Aquaman New 52 Relaunch by Geoff Johns Rehabilitated the DC Hero Fifteen years after the New 52, Geoff Johns used the Aquaman relaunch and the Trench monsters to turn the once-mocked DC hero into a serious horror-driven character. Fifteen years ago, DC Comics completed its rollout of the New 52 premiere issues, and in the final week it brought back a Golden Age hero who had become a joke over the preceding decades. That hero was Aquaman, and the issue sought to rehabilitate him through Geoff Johns' relaunch of the Aquaman title. The New 52 Aquaman premiere presented the hero in a horror story featuring the Trench, a race of intelligent deep-ocean monsters. Aquaman became a joke for many years after his introduction by Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris in More Fun Comics #73. That made him one of DC's oldest heroes, alongside Batman and Superman. Unlike Batman and Superman, however, Aquaman was not respected, and much of that disrespect stemmed from his appearance on a Saturday morning cartoon.That cartoon had no violence or fighting, so Aquaman was just the guy who could talk to fish, and the jokes started from there. The Aquaman jokes continued for decades, and he still has not fully recovered.Geoff Johns Answers Aquaman CriticsOne thing Geoff Johns did when he relaunched the title in the New 52 was to answer those insults and jokes head-on. Early in the first issue, police were chasing some thieves when Aquaman showed up. The reaction was priceless.The thieves saw him and laughed, calling him Tuna Man. The police wondered why he was there because they were not in the ocean and there were no fish. Aquaman silently used his trident to stop an oncoming armored truck and then slammed it into the ground.One of the thieves opened fire on Aquaman, but the bullets bounced off him. He then knocked out the thief. The police asked why he was there and whether he needed a glass of water. Aquaman was not amused and left.After he was gone, one officer said they were upstaged by Aquaman and that the guys at the station would never let them hear the end of it. Even in victory, everyone mocked Aquaman. He went to eat fish at a restaurant afterward, and a man told him he could not eat fish because he talked to fish. Aquaman said he did not talk to fish, and Johns was getting all the jokes out of his system early. When someone asked him what it was like to be nobody's favorite superhero, Aquaman had enough and left.The Trench Monsters and Horror TurnBefore Aquaman publicly answered his critics, the first panels of the comic did something not many readers saw coming. They did not show Aquaman but instead showed terrifying creatures with sharp teeth at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. They were intelligent and spoke in their own language, and they learned there was something above the water and set out to conquer it. This was the Trench.It did not take long for the Trench to show how dangerous they were. A fishing ship was out on the water, with the crew wondering why the fish were not biting. Suddenly, one of the men fishing was yanked into the water, and then the Trench all came to the water's surface and looked at the men in the boat. One of the monsters commented that there was food up there for them. They then slaughtered the fishermen and attacked the people on the nearby pier.Aquaman was called in to help figure out what was going on. This led to him defending everyone from the Trench, and Aquaman was not a joke anymore. The entire storyline was about the monsters from the Trench and whether they were true monsters or just deep-ocean creatures trying to survive. That made them perfect horror villains and also made them perfect to add to the first Aquaman movie in the DCEU.Aquaman Movies and the End of the JokesThe creatures were the ones in the deep ocean that Aquaman had to fight through to get to the wormhole that transported him to an uncharted sea at the center of the Earth. The scene where Aquaman and Mera had to fight the monsters of the Trench on the boat was pure horror filmmaking. In fact, director James Wan was so enraptured by these monsters that he wanted to create a spin-off film called The Trench.The Aquaman movies helped end many of the jokes about the DC Comics hero, thanks to Jason Momoa playing him as the complete opposite of his comic book character's presentation. The hero never should have been a joke to begin with. However, it was 15 years ago that Geoff Johns worked hard to take Aquaman and rehabilitate his image by placing him in a horror story and letting him be the superhero he was always meant to be.What are your thoughts about Aquaman's reintroduction in the DC New 52? Did you consider Aquaman a joke, or did you always take him seriously? Let us know your favorite Aquaman moments in the comments below.