Arthur Curry has a new power. It’s not something that he has a whole lot of control over. It’s not like there’s a YouTube tutorial on hydrokinesis. There’s no formal courses or licensing for that kind of ability. Thankfully, he’s got someone to teach him. That person happens to be his wife. Arthur deals with this and quite a bit more on Aquaman #1. Writer Jeremy Adams opens a new series with the venerable character with artist John Timms and colorist Rex Lokus. The opening issue of the new series is briskly-paced and deeply connected to current events in the rest of the DC Universe.

There’s a commercial airliner that’s going down 50 miles east of Manhattan. Metropolis 239 is going down. This looks like a job for...Aquaman. No problem. His wife is teaching him to use his new powers and everything. It’s perfectly fine. He knows what he’s doing. The bad news is that saving a commercial airliner is only the. beginning of his day. He’s going to have to deal with a massive creature made entirely out of water. Then there’s a sudden disappearance and weird activity deep in the ocean that requires the moral support of his friends Bruce and Diana...it’s going to be a long journey for Arthur.

Adams firmly establishes everything that’s going on in Arthur’s life relatively quickly in an issue that rushes through quite a lot: his personal life. His professional life as a superhero. His other job as king of Atlantis. It’s a busy life for him and Adams does an excellent job of showing a superhero juggling everything that he has to juggle and STILL being slammed with a hell of a lot of other hell to have to slog through. Aquaman is a tricky figure to get right on the comics page, but Adams is doing a good job.

Timms is given the opportunity to show some really intense action sequences that involve ridiculously massive threats being hurled at one guy of perfectly normal size. The fearless determination on the face of Arthur is a big factor in showing his heroism. Any artist would want to show some degree of emotional range, but Timms is wise to keep him stoic and perfectly focussed the entire time as the whole world falls apart around him. It makes for that much more of a visual impact for the hero.

There’s nothing specifically in the first issue of the new series that couldn’t have been in an issue of Aquaman at any other point since the dawn of the silver age. And yet...Adams and company manage to make it all feel quite fresh and new with impressively heroic proportions and a visually stunning series of events that all seem to be just a little bigger than anything Aquaman has any business trying to deal with. So it’s a fun opening to a whole new series that could end up being an accomplished addition to the many, many Aquaman series that have come before it.

Grade: B