If you life leads you with questions/
Seek advice from under the sea/
Dear Aquaman, Dear Aquaman/
Please give your advice to me: Aquaman!

Last night I saw the movie ‘The Raid: Redemption’. It’s an Indonesian action flick about a SWAT team infiltrating a derelict apartment complex to nab a mob boss. It’s a great film because it is nothing but massive fight scenes and shoot outs. Because it is directed so well you don’t notice how bad the story is when you’re seeing a guy fight five men with machetes with his bare hands. But just because it is a good movie doesn’t mean there isn’t cracks in some of of the cinematography (bad writing already mentioned). While this sounds like a complete, off topic rant it does sum up my feelings for this recent issue of Aquaman.

This felt like a lot of padding considering we still got ANOTHER issue of this story to end. I’ve enjoyed this story because Geoff Johns has made this more of a visual, kick ass action film then anything else. But now it feels like the story needs to end sooner then later and nothing really happens here. Well someone dies in this and it does piss me off considering I’ve loved ‘The Others’ this arc. The more Johns kills off one of these guys the more upset I get we probably won’t get to see them in their own series. (Seriously, all of these ‘Others’ are a home run for a series in my book.) Like ‘The Raid’, this is just a slow ebb in what could have been a great story but clearly Johns has to pad to get another issue in.

But, like ‘The Raid’, the visuals were never the issue when it came to this series. Ivan Reis keeps showing why he is one of the best artists at DC. It’s funny how just now he’s going to (maybe) get a spot at Justice League and until then he’s been relegated to a ‘B’ book such as this. Just because this is a ‘B’ title doesn’t mean he isn’t delivering his ‘A’ game. Even with three different inkers his panels look really great here. There isn’t a major ‘wow’ double page spread like the previous issues but even still it is a great looking issue. What helps on the three inkers problem is that all of them have worked with Reis on a bunch of different titles, including this one. So while some of the panels look different from the next it isn’t that noticeable to cause an issue.

I gave ‘The Raid: Redemption’ four stars on Netflix for a bunch of different reasons. While the action was top notch the lack of a story (or sad attempt at one) and the endless padding to get to a full run time made it tedious towards the end. All of these things I mention directly apply to this issue of Aquaman. The action is great and Ivan Reis once again did an amazing job here on the art. But you can tell a lot of padding by Johns to get another issue out of this. A good issue definitely, but considering we have two months to finish a story that should be done now….That’s a killer.