Arthur Curry Jr.
7 years ago - Arthur Curry Jr. Is born the son of Arthur Curry & Mera, delivered by Nuidis Vulko. He is the crown prince of Atlantis. He is brought to the surface to meet his grandfather Tom Curry.
6 years ago - 1-year-old Arthur Jr. is kidnapped. Black Manta, attacks Atlantis with Orm Marius only to betray him. He leaves Mera in a coma, and kidnaps the prince. Arthur Curry quests across the ocean to save him, assisted by Dolphin. He sacrifices his hand to save his son's life and almost dies of blood loss before Dolphin brings them back to Atlantis. He has it replaced with an Atlantean war-hook.
5 years ago - 2-year-old Arthur Jr.'s mother Mera recovers from her Coma, believing her son dead, and in her rage she attacks Atlantis & Arthur Curry. When she discovers that her son is alive, she choosing to remain in isolation to repent her attack.
4 years ago - 3-year-old Arthur Jr first meets Mareena.
3 years ago - 4-year-old Arthur Jr.'s mother Mera returns to the throne when Arthur Curry takes a larger role with the Watchtower. He beings learning to one day take the throne.
Aquaman's early stories from the 50's and 60's heavily featured his wife and infant child. This was actually a pretty common thing in stories for kids in that era. You regularly saw it in stories featuring sci-fi adventure characters; that they would quickly develop a family unit. It actually puts the early versions of the character in an interesting context when you imagine him as a contemporary of Flash Gordon or Adam Strange.
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Arthur Curry Jr's Comic HistoryArthur Curry Jr. appeared for the first time in 1965, in an issue of Aquaman titled "The Birth of Aquababy!" These comics are fun, because there really is a unique style to these old stories that you just don't see anymore, but they still seem very familiar nonetheless. While Aquaman comics of the era had a very traditional villain-of-the-week style, the world operated with a very well-established internal mythology.
Most DC characters went through their bug character shifts in the 80's and 90's. While Aquaman obviously had his big change into his long-haired harpoon-hand look in the 90's, this actually followed a long period of Arthur still wearing his classic costume, but also being dark as all hell. He was basically being depicted as depressed... and the explanation why is actually kind of nuts. Aquababy was killed. In *1977*, in the pages of Adventure Comics. He was kidnapped by Black Manta, was in a coma for a long time, and wound up literally dead. This broke up Arthur & Mera, and essentially defined the character forever. |
Our Arthur Curry Jr. StoryThe animated series alluded to the kidnapping of Arthur Jr. as the catalyst to the story that costs Arthur his hand. We even used that version of the story for our version of the character. It simply hadn't occurred to any of us that they actually drew this from this classic and seminal story arc, that the potential death of his son that he was fighting to prevent was one that has actually happened in regular continuity.
It actually works really well to combine the 90's version of Aquaman with the classic 60's era vibe. The neat byproduct of this is that we actually have a surviving Arthur Jr. He actually appeared in a few issues in Peter David's series (although best of luck trying to work out how), so we actually have a totally serviceable visual for what young Arthur Jr might look like. It's also fun to imagine a future version of DC when all the children of the modern heroes are adults. Arthur Jr. is a few years older than most of them, and is also the crown prince of Atlantis, so I imagine that in the future he will devote himself to his throne while Aqualad & Dolphin's daughter Mareena would serve as the future Atlantean hero. Just what the relationship between those two might be is probably a much more complex question. |
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