I'm getting really tired of shit like this, and in this case, it's NPR who should be fucking ashamed. Take four minutes and listen to this ridiculous air-filler and see if you can figure out what my problem is.
Back? Okay.
So, after insulting the character, this "examination" of Aquaman begins by letting you know he was created by Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris in 1941. I want you to remember that year, because it's going to come up again later. Also, for those of you playing at home, 1941 is three years after Timely Comics debuted Namor, the Sub-Mariner, who is the only other marine comics character anyone cares about. Anyway, after giving you the quick background that Aquaman is a comic book character, the piece bounces from his cartoon in the 1960s, to the SuperFriends cartoon, to the proto-memes that roamed the dismal valley that was the Interwebs of the 90s to the parodies of things like real memes and Robot Chicken. From there we talk about the HBO show Entourage for awhile and then we jump forward using language as a time machine a full decade to the era of the big superhero film, namely Justice League and now, the eponymous Aquaman. Glen here then sums up with a wishy-washy kind of point about how "the bros won," and what is lost when a character changes so much "in so short a time" by which I think he means 10 to 15 years.
Do you see it yet?
The "point," such as it is, fails to instill what is lost with any meaning. Are we meant to care about the discarding of elements from a character which no longer work when attitudes and mores change? If anything, that's a failure of marketing and commodification, not storytelling. Is it that something inherent to the character is lost during his recent broification? Is he no longer truly Aquaman, is that your point? Your point sucks, Glen. I think you might be a minor fanboy out of his league here. I think you might be someone who has made his collection of things into some kind of badge of authority (despite those big collections I see in the background) without learning anything about a character whose emblem you had inked permanently on your skin. Your piece is a waste of time and space, and it enrages me.
But that's still not the real problem.
The real problem is that your narrative is a complete fiction. You invented an endpoint and then strung together some stuff that happened to make it look like it created that endpoint. The reality is, the Jason Momoa Aquaman we see now is less of a shock to comics readers than it is to people who look at fucking memes because between 1941 and 2018, there was some storytelling happening, some character evolution, even some reflexive referencing of Aquaman's place in the DCU and the joke some people made of his presence, powers and appearance. And you may think that doesn't matter. You may think SEVEN FULL DECADES OF the character's PRIMARY FUCKING MEDIUM in stories doesn't affect this movie version. But let's say there was one good Aquaman story per decade. That's not too much of a fucking stretch, is it? That's seven good Aquaman stories. Seven good stories exceeds the quality output of some successful writers, and is way more than enough to evolve a character. So I think it fucking matters. I think maybe - just maybe - you could not pretend like nothing is happening on the comics page just because you're an ignorant loudmouth dork with a piddly stupid collection. I think you could consider, just consider - shutting your fucking mouth. I hate to go all Dark Fanboy on you, bud, but you failed to respect and so you deserve no respect.
And now look what you made me do, Glen. Defending Aquaman. We can talk about our own, GLEN. You have to earn the deep knowledge, fucking GLEN. Don't walk among us without doing the work, GLEN. You make me physically ill, you poser mouthpiece. This is like Ken Turan, all over again. Or that asshole Tim Hanley.