Aquaman Artists Announced!

Courtesy of CBR:

The newly announced Aquaman series will re-team Geoff Johns with Brightest Day artists Ivan Reis and Joe Prado, the writer revealed today at WonderCon 2011 in San Francisco.

“I don’t think you can get much better in comics,” Johns said during the DC Nation panel. “Everything the do elevates the characters they work on, and we hope to do the same for Aquaman.”

Announced last weekend during MegaCon, the new Aquaman will mark the seventh series for the 70-year-old character. Although he was left dead with the cancellation of Sword of Atlantis in 2007, the sea king was resurrected during Blackest Night before going on to play a central role in the current Brightest Day series.

Johns has insisted that Aquaman is one of DC Comics’ A-list characters, telling Comic Book Resources in December that, “He’s got to be showcased like that, and he’s got to kick ass like Green Lantern or Batman or the entire Justice League.”

Aquaman #1 is expected to debut later this year.

I've said from the beginning that Ivan Reis needs to be on an Aquaman book!!!

Aquaman Ongoing - More Details

In a follow-up to Aquaman getting his own series again, Newsarama has more details...

Geoff Johns clarified that his run later this year on Aquaman will be an ongoing series, and it will start after Flashpoint ends.

"It's been great to see the popularity of Aquaman," Johns said, referring to the fan response to his announcement at MegaCon on Sunday that he'd be writing an Aquaman series. "It's really cool to see all these characters get some attention for once."

Johns, who also serves as the chief creative officer for DC Entertainment, said the cast of the new ongoing series will include the characters that have been supporting Aquaman in Brightest Day.

"Mera will be a staple in the series. She'll be right next to Aquaman," he said.

Johns already added to Aquaman's supporting cast by introducing a new Aqualad in Brightest Day #10, coinciding with the same new Aqualad appearing in a new Young Justice animated series. The writer said the teenaged Aqualad is here to stay and will be important to the whole DCU.

"There are a lot of plans for Aqualad, not only in Aquaman, but throughout the DC Universe. He's become a pretty big character for us, which is great," Johns said.

After having died a few years ago in the comics universe, Aquaman was resurrected by Johns in the 2009 mini-series Blackest Night and has been starring in the bi-weekly Brightest Day, which finishes in April. Johns, who co-writes Brightest Day, hinted in a December interview with Newsarama that he would be writing the hero after the bi-weekly ended.

Out of all the characters the writer could choose for his next ongoing series, Johns chose Aquaman because he's enjoyed writing him so much in Brightest Day, "more than anybody," he said.

"I just know that there is a lot of potential in that character," Johns said. "I know there is untapped potential in that character and everything he's about. I love that everybody knows who he is, but they don't know a lot about him. And I just had ideas and stories for him."

But the writer said that even though people saw a "Johns-written Aquaman" in Brightest Day, that isn't necessarily the type of stories they'll be seeing in his new Aquaman ongoing series.

"There are a lot of things that will happen in the book that people won't expect," he said. "Brightest Day had a pretty straightforward superhero Aquaman story. That was to get him and Mera and Aqualad and Black Manta and everybody back on stage.

"But where we go in the book will surprise some people," he said.

Having first appeared in 1941, Aquaman has gone through some drastic changes as writers have tried to make him popular enough to sustain an ongoing series. The last ongoing Aquaman series, Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis, ended in 2007 with issue #57.

Johns said he's been interested in the character for a long time, and he compared his universe to that of Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps, which Johns has ushered into a significant revival over the last six years.

"Aquaman lives in such a cool world," Johns said. "Where Green Lantern goes out away from the Earth, Aquaman goes to the depths of Earth, and there are a lot of things we've never explored. The depths of the ocean are a frontier. You see it on the Discovery Channel, that they discover a new species on the bottom on the ocean all the time, and it's a whole new world down there.

"And how does that relate to our world?" Johns added. "That's what I want to explore. I really want to find Aquaman's place in the DC Universe, but then also explore what he means within the rest of that world."

Newsarama recently explored Aquaman's potential and creators pointed toward the story potential of Aquaman's connection to environmental issues.

Johns agreed there's a "real issue there."

"Aquaman cares about that, and it's central to who he is," Johns said. "But you have to be careful not to be preachy."

Then he added that there's something happening in the DCU that could allow Aquaman to approach the issue. "There are some twists and turns coming up that involve some of that, but I don't want to get into it just yet," he said, then added, "I'll just say this: It's all about responsibility."

I'm certainly along for the ride and am dying to see where he takes the Aquaman Family! I echo his sentinment that all the Aqua-characters have been woefully underused. I can't wait for Flashpoint to be finished (and it hasn't even started yet!!)

Aquaman is Back!!

This news comes from an article on CBR:

A new Aquaman series written by Geoff Johns will launch later this year in the wake of Brightest Day. The announcement was made Saturday at MegaCon during the DC Comics spotlight panel and confirmed last night by Johns.

“Announced at Megacon: After Brightest Day I’ll be moving over to a new book — Aquaman #1 coming later this year!!” he wrote on Twitter. It was not revealed whether the title is an ongoing or a miniseries, or who the artist will be.

It will be the seventh series for the 70-year-old character, who reached the height of his modern-era popularity in the 1990s under writer Peter David. The last Aquaman comic, subtitled Sword of Atlantis as part of a sweeping “One Year Later” retooling, was canceled in 2007, leaving the sea king dead. Or, rather, “dead,” as he was resurrected in DC’s Blackest Night event before going on to play a central role in Brightest Day.

Although Aquaman is often the butt of jokes, in large part due to his depiction in the Super Friends animated series, Johns has championed the character and his place in the DC Universe.

“I think Aquaman is one of DC’s A-List characters, but he’s got to be treated like that,” Johns told Comic Book Resources in December. “He’s got to be showcased like that, and he’s got to kick ass like Green Lantern or Batman or the entire Justice League.”

Please, please, let Ivan Reis be the artist! Whoooo-hoooo!

Young Justice Downtime

This week's episode featured Atlantis and the Aquaman family of characters! In fact, it was incredible how many they managed to get in:

Starting with Aquaman and Aqualad, the two characters we have already seen.



And you would expect to see Mera, Garth, and Tula, and weren't disappointed:







Black Manta sightings tend to run high as well:



Vulko and Orm (who isn't Ocean Master on Earth-16) are always welcome, if unexpected:



So the Earth-16 Ocean Master looks something like this:



And here are Lagoon Boy and Sheeva from the Erik Larsen run:





As well as Topo from the Kurt Busiek run:



That's ten characters, not counting Arthur Jr.! I think the show did a great job in showcasing Atlantis and was very impressed with what the creators did! Here's the immediate AquaFamily members (including the new Aqualad) once again:



And in case there was any doubt, Mera kicks ass on Earth-16 as well! Here she creates a hard water octopus for protection from Black Manta's manta men!



Enjoy!

The Legend of Aquaman Special

Back in 1989, I wrote a letter to the Editor of the Aquaman Special I recently posted a wallpaper from. In something that was rare at the time, I received a personal reply from then-Editor, Mark Waid! His entry on Wikipedia describes his career better than I could:

He is best known for his eight-year run as writer of the DC Comics' title The Flash, as well as his scripting of the limited series Kingdom Come and Superman: Birthright, and his work on Marvel Comics' Captain America. From August 2007 to December 2010, Waid served as Editor-in-Chief, and later, Chief Creative Officer of BOOM! Studios, where he wrote titles such as Irredeemable, Incorruptible and The Traveler.

And he wrote lots of other cool stuff from DC as well!
First, check out the cool envelope!



And the back of the letter!



And the front of the letter! When you hold the letter up to a light, the characters on the back look like they're holding up the DC Bullet! Very cool! I don't have a copy of the letter I sent, but I think you get a sense of a few of the things I asked him about!



I remember being excited about plans for Aqualad, and knowing that Ocean Master could have returned! It was sooooo cool to have gotten this letter! Even better than an autographed comic!

Enjoy!

Red Lantern Mera

Here's a new action figure I picked up today... and it's the very first Mera action figure ever put out by DC Direct! She's not looking like herself because during Blackest Night, she gained a red power ring and it changed her appearance.

Mera also comes with Dex-Starr, otherwise known as Rage Kitty (a regular earth cat who also gets a red power ring), so I think that could make her one of the more popular figures in this series! She also makes a great companion for Black Lantern Aquaman! I can't wait to display them!

Looking ahead, I have Brightest Day Aquaman, Mera, and Aqualad action figures (all based on Ivan Reis's outstanding artwork) to look forward to!

Star Trek in the real world

From the Edmonton Journal:

A team of Vancouver-based scientists have created a hand-held device that will help doctors diagnose sick patients in a quick test that identifies the bugs patients are carrying by separating human DNA from virus DNA.

Finding a virus's DNA from a throat-swab test is similar to "looking for a needle in a haystack," says Andre Marziali, a physics professor at the University of British Columbia, because the sample is crowded with human DNA. He and his team are hoping his medical "tricorder" invention — a portable, battery-powered device that can pinpoint the specific DNA signature of the virus — will help the medical community.

"Researchers often can't identify viruses that are infecting someone because of the amount of human DNA in the background. That is exactly the situation they're in now," Marziali said. "What this can do is it can pick out specific DNA sequences for analysis. This is huge.

"We have an incredible ability to reject background DNA."

Marziali's work was recognized as one of nine UBC advances that will "transform" the world in the university's Next Big Thing in 2011 report. His team is still developing the technology by testing accuracy and speed, but they anticipate the tricorder could be available in as early as three years if they obtain appropriate funding.

The device will have various ways of taking samples from patients — such as blood tests or throat swabs — that can be placed in the main instrument for real-time analysis.

Marziali couldn't suggest a cost estimate for the tricorder, but noted its success depended on being inexpensive because users would need to buy cartridges to hold samples.

The device is developed using the similar technology to the Aurora, a machine used by forensics researchers to extract DNA from the dirtiest of samples, including dirt and tar.

Marziali is president of Boreal Genomics, a company that currently sells the Aurora.

Marziali and his colleague, Lorne Whitehead, co-invented the computer-sized product — which was also used by RCMP to test forensics samples — in 2009. He said the researchers are the first to use electric fields to clean and untangle DNA.

Doctors are about 70 per cent accurate when diagnosing patients during flu season, which is why the tricorder's accuracy would be extremely beneficial, said Dr. Don Low, chief microbiologist at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital.

"There's no question it would be useful to the medical community," he said. "It would have an incredible use at the front line as a utility in doctors' offices, walk-in clinics and in the emergency department."

Three influenza strains — including H3N2 — are currently circulating across the country this flu season and Low said symptoms can be extremely similar, making diagnosing and determining appropriate treatments — from bed rest to antibiotics — a challenge.

"If a patient comes in with a sore throat, fever or cough, there's a good likelihood it's influenza. But we don't know if it's influenza A, or influenza B, or if it's one of the viruses circulating. These different kinds of viruses are closely related to each other," Low says.

"It's really empiricism, and only if you're lucky will you get a laboratory test to confirm for deny it," he added, noting that samples taken to a lab could leave doctors waiting up to five days before results are received. "By that point, you've decided how to manage that patient. With 70 per cent sensitivity, you're misdiagnosing."

Low said the device would also help doctors quickly discover if their patients have sexually transmitted diseases or other infections, aside from the common cold or flu.

For his part, Marziali is convinced the device would also be of use in other markets — such as security and pandemic control — and in remote areas where access to doctors and hospitals are limited.

A Medical Tricorder... how cool is that??

DC Universe Online

Showcasing some of the artwork that was used in the game!

Batman


Flash


Green Lantern


Nightwing


Power Girl


Superman


Wonder Woman


Zatanna


Enjoy!

Poll Results!

The last poll asked which DC Comics initiative you were most excited about. 57% and taking first place was DC Comics being priced at 2.99!

14% were excited about the new DC Earth One Graphic Novels!

14% were excited about the new slate of DC movies, of which Green Lantern will be the first!

And another 14% are looking forward to DC Universe Online, which started this month!

And the option that garnered no votes at all, the Digital Comics initiative!

My guess is not that many people are interested in digital comics yet. Thanks for participating and look for another poll to start soon!

New Aquaman Merchandise!

Today I took a trip to the nearest Toys R Us and found this:

A limited edition DC Universe/He-Man crossover! I'm not a He-Man fan at all, but this is the one version of Aquaman from the DC Universe classics line that I don't have. It's an exact replica of the one released in Wave 2 and it was the only Aquaman (out of the four they made) that I wanted and was missing. Amazingly, this was one time where there was lots of Aquaman to be found! There were at least ten Aquaman/Mer-man and only three Hawkman/Stratos. Weirdly enough, I already own the Hawkman figure. I picked it up at a pop culture convention for five bucks!

Happy Birthday to me!