Wow. What a different concept for Aquaman. A different guy as Aquaman? A sword carrying Aquaman?
I feel your pain. However, once you get over the initial suspicion of having another person as Aquaman, I am optimistic about the series for two reasons:
1) It's exploring the undersea regions, a very interesting and underused part of the DC Universe. Please, please, PLEASE tell me they're using the Fire Trolls somehow! Those were some great bad guys. Ditto for those monster jellyfish creatures seen in the Curt Swan-drawn 1989 Aqua-miniseries. Where DID those creatures come from? Inquiring minds want to know! King Shark also is a character with an intriguing Polynesian magic cultural connection that has yet to live up to his full potential to arouse interest. Though primarily I am a "classic" Superman fan (it is Superman's past history I find most interesting and not his current incarnation) there are five or six things about the post-Reboot Superman that ought to be kept around, and King Shark is one of them.
2) Two and a half words: Guice the Juice. In another thread, I praised Guice for his stylish art in the Baron FLASH right after CRISIS. His "Savage Speedster" story qualifies him for Sword n' Sorcery work: for one thing, look at all those foxy cave girls who lived inside that fat man.
Also, it's been a few decades now...don't you think it's time we got a new Aquagirl? There have been something like four or five Batgirls and it's a name that can't be kept down.
Superheroes that go in a Sword n' Sorcery direction CAN work; look at how interesting SWORD OF THE ATOM was; superheroes can actually be improved by the addition of adventure-fantasy elements. The Atom wielding a sword and kicking tiny keyster in a lost city of tiny people...strangely enough, it worked: it allowed the Atom's shrinking, which ordinarily is felt by many writers to be an unimpressive power, to be a "gateway" into telling different kinds of stories. The same is being done for Aquaman (turning his limitations into strengths), and it MAY work. That said, some characters, however, may not work given the Sword n' Sorcery context: Superman doesn't work without science fiction elements, and Batman with a cutlass is a little goofy.
She's been discussing it in her blog and her Aquablog...
Really? I just tore her blog apart tonight looking for a response and I couldn't find one. If she did, I feel vaguely guilty for thinking she had ignored me.
Nope. Loved it.
What about the Jurgens Aquaman appealed to you, what did you think "worked" about it? Granted, it's been years and years since I read the comic, however, my principal memories of it involve a shotgun wedding for Aqualad and Dolphin, Mera wearing a nonexistent bikini, Lagoon Boy, and a king from a "hidden" city below Atlantis coming up because Aquaman's birthday party made a lot of noise.
Interestingly enough, it's not suprising Busiek was chomping at the bit to write Sword and Sorcery type stuff; we can see signs of that all the way back in his AVENGERS run: look at the prevalence in the first issue of Thor and Asgard villains, the appearance of magic and wizards in the next one.