Dennis Powers, in his very interesting thesis on "Sub-Mariner", asserted there was only one aquatic water-breathing adventurer in the late thirties, forties, and fifties, who has been variously represented to us as Namor, the Submariner; Aquaman; and Neptune Perkins.

This builds on an earlier article by Jess Nevins, the "All-Aces Squad", that asserts there were at least two water-focused superhumans, Namor and Neptune Perkins.

I myself, think we should go in the other direction---that there are enough differences between Aquaman, Namor, and Perkins that we are talking about three different individuals.

I. AQUAMAN:

Of the three, Aquaman has the most conflicted origin(s), a result of being off-and-on continuously published for sixty years. So our first duty is to seperate the true from the false. In this, I am guided by two principles, which is not unknown in historical research---that the first mention of a person, or their first chronicler, is less subject to exaggeration and amendations than later versions(since they have nothing to build on) and the closer we get to the actual time when events happened, the truer they are. Neither assertion is unassailable, but it is a good guide---both in historical research and biographical research.

The first origin, written in his first story, has Aquaman fighting the Nazis in a story printed in November 1941. In it he is the son of a "famous undersea explorer"---not named, but implied to be famous---who found a deserted,undersea city, which he believed to be the remains of Atlantis. He mastered the many undersea secrets, long forgotten and vastly improved over the surface world, of Atlantis, and somehow trained his son via the Atlantean treatments to be a water-breathing human---with strength enough to endure the pressures of the deep (or slug his way right through a submarine's hull), swim faster than most ships, and able to communicate with sea life. That story was written by Mort Weisinger.

The second story, "How Aquaman Got His Powers", was written in the late fifties. In it, Aquaman's given name is Arthur Curry. His father, Tom Curry, is an ex-sailor and lighthouse keeper. His mother, Atlanna, is an exile from the domed city of Atlantis, that had survived the sinking of Atlantis and its inhabitants had developed until they could do all sorts of watery feats. However, she was exiled for daring to want to look at the surface world. In the story, Arthur was wimming at ten months, stayed an hour undersea at age two, played with sharks at age four. Then Atlanna died after telling them the story of her life---finally---and Tom Curry trained his son to become the protector of the seven seas. Arthur had an inborn ability to telepathically communicate with sealife. The writer was Robert Bernstein, but Mort Weisinger, Aquaman's creator, edited it and approved it for publication.

According to a later amendation by Bob Haney, Tom Curry remarried and had a second son, Orm, who was not a water-breather. Orm was jealous and resentful of his older brother, later got amnesia, and became the criminal Ocean Master.

The third story, "Time and Tide" was written by Peter David in 1993-1994. In it, Arthur Curry/Aquaman is the son of Atlanna, the former queen of Atlantis who had an adulterous relationship with an ancient Atlantean sorcerer, Atlan; the child was exposed to Mercy Reef, where it would die of exposure to air because of its peculiar blonde hair, which led some to think it was cursed. He was adopted by a dolphin, swam with their school, until he was a teenager. He was later found by Arthur Curry (!) and taught about the surface world, and also encountered native Atlanteans.

Orm was the son of an Eskimo woman and the Atlantean sorcerer, Atlan. So they were still half-brothers. Sort of.

Oh, and Aquaman thinks his mother was insane, and at least, initially, didn't believe the story about the Atlantean sorcerer.

Since the first two stories bear the imprint of Mort Weisinger, Aquaman's first chronicler, let's see if they can be reconciled.

First off, let's place the time. If Aquaman first appeared in 1941, and looked adult (or at least eighteen) he could have been born no later than 1923.

Tom Curry, an ex-sailor and present light house keeper, spots Atlanna on a raft in a hurricane. He rescues her, and they are married two weeks later.

"A year later, I was born, and they called me Arthur."

Unless Aquaman was shading the truth, or Atlantean women have a different term of pregnancy than land-dwelling women, that would rule out the Atlantean sorcerer as a father. Since there seems no reason to lie at that point, I accept it.

She spent hours staring into the sea, never telling her husband where her folks were, or where she came from.

Arthur was, from the story, at the youngest four when she died. (A reason was never given. Could it have been suicide? Too much time out of water? We're not sure...Peter David ascribes it to suicide, but much of what Peter David wrote was a sick woman's fantasy) That might be seen as a discrepency with Aquaman saying, in 1941,

"My mother died when I was a baby..."

But some people speak carelessly of their younger years of being their "baby" years. I don't see a careless reference precluding the other. And in his first appearance, he obviously didn't want to clue in the Allies or the Axis of the actual existence of Atlanteans. (More on that later.)

After Atlanna died, Tom Curry trained young Arthur in the use of his talents (much as Pa Kent aided young Clark in the learning of his abilities) but would the love-obsessed Tom Curry have stopped there? He now knew there was a real Atlantis---wouldn't it make sense for him to become an undersea explorer, looking for Atlantis? He found some ruins of Atlantis (perhaps the same ruins that Nemo took a stroll in) and made a water-tight home there. It was implied that they lived there all the time, but that was a half-truth. It was an ocean house they sometimes retired to, alternating between that and the lighthouse. (That may have later evolved into the Aqua-Cave.)

Nor was that the only place Curry explored. He probably followed up on rumors of Innsmouth, and of dark and Cyclopean Y'ha-nthlei. of Leonard McKenzie's story of blue-skinned sea-dwellers in the Antartic. He might have travelled to the Artic also, to all the obscure places on the Earth, looking for his beloved Atlanna's people.

Though he found Atlantean ruins, he never found the living domed city of Poseidonius from which Atlanna hailed.

Arthur went to school once a year to take an exam, since he was receiving a very eccentric home schooling. There were obviously gaps in his education. He didn't recognize a grenade in his first (1941) adventure, and thought his father was famous, understandably overestimating his father's importance.

After his father died---buried at sea---Aquaman resumed his task in earnest.

As for the third origin, it may be summed up in Aquaman's own words that,

"my mother was insane"

The whole fantasy, so transparent, of being impregnated by an ancient Atlantean sorcerer, (whose name is Atlan---a masculine equivelent of her name, and also the first two syllables of her homeland) bespeaks an insane fixation on her land, a made up anima to replace the truth in her mind. Now that she was exiled, like many exiles, she found there was nothing so special as her own homeland. She fantacized the whole sequence, rather than being married to the everyday Tom Curry. She was grateful to him, but those hours of staring into the sea bespeaks a strong fixation.

It's interesting that Atlanna Curry died in 1927, at the latest---the same year Federal authorities began an investigation into Innsmouth. Maybe the narrator of "Shadow Over Innsmouth" isn't the only person to convince the government of underwater beings who might be a threat to them.

Peter David, in the "Fish Tales" segment of Time and Tide, claims that Aquaman was raised, Tarzan-like, by a foster-mother dolphin named Porm, after being abandoned to Mercy Reef by Atlanna's husband, the king of Atlantis. That is mostly fantasy, and unlikely fantasy at best, but there is a kernel of truth in it. A few years after his mother died, for nearly a year, Aquaman went "native" in the seas, living with dolphins. With his telepathic communication with them, he often felt closer to sealife than to humans. He found a mother-substitute in the loving Poam, assauging the loss of his beautiful (if possibly insane) true mother, but she did not raise him from childbirth or suckle him, and yes,he was saddened when he left her, realizing that he must return to the world of humans, and his father.

...Who had been searching frantically for him, perhaps thinking Arthur had found his mother's people. So that was another spur to him becoming an explorer.

What about Orm Marius? Was his father Tom Curry or the sorcerer Atlan?

Again, we must go to the original story, which definitely says that he was the child of a second marriage by Aquaman's land-human father. But let us look at Peter David's "King of the Sea" segment of TIME AND TIDE, and the words of Orm,

"And my mother accusing me of ruining her life. Becoming drunk one fine night and telling me I was a bastard! Spewing an insane fabrication of how she was seduced by some sort of 'undersea wizard'..."

Was that Atlan...

Or, more likely, was that the undersea explorer Tom Curry, full of Atlantean secrets? He might have married her in non-Eskimo eyes, but never went through the Eskimo rituals for same, thus making the half-eskimo Orm a bastard in her eyes.

Aquaman might have been retracing his father's steps, and so met the Eskimo Kako, who fathered his son Koryak. Certainly that is a more reasonable explanation than, of all places on Earth, the young Arthur Curry just "happened" to find the Eskimo village where his half-brother by an Atlantean sorcerer (brother!) happened to live...a chance encounter in the order of millions to one, if not billions.

According to Jerry Siegel, who first chronicled the adventures of Superman, Aquaman was a close friend, and later became a fellow Justice League member with Superman.

Later, Arthur Curry would become the new King of Poseidonius, which like many of the cities that survived the destruction of Atlantis, claimed to be Atlantis. He married a woman with odd powers over water, named Mera, who claimed to be from another dimension, and had another child--who died at the hands of his enemies.

According to the comic books that still chronicle his adventures, he lost his hand in the last decade, and may have recently lost his life.

Atlantis has been the subjects of many speculations ever since Plato first broached the subject. It seems unprecedented, geologically, that a whole continent could sink. Still, there are many theories to cover the Atlantis legend---from possibly flooding after the end of the last Ice Age, to the explosion of Thera on Santorini. (See the section on Atlantis later.)

II. THE CURRYS:

Tom Curry's full name was Thomas Arthur Curry. Hence him sometimes being called "Arthur". He had a sister, Ela, who was an aspiring biologist-explorer.

His father, also named Thomas Curry, and was also a lighthouse keeper, as well as a student of esoteric teachings. Dennis Powers found out about his existence, and understandably confused him with his son. His sister, Guinevere Curry, married a Colin McKenzie. Colin and Guinevere's son was Leonard McKenzie, who became the captain of Antartic icebreaker ORACLE, and fathered Namor the Sub-Mariner by Princess Fen of Emperor Tha-Korr's submarine kingdom.

When Leonard's cousin, Helen Curry, heard of his experience, she journeyed to the Antartic herself. This was a year or two after Leonard returned, injured. Knowing this would be the biological find of the century, she signed on to go to the Antartic...sailed the same waters---and was never heard from again.

Interestingly enough, several decades later, a cousin of Sub-Mariner appeared, with blonde hair, who claimed to be the daughter of a human woman and an Atlantean male. This female called herself Namora. She didn't seem as strong as Sub-Mariner, but otherwise shared his caucasian-looking skin and ability to breathe in and out of water, unlike her blue-skinned relatives, who could only breathe in water.

I submit that Namora is most likely the daughter of Helen Curry, who was captured and used in an air-filled harem by a brother of Fen's in retaliation for what he saw as the air-breathers' arrogance. She probably died in captivity.

Namora had a daughter by another Atlantean, Tamar, at least according to Bill Everett, who first chronicled Namor, Narmora's, and her daughter Namorita's first appearances. Namorita is still around, and shares the caucasian skin and blonde hair of Namora.

Tom Curry senior, the lighthouse keeper and keeper of esoteric knowledge, had married briefly when he was a sailor, to a mysterious woman named Helen Vaughn who was a few years his senior. The marriage was, to say the least, unhappy, and she had his children and then went on her way. The woman---if that is the best term for her---was the Helen Vaughn whom Arthur Machen chronicled in "The Great God Pan". Curry was her first husband, later she married a man named Beaumont. Helen Vaughn was the child of Mary Vaughn, a child of the gutters of England, who was subjected to a strange experiment by her guardian, Dr. Raymond. In it she saw things beyond this world, and ended up pregnant thereby. Mary's daughter, Helen, left destruction in her wake.

The experience left Curry shaken and he took his two children with him back to America. Thomas Arthur and Helen seemed to be fully human, despite their mother's half-human parentage.

Thomas Curry Sr. had a sister who married a Massachusetts professor named Headley. His son, Curtis Headley, accompanied Professor Maracot to a lost Atlantean colony at the bottom of the sea in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's MARACOT DEEP. (Luckily, the engineer who accompanied them didn't quite believe Maracot's theory about the lessening of pressure the further down you go, and reinforced their bathyscape as much as possible. And the Atlantean diving "envelopes" they wore had a built-in force-field that protected them against the crushing pressure.) Like his cousin, Thomas Arthur Curry, Curtis Headley married an Atlantean woman, Mona.

Their father, Curtis Curry, was reputed to have an illegal and dangerous past, perhaps smuggling. In actuality, he was one of Captain Nemo's crew, and may have been included because of his relationship to Captain Nemo. Philip Jose Farmer wrote an intersting novel, THE OTHER LOG OF PHILEAS FOGG, in which he followed H.W. Starr's thesis that Captain Nemo was none other than Professor James Moriarity, and gave cogent reasons why Captain Nemo couldn't be Prince Dakkar, as Verne claimed in MYSTERIOUS ISLAND. Some doubts have been expressed on that, but Curry's wife was Thomasina Moriarity, niece to Morcar Moriarity, the Professor's mother---and there is good reason to believe that Moriarity was at least involved with the Nautilus and Nemo episodes. As Moriarity's cousin-in-law, Curry would have had the inside track on becoming a shipmate on the NAUTILUS---and would have also perhaps marked where Nemo found the remains of Atlantis. It would have been kept in family journals and used by his grandson, Thomas Arthur Curry, Aquaman's father.

Curtis Curry's father, Josiah Curry, was a fishing captain who married Elaine Marsh, sister of Captain Obediah Marsh of Innsmouth, Massachusetts. Obediah Marsh, like Thomas Arthur Curry, married a water-breathing bride from an unknown culture---in his case, from the Deep Ones.

Elaine and Obediah had another Marsh sister, Lavinia. She married a Whateley of Dunwich, and their son was Wilbur Whateley, self-confessed wizard. His daughter, Lavinia Whateley, mated with the alien entity Yog-Sothoth, and had two children---one being the horrific Wilbur Whateley, another being unnamed but far more horrific. (Yog-Sothoth probably deliberately rearranged his genes so a human-Elder God crossbreed could be produced.)

Now to look at the mother's side of the family, but first I must discuss the difference between facts and theories about Atlantis:

ATLANTIS' REALITY:

There are many theories and fictions about Atlantis; Tolkien claimed that another name for his isle of lost Numenor related in the Allakabeth was the basis for the Atlantis legend. Robert E. Howard claimed that Atlantis existed, not in 11,600 B.C. as Plato indicated, but 20,000 B.C. and sank around 14,000 B.C., and was destroyed in a Great Cataclysm (for interesting speculations about that great cataclysm, let me recommend "Mysteries of the Great Cataclysm" which was originally published in REHUPA #160.) Clark Ashton Smith placed several stories in the last city of Atlantis to sink, Poseidonis.

Nevertheless, the inescapable fact is this:

Quoting from ATLANTIS BACKGROUND:

"According to geological data, there had been no rising or sinking of the earth-crust in the Atlantic Ocean area not only in the last dozens of thousands, but even in millions of years, that would be commensurate with the sinking of a big island or a small continent. The map of the Atlantic itself bears it out graphically: the outlines of the continental platforms of Africa and South America fit in ideally; similarly, North America, Greenland, Scandinavia and Europe make up a perfectly fitting mosaic, in which there simply is no room for an allegedly lost fragment (particularly of such dimensions as Plato described). All the edges of the continental shelf facing the ocean also coincide with the bends of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and the earth-crust rift zone itself, from which continents are 'sliding apart' (See map of Northern Atlantic)."

However, the same article concludes that he believes that there is a real possibility for an Atlantean civilization around the time Plato indicated, on the Celtic Ridge among other places. That part of it might have been on an island, and part of it on parts of Europe that were drowned when the ocean levels rose after the ending of the last Ice Age.

Other theories are quoted by Lin Carter:

"No one is quite certain just where Plato got the idea for his dream of Lost Atlantis. He himself recorded that the great Athenian lawgiver, Solon, was told the story by Egyptian priests and that his notes were passed down to Plato's own time. This explanation is perhaps a bit too romantic to be taken seriously, although history does in fact record the evidence of independent authorities to substantiate it. It has been conjectured by some that Plato heard of the mysterious disappearance of the rich and famous Hispanic metropolis of Tartessos -- the "Tarshish" of the Old Testament -- which was swallowed by the sea. Most recently, new evidence has come to light which suggests that the sudden collapse of the maritime empire of Minoan Crete, due to a volcanic explosion of cataclysmic magnitude, may be the key to Atlantis. Excavations on the small volcanic island of Thera just north of Crete are now uncovering surprisingly exact corroborative documentation of the old Platonic legend."

What's interesting about the Thera theory as a possible explanation for at least some of the Atlantis theory is that it would place it much closer to Plato's own time. According to the Kull series by Robert E. Howard, the main Atlantean god was Valka. According to the Numenor story as relayed by Tolkien, the main god was Illuvitar, or Morgoth or Sauron, depending on which era we're talking about.

Yet Aquaman's Atlanteans regularly swear by Poiseidon and Neptune, as do even more puzzlingly, the "Atlanteans" who are part of Namor's race---even though those are supposed to be descended from wandering tribes of homo mermanus, the blue-skinned water-breathing man, who wandered onto the remains of Kull's Atlantis, according to Marvel comics chronology.

It is inconceivable that the same name for the same god might have endured ten thousand years. Greek and Latin were not the classical languages we know at the time---at most, Indo-European, the mother language of so many, would have been developed. Neptune, especially seems to be of relatively recent coinage in Italy. But if Aquaman's people were descended from the Minoans who inhabited Thera, that makes much more sense. Almost certainly the Poseidon-cult would have been prevelent by that time, and perhaps even the Neptune-cult in Italy.

We know from such writings as "Shadow over Innsmouth" that there is a race of Deep Ones---fish/froglike waterbreathing humanoids who serve Dagon and great Cthulhu. Rather startlingly, they can crossbreed with humans. (One assumes that is the result of direct genetic manipulation by Cthulhu and his kin, either of the Deep Ones or of ourselves, so that eventually the human race can be crossbred into more useful seagoing servents for Cthulhu.)

Captain Obediah Marsh married one such Deep One, and "the Innsmouth look" became proverbial. A colony of Deep Ones existed in the bay off Innsmouth.

I submit that there was a similar colony off Thera or some part of the Cretan civilization, and that many of the Cretans and their Greek slaves who could descended to the sea, to escape the cataclysmic eruption of Thera. That from there, they progressed into the deeper seas, and found the few remains of the primeveal Atlanteans, the culture that existed around eleven thousand years ago. If there were any shelters or domed cities that had Atlantean colonies that survived the sliding into the sea, that several of these colonies intermarried with the Creatan-Greek water-breathers. Some stayed all air-breather, some slowly became all water-breather.

I agree with Dennis Powers that Namor's people were also a crossbreeding of the humans and the Deep Ones, but one done much earlier, in prehistoric times. That would explain why the blue-skinned homo mermanus could return to the sea and breathe underwater, and other mammals that returned to the sea, like the dolphin and the whale, could not.

I believe that the Caucasian-appearing, Thera-descended peoples moved gradually out of the Mediterranean and colonized cities left from the remains of a civilization that fell during the rising of the seas after the melting of the last Ice Age. That they in turn met and traded and probably warred with the blue-skinned homo mermannus, and the mythology of Poseidon/Neptune spread that way even into the homo mermannus culture. They also built and, if there were any left, intermarried with the remains of the ancient Atlantean culture of ten thousand years ago, some of whom seems to have preserved their culture in great cities built to withstand the ocean pressures. Nevertheless, these are widely seperated and expertly hidden, and considering the oceans cover three-fourths of the world, it is not suprising they are not publicly acknowledged, even today.

There are at least four varieties of intelligent water-breathers that inhabit the depths of the ocean; The Deep Ones, who inhabit R'lyeh and Y'ha-nthlei; the blue-skinned homo Mermanus, whom we might call the Blue Atlanteans; the Thera-descended Caucasians who intermarried with the Deep Ones, what you might call the Pink Atlanteans. The Pink Atlanteans have two subclasses, the tailed and untailed. The more fishlike have tails, and are the basis for legends of mermaids, and live in the city of Tritonius. Examples are Lori Lemaris and Mrs. Jorkens, from the story of the same name, as well as the heroine of the story retold by Ron Howard, Darryl Hannah and Tom Hanks in the movie SPLASH.

There also seem to be two native populations of the Caucasian "Atlanteans"---the ancient-Atlanteans who hailed from at least eleven thousand B.C., who constructed several sub-sea shelters, the race that Kull and Kathulos perhaps hailed from (although it's extremely doubtful if they lived on a seperate continent that sank, instead of a few islands and the European coastline that was drowned by the Ice Age's end; and the Theran-Santorini Cretans (and their Greek slaves) who through interbreeding with the Deep Ones, could breathe underwater, and evidently found both the remains of the ancient Atlantis and settled there. In a few cases they found descendents of the original Atlanteans and interbred with those few living colonies they found, and brought the worship of Poseidon, Neptune, and at least in one case, Athena, with them.

Among the remains found were at least two domed cities. Occasional air-only-breathing throwbacks were born, so the Thera-descended caucasian waterbreathers pumped water out of there and air in, to provide a safe refugre for same.

Note I say, "at least" two domed cities. I believe there are more. In the MARACOT DEEP by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in 1926 Professor Maracot, Bill Scanlon, and Cyrus Headley discover a lost Atlantean colony deep down in the Atlantic Ocean. It's worth noting that they had a caste system---native "Atlanteans" versus the "Greek" slave caste...oddly enough, the Greeks were often golden haired and blue-eyed, the Atlanteans dark-haired and dark-eyed. They were air-breathing, but lived in a domed city under the sea. THey again had more modern gods than one would expect of a colony kept under the sea for over eight thousand years---there were statues to the Pheonician Baal and the Greek Athena, with the same pronunciation for both.

Again---extremely unlikely from eight to twenty thousand years ago. The Greeks of that time would have been speaking the prototypical Indo-European language at best, not straight Greek. Much more likely from three thousand years ago. Evidently there was a native ancient-Atlantean population, huddling there at the bottom of the ocean, perhaps an arc-like refuge that they stayed in. The water-breathing Therans (perhaps also with Greek slaves that they forced to interbreed with the Deep Ones) found them, and took refuge with them.)

Stanley Coblentz, in THE SUNKEN WORLD, also chronicled the finding of a different giant, domed colony of Atlantis, filled with air-breathers. (Which was published in Summer 1928, in AMAZING STORIES and in book form in 1949.) Other stories of Atlantean colonies such as the SCARLET EMPIRE might be based on fact, also.

These different Atlantean city-states seemed to be self-sufficient and only minimally aware of the others. Poseidonius and Tritonius shared some culture and trade, but most colonies were only dimly aware of the others'.

Notice how everything seems to cluster around in the twenties? Atlanna came to be exiled in the early twenties'. Lori Lemaris met Clark Kent in college in the twenties. THE MARACOT DEEP, THE SUNKEN WORLD, "Shadow Over Innsmouth"---all in the twenties. Kathulos' nefarious activities first came to the attention of authorities in the twenties'. There seems to have been a deliberate move by the government to suppress and destroy all evidence of the undersea civilizations around that time.

It wasn't entirely successful; Wonder Woman, at least, encountered an air-breathing Atlantean colony run by robust women and dwarfish men, run by a Queen Clea, in the forties'.

It's worth noting that Lori Lemaris claimed that they sent a person "once every hundred years" to see the progress that was made. One wonders if Madame Blavantsky, who seemed a fakir in so much else, nevertheless found some papers left by the previous envoy, in the 1820s, because Blavantsky was the first one to mention the word "Poseidonius" as an Atlantean city. However, she couldn't have met the envoy, because she wasn't born till 1831.

May I suggest that Poseidonius and Tritonius at least, shared that information, and Atlanna's disappointment at not being the envoy chosen is what led to her own curiosity about the surface world---and her subsequent exile. (Indeed,Atlanna would have been physically the much better choice, since she had legs like surface people. The only reason Lori might have been chosen is if Atlanna were already seriously unbalanced. However, there is one way Lori is superior to even Aquaman---she can read the minds of anybody, not just sea creatures. I suspect Aquaman's inability to read humans' mind being more psychosomatic than otherwise....he identifies more with sea creatures. Lori's abilities over sea creatures, on the other hand, seems far more restricted in area than Aquaman's, who can summon sea creatures for hundreds of miles around.)

I suspect the telepathic power that developed in some of the Atlanteans was self-defense. They might have been even more susceptible to the telepathic nightmare casts of Cthulhu, dreaming in his undersea house of R'lyeh, since it was also underwater, and only by developing telepathic skills could they defend themselves against the Old One's telepathic broadcasts.

It's also worth noting that Aquaman could stand to be out of the seawater for days or weeks at a time as a child---that as he got older, he found he couldn't stay out of seawater for more than an hour. His endurance for air-breathing decreased with age. Lori, on the other hand, could function all day out of water, but had to sleep for at least ten hours in salt water at night.

ATLANNA'S FAMILY:

Although I assert that Robert Bernstein's origin, under Weisinger's editorship, is more nearly correct than the later "Aquaman: Time and Tide", I will sometimes refer to Peter David's writings. David seems to have found some of Weisinger's notes, and used them as a springboard to his own story, filling in the gaps with his own considerable imagination. Bob Haney was sometimes guided by glances at the same notes while Weisinger was alive.

I suppose I should first untagle the tangled schema of Poseidonian kingship, which will eventually explain how Aquaman got the throne.

Anyway, when Peter David asserts that Atlanna had been the wife of Trevis the weak, the last true king of Poseidonius, who had been unable to give him a child, that much is true. However, Atlanna had a partial claim to the throne, her great-grandfather being also Trevis', and a king of Poseidonius. Their parents were first cousins, and like many royal families, they intermarried. (Peter David hinted that Atlanna had been around since the sinking of Atlantis, which was total fiction.)

Trevis used Atlanna's sneaking to the surface world as an excuse to get her exiled, and de facto divorced, to see if he could have children by other women of the sunken city-state. Unfortunately, the problem was with him, not the women he slept with, and he died--of suicide--- without issue.

Trevis' only brother, Uri, got killed by a some toxic waste that was dropped by the surface-dwellers. Their sister, Becca, had just married the king of the nearby Atlantean colony of Idylists; she wouldn't have a child for at least another decade, by King Skar, who would become the young Garth, later known as Aqualad or Tempest.

Now, that kingly great-grandfather had three children. Atlanna was descended from the youngest, Trevis from the oldest. There was a middle child, and a descendent of that child claimed the throne. The first king of that line, and king of Poseidonius while Arthur/Aquaman was a teenager, was Thesily. However, he became a tyrant. When the teenage Arthur/Aquaman came across Poseidonius, he was thrown into jail and there met Vulko, his advisor-friend, for the first time. If Thesily had truly realized who Arthur-Aquaman was,he probably would have been killed as a claimant to the throne.

Later, Thesily was overthrown by his own people, and replaced by his younger brother, Juvor. Juvor was a popular and an efficient king during the first decade or two of Aquaman's adult life, but when he died without legitimate issue, the ruling council could not find a closer heir to the royal throne of Poseidonius than Aquaman. So, in the story Bob Haney called "The Wedding of Aquaman", he was appointed king upon Juvor's death....on condition that he marry an Atlantean woman right away, and presumably, start providing heirs.

(Juvor's only child was illigitimate, and had been only adopted as a ward---Tula, who was later known as Aquagirl and was the lover of Aqualad/Garth/Tempest.)

Atlanna was one of two children. Her younger brother, Madinor, fell in love with a mermaid from Tritonius, Lenora, younger sister of Lori Lemaris, who was descended from Nal Lemaris, who first freed Tritonius of their dome. Interestingly, their child Madisa befriended and later fell in love with a surface human called Allen Baugh. Under the name "Madison" she came to the surface world, and displayed the interesting ability to manifest legs like the Poseidonians on land, and a tail while in water. The story of "Madison" and Allen's love, and their hunt by the authorities, was later sold to the movies by Allen's brother Freddy, and made by Ron Howard into the movie SPLASH....with many exagerrations and fictionalizations.

Atlanna had been, before she had been asked to marry Trevis, one of the chroniclers of Atlantis' history. Her father, interestingly enough, was named---Kathulos.

Kathulos' involved story was told by Robert E. Howard in the story SKULL-FACE. Kathulos was a sorcerer from the dying days of the original, primeval Atlantean culture that existed around ten thousand years ago. Through the advanced science/sorcery of that culture, he preserved his body in a coffin in a state of suspended animation for over ten thousand years.

The coffin was first uncovered by the Poseidonians as they did an excavation. Atlanna's mother, Shenya, also an achivist, who supervised the excavation, had an air-filled chamber built to open it in---and first released Kathulos after millenia of sleep. Shenya was put under Kathulos' control by his hypnotic sorcerous powers, and became both his guide and his lover. (Kathulos was so hideous, so skull-like in the face after his millenia of sleep, that only under hypnotic control could he have a lover.) Kathulos was amazed at Posiedonius, and contemplated conquering it, but since he wasn't a water-breather, it seemed futile; besides he wanted larger worlds to conquer. He had Shenya place him back in his coffin and set him adrift on the surface, where he would later be found and loose his campaign against the civilized world.

He left Shenya pregnant, and with such a father-figure there is little doubt that it helped lead to Atlanna's later insanity. However, Kathulos's genes, his sorcerous might that could subjegate others to his will, helped contribute to Aquaman's own telepathic strength.

Shenya later married another Poseidonian, and had Atlanna's younger brother, Madinor. Shenya's father, Prince Auron, was an archivist and explorer. Like Aquaman and Atlanna, he was blonde-haired and blue-eyed. He had heard of a strange section of the deep ocean where the sea bottom was phosperescent and there were giant crustaceans. There were rumors that there was another colony of the original Atlanteans there. He and a large expedition ventured into those deeps---and never returned. There can be little doubt that they found, and were captured by, the Atlantean colony whose story was given in MARACOT DEEP, and that the odd undersea conditions, and flora and fauna, near that colony was a result of direct cultivation by those selfsame Atlanteans. It is unclear whether they joined other slaves who were descended from the Greeks or started that slave class from the descendents of the Poseidonians.

He left behind Helia, his wife, the archivist of Poseidonius, and his young daughter Shenya. (Helia's mother had been the envoy to the surface in the 1820s.)

Auron's father was King Enlil, who was also the father of Juvon's line and Trevis's line. He had three children, Auron being the youngest. Enlil was mentioned in Flash #66, second series. He had a special crown, discovered by archeologists, made with Atlantean sorcery or science, which gave him control over the waters of the sea. (Another crown, the Serpent Crown, he decided was too dangerous to use.) With it, he fought and had a decisive victory with the "Blue Atlanteans"---the hot-tempered sea-breathing race that often was constantly at war with the "Pink Atlanteans", from Poseidonius and Tritonius. Enlil was allowed to fight for the Tritonians also, as a warlord for both cities.

Enlil negotiated a treaty after that win that sent the "Blue Atlanteans" south, eventually to form a kingdom by the Antartic ice shelf under Emperor Tha-Korr, Namor's grandfather. Enlil's sister, however, had to marry the emperor of the Blue Atlanteans, and Enlil had to marry the emperor's sister, Thakken, as living hostages to each. Thakken was the mother of Prince Auron and Enlil's other two children. So each ruling family of the deep---Poseidonius' and Namor's Atlantis---has intermarried with the other, and Namor and Aquaman are very distantly related, on both sides of their families.

Enlil's sister (who was Tha-Korr's grandmother) was a priestess of Poseidon/Neptune, and encouraged the growing Neptune cult among the Blue Atlanteans.

Enlil gave the Serpent Crown to the Blue Atlanteans as a parting gift....a rather double-edged gift as it turned out.

So, if you hear of strange things happening on the sea...don't laugh it off too early. The oceans cover three-fourths of the world, and are woefully unexplored. In odd pockets under the sea, strange colonies lurk---whose heritage is the ocean itself, and who all claim the title of "Atlanteans", whether they be air-breather or water-breather, Caucasian or blue-skinned.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

THE MARACOT DEEP by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

"Skull-Face" by Robert E. Howard.

"Sub-Mariner" by Dennis Powers.

The "All-Aces Squad" by Jess Nevins.

Of course, TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE by Philip Jose Farmer.

Those interested with comments, suggestions, things I have forgotten, things I messed up, contact me at...
E-Mail:al.schroeder@nashville.com

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Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. Superman is owned by DC Comics, Warner Communications, and the Siegels. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.