History of Aquaman: 


    This cartoon series of "Aquaman" is a lot of fun, extremely colorful, with plenty of action.  It's greatest weakness is lack of humor.  Tusky the walrus makes the show.  The other characters don't have much personality.  At least Tusky is cute and amusing.  He's a walrus that acts like a dog.

    Aqualad is an almost totally worthless sidekick in this cartoon.  What the heck is he doing here, anyway?  All he does is get beat up and trapped.  Aqualad spends more time needing rescued than he does helping Aquaman.  There are only a few times where he actually saves Aquaman.  Besides that, he's no Robin or Tonto.

    Mera, the sexy redheaded wife of Aquaman, is little seen and serves little importance in this series.  I love her character in the comics and wish Filmation could have found more for her to do.

    Aquaman's supporting cast consists of his sidekick Aqualad, their seahorses Storm and Imp (respectively), and Aqualad's pet walrus, Tusky.  Mera rarely appears.  The villains change from cartoon to cartoon.  This is good, because we get variety, but most of the villains are really blank and ignorable.  Relatively few villains in Aquaman are true "characters".  Black Manta is easily Aquaman's most popular ongoing villain.  Other standout villains include Fisherman, Queen Vassa, and Torpedoman.


    Aquaman was around in comics long before this cartoon series.  He made his debut in "More Fun Comics" #73 (November, 1941).  Aquaman was created as DC's (then-known as National Periodicals) answer to Marvel Comics' Sub-Mariner, created in 1939.  Arguably, Aquaman is probably the better-known of the two heroes.  However, Aquaman was a slow character to catch on in mainstream popularity.  He was a back-up feature at best in comic books throughout the Golden and Silver Age.  Aquaman didn't have his own title and really didn't appear on covers.  He wasn't as interesting as Superman, Batman, and other superhero characters because he was rather limited.  Aquaman, for the most part, had to stay in the water.  He also didn't have much of a supporting cast for his first few decades, and his villains were pretty lame and ordinary.  Aquaman didn't fight crime and save the world per se; he simply defended his kingdom of Atlantis and the water domain of Earth.

    Things began to change for the Aquaman character in 1959.  His origin story was greatly revised.  For one thing, he actually HAD a backstory, and a real name.  This version of Aquaman became known as the Silver Age version.  In 1960, Aquaman became a founding member of the Justice League of America superhero team.  This is what REALLY jumpstarted his popularity in comics.  Now he was shown on covers and people saw that he could be interesting.  It was just a lark that Aquaman was included in the original team line-up.  In 1960, Aquaman certainly wasn't as popular as his teammates, but DC wanted a well-rounded cast.  Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Martian Manhunter presented an interesting variety.  Superman was the strong one, Batman was the non-super one and the realist, Wonder Woman was the woman, Flash was the fast one, Green Lantern was the cosmic hero, and Martian Manhunter was the big, silent one.  Aquaman was truly a unique addition, distinct from the others.

    Thanks to his addition in the Justice League of America team, Aquaman was used more in comic stories.  In 1961, Aquaman was finally given some important supporting cast characters of his own.  It was in this year that his sidekick Aqualad and his love interest Mera was introduced.  It had taken nearly two decades, but Aquaman was finally given his own series with "Aquaman" #1 (January-February, 1962).  In 1964, Aquaman married Mera, and became King of Atlantis.  At this time in comics, no superhero ever married.  Aquaman was the first.  In 1965, Aquaman and Mera had a son named Arthur, Jr., nicknamed "Aquababy".  This was another comic book first.  No superhero ever had offspring before.  Aquaman was truly in a class by himself when it came to superheroes.  He had a family, and he was happy.  He was not a troubled hero like his contemporaries.

    Also important was the addition of interesting foes for Aquaman in the 1960s.  Black Manta became his top villain, his arch-rival.  Other major villains included Fisherman, Ocean Master, Scavenger, and O.G.R.E.


    Filmation was given the license by DC to do a Superman cartoon series.  "The New Adventures of Superman" was actually Filmation's first-ever cartoon series, debuting in 1966.  The series was a huge hit and became more popular than anyone ever expected.  It was a half-hour series that featured animated segments of Superman ("The New Adventures of Superman") and Superboy ("The Adventures of Superboy").  It ran from 1966-1967.

    By the time the 1967 season came around, Filmation was granted an hour show.  Superman and Superboy couldn't carry an hour show alone, so another character had to be prominently featured.  Filmation chose Aquaman for a number of reasons.  For one thing, Aquaman wasn't as well-known or as well-used as Superman, so he was really fresh and interesting.  Aquaman also had a pretty strong fan base among comic readers since his 1959 reboot.  He was also an underwater hero, which would be an interesting contrast to Superman, who fought villainy on the surface and in the air.  For all intents and purposes, Aquaman was a cool premise and a new offering to the DC cartoon line-up.

    "The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure" debuted on September 9, 1967 on the CBS network.  It's often thought of as the second season of "The New Adventures of Superman", although it's really its own series.  This cartoon series was another huge, runaway hit!  This is also the one thing most responsible for making Aquaman one of the leading superhero characters in the comic book industry.  The readership of Aquaman comics really jumped, and Aquaman became an extremely popular superhero among mainstream audiences.  People that never read comic books now knew about Aquaman.

    This series also had a rotating cast of superhero cartoon segments of:  The Atom, The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Justice League of America, and Teen Titans.  These characters boasted only three cartoons apiece.  Aquaman had 36 cartoons in all.  New segments of Superman and Superboy were also brought to this series.  "The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure" is responsible for being the animation debuts for nearly all of DCs major superhero characters except for Superman, who debuted in the shorts for Max Fleischer Studios in 1941, and Superboy, who debuted in "The New Adventures of Superman" series a year earlier.  Batman did not make his animation debut until the next year, in "The Batman/Superman Hour".

    As popular as Aquaman cartoons had become, they were only produced for one season (1967-1968).  The Aquaman cartoons from "The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure" were simply repackaged as reruns for "The Adventures of Aquaman" series of the 1968-1969 season.  That was it for Filmation's run of Aquaman.  The next time we saw Aquaman in animation was with Hanna-Barbera's "Super Friends" series in 1973, which went through several incarnations throughout 1986.


    A lot of comic/cartoon buffs saw the "Super Friends" period of Aquaman as a regression.  He wasn't always featured prominently in the cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera.  Aquaman sort of became sub-standard again.  Unfortunately, Aquaman's receding popularity crossed over into his comic book readership.  Aquaman's character and saga was really tweaked with in the 1980s, and in the 1990s he became he much more serious hero; somewhat psychotic.  It's been kind of "touch and go" with Aquaman ever since.  The "scary" Aquaman has developed some kind of a following, but in the 2000s DC started to make him a "lighter" hero again.  In any case, a lot of superhero historians will tell you that Aquaman's greatest period of popularity was from about 1967-1973.


    "The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure" made Aquaman a pop culture icon, but it's also notable for other things.  It kickstarted the acting career of now-legendary Ted Knight.  He had been around in acting for sometime, live-action and voice-over, but with this series he became known as the "unofficial voice of DC".  It was the first thing he became really well-known for.  His accomplishments since then have dwarfed it, but his superhero voiceover work was an important stepping stone.

    In the first incarnation of DC cartoons, "The New Adventures of Superman", Jackson Beck was the narrator.  He had also narrated the classic "Superman" radio show, and Filmation was trying to play off that.  With "The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure", Ted Knight was made narrator full-time.  In the later part of the previous season, he was narrator for "The Adventures of Superboy" segements.  He did voices for many characters in the cartoons of the previous season, and continued to do many more while he was a full-time narrator.  Knight became the primary narrator voice for DC cartoons for years.  He even narrated the first season of "Super Friends", which was produced by Hanna-Barbera for the NBC network.

    Like the previous season of DC cartoons, this season also has "authenticity" to its comic book sources.  Writers from DC comics were brought in to write the cartoons.  The cartoons were pretty faithful to the comics.  There were some elements that had to be added to make them more entertaining as cartoons and "kid-friendly", but they were overall respectable cartoon adaptations of the beloved heroes.