I thought that Black Manta was the coolest looking member of The Legion of Doom when I watched Super Friends as a kid, so it was a thrill to finally see him realized in live action in Aquaman. My only complaint was that I wanted more! He promises to have a larger role in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and I am looking forward to seeing how he has leveled up for the sequel.
Great layout Ross. Quite a few little touches.
ReplyDelete"Lost Kingdom?" Sounds more like one of those made-for-VHS Conan The Barbarian rip-offs from the 1980's! I must therefore suppose that there is a missing underwater civilization that did not get reunified by Mamoa in the first Aquaman movie.
ReplyDeleteOn a lighter note? Maybe that's why Lockjaw has joined the JLA-STF. To help their Aquaman find that lost kingdom!
ReplyDeleteI personally will never watch Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Just looking at Amber Heard gave me the creeps even before I knew that she was a violent domestic abuser, and for WB to keep her on despite that fact is not only an enabling of that, but a clear show of gender bias when men can be fired for nothing more than being accused. I'm not generally one to jump on a "boycott" bandwagon, but I'm quite vocal about this one, even being more strident than most, because the offense is unusually egregious.
ReplyDeleteAs for Black Manta, in the old days I thought his helmet looked dopey and didn't understand why he wore one like that. A few years ago I saw a diagram explaining the tech involved, and that made it seem less dopey, but there still aren't a lot of renderings that make it look "cool" to me. What we saw in the first Aquaman movie is one good example; this picture is another.
That rendering of Black Manta isn't the only excellent thing about this cover, Ross -- in fact, I'd call it one of your better efforts. I can imagine Black Manta having done something to put Aquaman in a coma, and that's the last straw for Stingray. The moment pictured here would be just a dramatic representation of the overall story, and a decent writer could make the pursuit into an action-packed, highly emotional tale.
@Cary: There was one. I believe it was touched on in the first movie, as a "trench" of sorts filled with inhuman monsters (that's probably an exaggeration of what was actually said).
@Ross: I woke up this morning wishing I could see Christian Bale's Batman and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man in a multiverse-spanning adventure. Maybe as Spider-Man: No Way Home or The Flash: Flashpoint approach.
Not as much fun, as photo covers go, as Deadpool and Green Lantern would be, or even Daredevil and Batman, but I think it'd be interesting.
(If I got to pick a subject for another "same-actor" photo cover, though, I'd still go with Cable, Jonah Hex, and Agent Kay versus Thanos.)
Black Manta was def the coolest-looking guy in the whole Super Friends cartoon.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite cartoon incarnation of him was the 1967 Filmation version voiced by Ted Knight. And those (genetically engineered?) Manta-men of his gave eight year-old me the creeps!
ReplyDeleteStewie!
ReplyDeletehttps://mobile.twitter.com/dcolympus/status/1022657123560448000
Dear Ross: I remember once seeing a piece of Neal Adams' art for the NFL with the Atlanta Falcon as a bally-carrying super-villain. Any chance you might be able to find an on-line copy of that, colorize it, and then have him go up against Hawkman, or Birdman, or both?
ReplyDeleteNever seen that image but nothing is impossible.
ReplyDeleteNot even Felix the Cat on the Haunted Tank? #JustKidding
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDelete"My favorite cartoon incarnation of him was the 1967 Filmation version voiced by Ted Knight."
And now I'm envisaging the entire membership of the JSA, as it then was, sitting in a studio doing the voices for cartoon characters...
:D
It would be funnier if you envisaged the entire cast of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" doing the voices for an animated JSA. With Mary as the Black Canary; Lou Grant as Wildcat; Ted Knight as Starman (of course); and Betty White as the original Gray--ahem! I mean, Red--Tornado.
ReplyDelete@Cary: Don't forget Gavin MacLeod as Sandman.
ReplyDeleteNaw! Let Thomas Haden Church reprise that role and let Gavin MacLeod do a Highlander pastiche.
ReplyDelete"There can be only one...spin-off of MTM!"
@Cary: Wrong Sandman.
ReplyDeleteI know. "Mr. Rogers was just messing with your head."
ReplyDelete;-D