the crisis is a "huge burning glass in the sky" that is magnifying the sun's energy and evaporating the oceans. This should be Aquaman's time to shine, right? I figured GL would be stung by a yellow jellyfish, forcing the league's resident mariner to step up and save the planet.

Well, in a way, he does, true, by summoning the octopi of Thanakon and commanding them to the surface, but it's Green Lantern who lifts them up on the lens with his power ring. Worse, while Aquaman bosses the octopi into releasing black ink to blot out the lens, the whole thing is Green Lantern's idea. The resident lord of the sea couldn't come up with this plan? Not according to writer Gardner Fox. A tailor-made situation for Aquaman to justify his presence, and he needs Hal Jordan to figure it all out. Come to think of it, Lantern could have used his ring to scoop up the octopi himself and then, I don't know, poke them or something to make them release that black ink.

The chapter ends with Aquaman wishing they had a way to get back and join their fellow League members, and of course it's his buddy GL who thinks of one. That's Aquaman in these stories: nice guy to have around if you've got a job for a fish, but not so clever on his own. It's like someone needs to tell him to tell the fish what to do, and when telling fish what to do is your main distinction, well, it looks pretty bad.

Maybe his portrayal in JLA is an aberration, although years of reading later stories and watching "Super Friends" makes me doubt it. If I buy an Aquaman collection, will I see the guy kick a, take names, and act like a superhero who knows what he's doing?