Adventure Comics #269

Adventure Comics #269 (1960)
by Robert Bernstein & Ramona Fradon

Considering he’s from a city where everyone can breathe underwater, you’d think Aquaman would find himself a better sidekick than one who’s afraid of fish.

We begin with Aquaman finding an abandoned boy.

The kid, who doesn’t have a name yet, is terrified of fish until Aquaman sends them away.

Aquaman deduces that the kid is from Atlantis because he has purple eyes and can communicate telepathically. Despite the fact that they haven’t been speaking telepathically.

Purple eyes are not a sign of being Atlantean… it’s the sign of being an Atlantean who can’t breathe underwater.
Since Atlantis is underwater, wouldn’t a child born with this genetic defect drown immediately?

In a surprisingly dark moment for the Silver Age, we learn that Atlantis straight up throws away any child who can’t breathe underwater!
Leaving aside that this is too close to eugenics for comfort… Atlantis KNOWS the surface world, why strand the child in the middle of the ocean instead of sending him near a human civilization???

The kid’s story is even more tragic than that: he CAN breathe underwater, he’s just exiled because he’s afraid of fish!

AND HE’S AN ORPHAN!!!

Aquaman is technically not the king of Atlantis yet, but I sure hope he eventually does SOMETHING about this tradition once he’s on the throne!

Especially when it looks like the phobia wasn’t even THAT severe, given how quickly Aquaman is able to help him.

The cure is pretty single: just have the kid play with fish and witness a manta ray being tortured by enduring staying out of water to act as a sail.
Wait, what?

I’m no fish expert, but whenever I read a classic Aquaman story I always get the feeling that 99% of what fish do in his adventures have little basis in reality.

You may not be king yet Aquaman, but I have some doubts you don’t know ANYONE who could help this kid.

But soon he becomes the kid’s de facto adoptive father, after being fooled by a weird trick.

That last caption is the first time in the story the kid is called Aqualad.

His birth name will eventually be revealed to be Garth… which weirdly enough has him sharing the same name of Lightning Lad.
How is it that a guy from Atlantis and one from another planet in the future have such a normal name?

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Historical significance: 6/10
I get the feeling Aqualad is only important to the Teen Titans and nobody else; even Aquaman feels like he can go on perfectly fine without him.

Silver Age-ness: 2/10
Only this era could get away with not addressing AT ALL the moral implications of the exile.

Does it stand the test of time? 2/10
The Fradon artwork is the only saving grace, because she does some fantastic work with all underwater scenes. Other than that… Aqualad comes off as WAY too whiny to be a believable sidekick.

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How close is this to the modern character? 0/10
If I don’t know much about Aquaman, I’m really in the dark with Aqualad… but given that he’s still around as a superhero, I’d guess he has nothing in common with the kid in this story.
In fact, the idea that he was exiled for fearing fish will be dropped by other incarnations.

He would get a bit less socially awkward after becoming a founding member of the Teen Titans and beginning a long relationship with Aquagirl.

He will eventually drop the Aqualad name to become Tempest.
Along with the name upgrade, he will also get a massive power boost by becoming able to control water, a marriage with Dolphin who resulted in a son, and he was king of Atlantis for a while.

He was killed off in 2009, being replaced for a while by a different Aqualad (who originated in the Young Justice cartoon), but he was reintroduced in 2015 and he’s still around as Tempest.
I don’t know how unique his aquakinesis is now, considering they keep giving Aquaman that power as well.

Yeah sorry about how brief this segment is, when compared to most other hero origins… but I haven’t read a single story with this new incarnation of Tempest, and like I said I’m not overly familiar with any incarnation of Aqualad.
But I’m glad he’s found his own corner of the DC Universe; the Titans at least seem fond of him.

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What else was in Adventure Comics #269?

This was still the Superboy book, and the cover story (by Siegel & Papp) features Krypto.
Notice Aqualad is called “Aqua-Boy” on the cover and nowhere else.

Superboy has to punish Krypto for interfering with a military exercise he mistook for a game.

So Krypto travels to another world to find another superpowered teenager as master.

But he turns out to be a psycho who takes away Krypto’s powers and mistreats him.

Forget Lex Luthor, forget Brainiac, forget even Darkseid… this guy is the worst person in the Superboy universe.

Krypto eventually gets his powers back and returns to Earth, with Superboy never learning about his cruel other master.
Sadly this is the only appearance of Solar Boy so we never get to see him properly punished.
In my headcanon, he will eventually try this with the Lobo’s space dolphins and gets eviscerated.

We also have a surprisingly meta Green Arrow story, by Robert Bernstein and Lee Elias.
All-Star Comics was the JSA’s book, which had stopped publications in 1951.

I’m guessing this was a treat to 1960s readers, as I don’t recall many other instances of a comic giving an inside look at a comic book publisher.

In the story, a comic book artist gets his idea for a Green Arrow ripoff rejected because his archery tricks are not believable… so Green Arrow spends the issue showing that they’re legit.

Considering that DC will eventually explain the existence of Golden Age comics within Earth-One as being directly inspired by the real Earth-Two heroes… does that mean that these comics ALSO feature characters that are real in some other universe?

That might have been useful to the in-story publisher, but not to Green Arrow: his serial on Adventure Comics is replaced by Congorilla, with Green Arrow moving to World’s Finest.