Adventure Comics #452: Atlantis Disassembled

Did you know that the problems with Identity Crisis and Avengers-you-know-what aren’t new? As shows, they were probably around as early as the mid-70s!

And after reading all about the “revelation” at the time as to who the mercenary Black Manta, one of Aquaman’s most notable adversaries, was, that being a black man under the scuba-diving outfit, all I can say is - it’s going to take a lot for me to keep from vomiting.

Most incredulous about this waterlogged shipwreck of an Aquaman story, aside from how Black Manta as presented here is shown taking off his helmet underwater, is that it was written by David Michelinie, one of the most notable writers of the Avengers and Iron Man during the late 70s-early 80s; I just can’t believe it. Then again, even in the Avengers, if I’m not mistaken, there was that story he wrote for Jim Shooter* in which Hank Pym slapped Janet Van Dyne and…oh, never mind.

An important note to be made on the quip that Manta makes about Peter Benchley: this story came out during 1977, the same year that The Deep was adapted to film, and while I don’t know about the novel, I do know that the movie submerged itself in racial stereotyping, when it depicted a gang of black voodoo worshipers from Haiti as the ruthless villains of the pic, even going so far as to subject Jaqueline Bisset to some distasteful abuse, at least twice, during the proceedings. Are we to assume that Michelinie was trying to sink lower than Benchley at the stereotype studio when he wrote this?

If this issue of Adventure Comics is obscure by today’s standards, I’d have to figure that that’s a good thing. This is most definately not something anyone with sense would want to have to remember.

I should hope that post-Crisis, DC made sure to get rid of all the racial insults that Mr. Michelinie’s horrid little story perpetrated back in the late 70s. I don’t know what Black Manta’s exact status is today, but then, maybe that’s why I should try and find and buy more Aquaman material from recent in order to know.

* Shooter, as was discovered in past years, manipulated some of the writing on titles like Avengers when he became the EIC of Marvel Comics in 1977. And that may have been one of the reasons why he eventually got shown the door, even at Image Comics.