 Welcome back to the channel, Geo here, and it wouldn't be a week in Geekdom without me reviewing an Aquaman book. You see, Aquaman is my favorite DC Comics character and one of my all-time favorite heroes. I made a video for the first hardcover if you want to check that out. I will leave the link at the end of this review, and yeah, let's let's do this thing. Yeah, Misty is the second volume of her ongoing Aquaman run. Of course, this was a post-rebirth because we're no longer using that title. And the first thing that I want to talk about is they eliminated, I don't know if you can see it, they eliminated the volume number from the standard size hardcovers, and you can find them now here at the back. Right there it says, right here, it says volume two, which is pretty interesting. Obviously, the thing being, a new fan will pick this off from the shelf and not have to worry, oh, where's volume one, where's volume three, they can just pick this and start reading. I don't know if that works a hundred percent of the time, but that is going to be the norm, I guess, because all the books are coming out like that. So yeah, this find does look cool without the volume number. It looks like a solid reading piece that you're going to get. And this story is, of course, written by Kelly C. DeConnick, who started after Dan Abnett left, and this time around Victor Bogdanovic, which I probably butchered that. I'm so sorry, and Robson Rocha and Daniel Enriquez, those two are back, but Victor's new to the Aquaman title. And I didn't really notice a huge departure in style from Robson. I think they match and they complement each other art-wise pretty damn well. So when we left volume one, Arthur had lost his memories. I'm not going to go over every single detail, but from right out the top of my head, Arthur had lost all his memories. He was an amnesiac living in this small island with wholesome folk, and he was going by Andy. At the end of the volume, he starts regaining all of that stuff back, and you realize that the villagers were actual ancient sea deities who were stranded there due to mythological hijinks. You can read that volume to figure things out. So here at the start of amnesty volume two, Arthur wants to regain his memories, and he is put into this, I want to assume, death trance, if you will, where he goes into the great beyond, in this case, undersea, and you meet a brand new character called Mother Shark. And something really trivial, which has no impact whatsoever for this review, but I wanted to include it anyways. Since I first heard of Mother Shark and I saw the drawings and stuff, the first thing I kept thinking of was Mother Love, the queen song, and for some reason the melody, the haunting melody of that song, just kept playing in my head as I was reading the comic, and it sort of complemented the story in a really weird way. So Mother Shark, she is, and I was just going to say Mother Love, Mother Shark, she is sort of like the crypt keeper, I guess, for all the souls that are passing onward, but it's something beautiful in that it's undersea, because Earth, as a whole, it's a water planet, there's so much ocean out there, and it makes sense for it to be the source of many things, and one of them being sort of like this gate onto the afterlife. I thought that was a pretty cool take on the whole thing. And Arthur talking with Mother Shark, and you get sort of this really nice introspective look at Arthur Curry, and Kelly Sudeconnick is able to write that stuff in a not cliched way. It's a very fun way the way she handles it. With her Mother Shark talking about fragments of like these bubbles of memories, and she's very poetic and vague about Arthur's history, not only as an individual and as a just as a member, but as a hero that is Arthur Curry. The way she talks about him, and the way they reflect on his life and his deeds and stuff, I thought was pretty well done, hitting all the major notes of this character with his how he grew up and all that stuff. So afterwards, without spoiling too much, let's just say that if I take the slip cover off this book right here real real time, it's not going to be too much of a spoiler. But as you can see from this image, all the sea deities hop on board with Arthur, and they leave the island and head towards Amnesty Bay in Maine. And from there, the story kicks off with some really cool character work. I love what Kelly Sue has done with the title. She's taking all the good bits of story from Arthur's past, and just twisting it in new ways, and giving us new storylines to geek out over. And I love that she's not going for the standard procedure of here's Arthur against humans, because they're Atlantean versus Homo sapiens, and they hate each other, or here's Ocean Master wanting to invade, or hey, here's Black Manta doing his thing. Instead, he is being a bridge, as he's always been, between the sea and the land, and introducing all these new characters to North America. And I find a very fun way in focusing more on how can you rebuild your life and start anew, but still rekindle friendships and all that stuff. And I think she has a really good grasp of what makes Arthur tick, and his connection to the world, and his importance as a hero. I really do like what Kelly Sue's doing with the character, and I love the run so far. I know I'm a little ways behind, because I'm not reading it as it's coming out, but I do know some things that happen beyond this volume, so I am aware of the big bellied issue. I would say if I were to point out any negatives, actually would be the freaking cover, because you see Black Manta here, and I love Manta, he's one of my favorite villains, but he's not, I don't think he's needed at this point. He appears late into the book, setting up the third hardcover, which will be the confrontation between these two characters, these long time rivals. But, and I get it, a lot of fans of the character want to see that stuff, but as someone that likes to keep reading new and different things, I found that it bogged the story and the whole book a little bit for me. It bogged it down somewhat, because it's an old trope resurfacing. It's like, okay, you made a really cool first volume doing a Indonesia story. Arthur gaining his memories, an introspective look, analyzing his relationship with Atlantis, Mira, all that stuff, that's great. Introducing a whole bunch of new supporting characters for his book, and then you return to your old ways with Arthur against Manta. We kind of know, regardless of what run it is, we know the outcome eventually of these two characters fighting, and their motivation. So it's very cyclical in nature, and while that's fun and really kick-ass, trust me, I'm not saying I hate it or anything, I just want to see new things. Like, for example, in the book, we go back to Atlantis and we see Mira, and she is having to deal with her royalty thingamajig issues that they are telling her, hey, you have to be married, we need a king to accompany you and all that stuff, you gotta make this, you gotta follow tradition and whatnot, and she's very much a rebel, and she's doing things her way. And that stuff to me is really exciting, and it gives you a really cool look at Atlantis, whereas you've never seen that in the past. It's always been very Arthur-focused, and his reign as king has always been in and out, because he's always second-guessing, and spending more time with the Justice League than with Atlantis. So I've always liked when Aquaman writers take the time to develop Atlantis as a whole, as a society, because yeah, Peter David did that excellently back in the 90s, but since then, it's kind of been okay, and kind of, you know, that I wish we would have gotten more in the previous runs, but with Kelly and the stuff that she's doing, I'm liking it. She's fleshing out and ideas that, for example, Amnett introduced with his run when the rebirth stuff kicked in, and she's fleshing all that stuff out while still introducing little elements here, and there are tons of surprises for her run. With the Black Mantis stuff, like I just said, it feels cyclical, and the setup and the whole reveal with the weapon that he's going to be using, spoilers. It's cool as hell, but at the same time, I'm like, okay, let's go back to Amnesty Bay. I want to find out about the new characters, the seafaring gods, and I want to find out about Arthur's ongoing relation with Mira and how that develops, and whether Atlantis will accept Arthur again and all that stuff. That's what I want to read. Of course, when you imbue the book with action, and seafaring adventures and stuff, it makes it even greater, and we do get that. We get a Aqualad, but I'm not going to reveal who because I want you to read it, and his reintroduction to this book is wonderful. Of course, it is beautifully accentuated by the wonderful artwork. It looks gorgeous, and like I said at the beginning of the video, the art really... I knew who was drawing what, but if you put both art side by side, Robson and Victor, they really do flow in a similar manner. Of course, it borderlines between realistic and kind of cartoony-ish, and I guess maybe it's because we had Jonathan Galapion on some of the issues doing the artwork with them, the colors and stuff. I think it really accentuates the story and gives it a very unique, hyperly realistic detail, but still preserves that comic book animated feel that we all love, right? Or at least that's the perfect balance that I look for when I read comics. I want sort of a mishmash of the two elements clashing together and creating unique character works. As for the book itself, there's not a whole lot. I think it's only like five issues, which is, you know, I'll take whatever they give me, I guess. Some of the extras include pencil work and inks and stuff, and that just looks amazing. This is one of my favorite pages. That looks so cool, and it gives you such a eerie sense of escapism that you're not like it's on earth, but it doesn't feel like your typical setting in an Aquaman book, even though it's on an island. Also, one of the cool elements about this book is that they reintroduce sort of the Lovecraftian-esque horror, which is absent in a lot of Aquaman material, and I think works perfectly for the character because he is a seafaring hero. And I want to see sort of this horror action take on Aquaman with him dealing with characters that are not your typical supervillains. So I really enjoyed that. I thought it was fantastic. So yeah, overall, this just solidified the run for me and I cannot wait to pick up Volume 3 whenever that pops up. I absolutely loved it. I think Kelly Sudeconik is on a roll and she's doing great things with the title. And she is worthy of, to me, in the pantheon of Aquaman writers. I think she's doing a really cool job. And the art is really dramatic and beautiful to behold. Have you read Aquaman Volume 2 amnesty from Kelly Sudeconik? Let me know in the comment section down below. If not, let me know what is your favorite Lovecraftian tale in comics. Let me know down below. Thank you everybody for tuning in. As always, thank you for liking, commenting, subscribing, being a part of a week, and keep them. Thank you so very much. Of course, hit the little bell icon so you know when new videos pop up and follow me on social media if you can. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that fun stuff. I've got to go. I've got more stuff to replay, review, watch. It's a madhouse. I will catch all of you on our next video.