Flashpoint: Emperor Aquaman #3 – Review

By: Tony Bedard (writer), Vicente Cifuentes (artist), Diana Egea (inker), Kyle Ritter (colorist)

The Story: I know I killed your wife, but do you have to act like such a jerk?

The Review: We’ve known for a while now that Prince Orm of Atlantis and Penthesilea of the Amazons have worked together since day one (see Flashpoint: Wonder Woman and the Furies #1) to raise Cain between their peoples.  Even though it’s never been explicitly stated, you can pretty much deduce, especially given Orm’s character history, that power-lust motivates their partnership to some degree, but how they came to work together still remains a mystery.

Well, hold on to your britches, because here comes a spoiler that will blow your mind.  As Diana reveals to Arthur, “…[Orm’s] not dead!  It’s worse…I walked in on your brother and my aunt Penthesilea kissing!”  Bedard’s love for melodrama defeats whatever impact this “revelation” can have (which is slim to begin with), but worse, it just makes the characters look silly.  Their overblown disbelief (Arthur: “That’s…no…that’s just not—”) makes them sound like kids who can’t believe their parents made out because it’s just plain icky.

Once you get over your violent spasm of eye-rolling, you’ll also have to take issue with the execution of this scene.  It feels very soapy with its fraught fact drop and lack of substantiation.  Surely this merits a flashback of some kind, especially since it changes the entire flow of the story now that the real villains stand revealed.  Possibly we’ll get to see Orm and Penthesilea’s lip-locking in the next issue of F:WWATF, but that just seems like poor editorial planning.

Flashpoint: Emperor Aquaman #1 – Review

By: Tony Bedard (writer), Ardian Syaf (penciller), Vicente Cifuentes (inker), Kyle Ritter (colorist)

The Story: If this deal doesn’t go through, we’re sunk.

The Review: In my mind, there are actually few truly bad writers in the comics biz—just writers who do certain things well and other things not so well.  Certainly you have your top all-rounders who can pretty much write the phonebook and make it a page-turner, and you have your hacks that can’t produce anything readable no matter the genre.  But don’t overlook the writers who, when they can play to their strengths, offer some pretty worthwhile goods.

I’ve often criticized Bedard for his clear limitations as a writer, which we’ve seen in his runs on R.E.B.E.L.S. and Green Lantern Corps: he can’t seem to manage an ensemble cast very well, nor can he give credit to a plot with much complexity.  But we shouldn’t ignore the points where he excels: straightforward, uncomplicated storylines with take-charge, bold personalities.  This makes Flashpoint: Emperor Aquaman the ideal grounds for him to work with.

The principal cast consists entirely of characters of noble origins: Emperor Aquaman, Queen Mera, Prince Orm (who you may know as the Ocean Master), and King Brion of Markovia (Geo-Force).  If they come across a little too narrow-minded, pretentious, and unrelatable, well, they are, after all, royalty.  They can pull off the tinge of melodrama Bedard lends to all his dialogue: “You must take a few risks, after all, when you extend the hand of peace.”

For the most part, Bedard engagingly delivers the grim hows and whys of Western Europe becoming a casualty of war between Atlantis and New Themyscira.  But you still get overwritten moments, like the heavy-handed narration in the intro distracting from the already powerful imagery.  And important as it is to get the necessary exposition across, it’s always painful to have it done through characters explaining things to other characters who should already know that information: Orm recalling to Arthur the details and consequences of a plot Arthur himself masterminded is a perfect example.