Welcome back to First Strike, showcasing our favorite superheroes' first published encounters with their most infamous foes! In today's installment, the King of the Seven Seas faces off with the Ocean Master!
(Originally posted on The Comics Bolt) Welcome back to First Strike, showcasing our favorite superheroes' first published encounters with their most infamous foes! In today's installment, the King of the Seven Seas faces off with the Ocean Master! Even though Aquaman #29 was the Ocean Master's first appearance, he's apparently encountered our hero before. We get a flashback to their first encounter, back when he was a mere poacher and pirate, and Aquaman and Aqualad managed to drive him away. He's been on the run ever since, and now he's back with a device that threatens to disrupt all ocean traffic worldwide - unless the authorities leave him alone. Aquaman's incensed about this latest scheme, but he doesn't seem all that interested in taking on Ocean Master directly. At the end of the story, we find out the reason why - the Ocean Master is his half-brother, Orm. This is a great introduction for an arch-villain. Aside from the family connection, the Ocean Master's overall scheme is quite an ambitious one, even if it does rely on textbook Silver Age pseudo-science to pull off. (Which, to me, is part of the fun of comic books from this era.) He's also not afraid of taking Aquaman on in a fight, which is pretty gutsy when you remember that he's a normal human while Aquaman possesses both super-strength, super-speed, and enhanced eyesight and hearing that allow him to easily survive and navigate the depths of Earth's oceans. The Ocean Master may not be Aquaman's arch-enemy any more - Black Manta has either dethroned him or shares that honor with him - but he's still a major player in Aquaman's mythos, regardless of what continuity we're talking about. During Peter David's acclaimed run in the 1990s, he introduced the idea that they were part of a prophecy that two brothers must always battle for the fate of Atlantis. In the New 52 continuity, apparently following a cue from the Justice League animated series, Orm was re-imagined as a zealous Atlantean native with a more militant attitude toward the surface world. He'll be the main villain of the upcoming Aquaman movie, so you can see their feud play out on the big screen in only a few weeks, as of when I'm writing this. If you want to see where their rivalry began, this comic will make for fun reading, if you can get a hold of it, Silver Age silliness aside.
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