James Wan's Aquaman film may have worked fine enough by taking the bulk of its story from Geoff Johns' stint on the character during the New 52, but there's plenty of other material to look to that predates the writer's run.
Although it's only recently that King Arthur Curry has found mainstream recognition, the character hasn't been a joke in the comics for over three decades. One of the writers who was instrumental in tackling that stigma was Peter David, who gave Aquaman a whole new makeover from 1994 onwards. Visually, audiences can probably already see comparison's between the writer's version of the character and the one portrayed on screen by Jason Momoa, but there's another element that's completely missing: the hook hand.
Look, love it, or just plain old hate it, the hook hand makes Aquaman look like a bonafide warrior. Given how the DCEU has leaned into that interpretation so far, and also how Momoa would probably own that look and then some, Aquaman 2 should make the bold decision to lop his hand off and replace it with a mechanical spear.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
