Aquaman: Deep Dives #3
Written by Steve Orlando
Art by V. Ken Marion, Sandu Florea and Andrew Dalhouse
Lettering by Wes Abbott
Published by DC
Review by Pierce Lydon
‘Rama Rating: 4 out of 10
Comics are really only as good as their art team, and Aquaman: Deep Dives #3 is as good an example of that maxim as any. Steve Orlando gives readers a pretty middle-of-the-road adventure story to show some of the dynamic between Aquaman and Tempest, but penciler V. Ken Marion, inker Sandu Florea and colorist Andrew Dalhouse completely fumble the execution. Marion’s botched visual storytelling coupled with Florea’ thin, indistinguishable inks and Dalhouse’s sometimes inexplicably neon coloring means Orlando’s story is left sleeping with the fishes.
As Arthur and Garth battle an interdimensional sea serpent, Marion struggles to make the choreography or the stakes fully translate onto the page. Constantly changing panel sizes make for an uneven read and don’t give a great sense of the space of the setting for the story. Florea doesn’t help matters by failing to really differentiate the line weights of the different elements of each panel. This is particularly noticeable in panels that feature a lot of water (spoiler: that’s most of them) as the shapes all kind of blend together.
Marion’s linework has a sharp, jagged quality to it that would in theory help his characters standout against the backgrounds, but Florea lets the details get lost and the result is something that like a mirror-universe mashup of Brett Booth, Scott Kolins or Kenneth Rocafort, but with none of the strengths that make those artists stand out. Dalhouse has the unenviable task of trying to make sense of the menagerie of lines — he mostly acquits himself, except when it comes to Tempest using his powers. The water wielding and different spells wash over the pages in a sickly neon that is tough to focus on.
Ultimately, the art distracts from the little bits of character work that Orlando is doing. The writer isn’t reinventing the wheel or anything here. This is a pretty standard “super heroes save folks from a monster” story. But if it was a little easier to parse what was actually happening on the page, the smaller moments in the script would stand out a little bit more. Marion doesn’t execute facial expressions all that well either, so even ORlando’s small dialogue flourishes don’t land.
DC’s ‘Digital First’ books have really been a mixed bag, and I think it’s because these books were never really intended for the platform. It’s not enough to just make a comic for print and toss it into a digital setting. The ways that people read are entirely different on a phone or tablet. That means that the content has to change to suit that. Otherwise, you’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and you’re leaving readers holding the bag with a poor reading experience. This issue is a clear example of that, leaving Aquaman: Deep Dives #3 is dead in the water.