Writer: Mark Andrew Smith
Artist: Paul Maybury
Company: Image Comics

Aqua Leung is not, in fact, an appreciation of Jethro Tull. Instead, it is Image’s first What If? Specifically, What If Aquaman Was Completely Awesome? There’s a lot more to Aqua Leung than that, but if I had to sum it up in a nutshell, I’d say that Smith, Maybury and their cohorts in coloring, lettering and editing have finally created a cool aquatic superhero tale. Actually, even that’s not wholly accurate, because Aqua Leung has as much in common with the fantasy genre, and maybe a touch of sci-fi, as it does with superheroes. Aqua Leung is a thick tome of epic battles and bloodshed and prophecy, leavened with some hipster humor and loaded with action. And it’s clear that while there’s a ton that happens in this first volume, Smith and Maybury are in for the long haul and are starting a fantasy epic here.

Aqua Leung, named after its title character, reads kind of like a cross between Braveheart, Aquaman, Scott Pilgrim, Samurai Jack and Lord of the Rings. Wrap your brain around that conglomeration, if you can. The central story, about a young boy prophesied to take over the kingship of a great empire, is pure cliched fantasy stuff, but the execution is anything but the usual. The story hits a lot of familiar beats, from adoptive parents to tough mentors to the growth of a boy into a king, but it does so in ways that are far from the norm.

A lot of that is down to the artwork, which seems to draw influence from artists as varied as Scott Morse, Jim Mahfood, Paul Pope and Bryan O’Malley. When Aqua faces off with a sea monster, the size of the monster’s toothy jaws is exaggerated across several pages. This kind of pull-back long shot is something Maybury uses many times to great effect, to show just how small young Aqua is against his mighty foes. It’s a visual representation of his courage just to be facing off against these guys, and it says a lot that Aqua maintains a cool head, and even on occasion a boyish innocence, in the face of the fantastic.

Fantastic is available in abundance in the pages of Aqua Leung. Gigantic sea monsters, massive armies, archers with deadly accuracy, powerful scarred warriors with tragic tales, corrupt kings, monstrous gladiators, the fall of a king’s dynasty and the rise of a new one, it is clear that Smith does not think small in terms of his story. The undersea world of Aqua Leung is populated with well-considered empires, races and histories.

However, while Smith and Maybury don’t play the whole thing as parody, neither do they ignore some of the more comedic, over-the-top aspects of high fantasy. When the lobster hero Tiberius offers up advice on how to beat foes, he offers “You see, the trick to beating it was to hit it with my hammer over and over again.” When you’ve got a panel of Aqua thrusting his hands in the air, Captain Kirk style, and yelling out “Damn Sea Monkeys!” you know that the creators are not treating this as sterile, overly sincere fantasy. There’s a sincere love of the genre and its trappings going on here, but there’s definitely a wink and a nod to the readers as well. The self-aware humor of O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim is probably the best comparison.

There were times when I wished that Smith had been a little more spare in his dialogue and narration. There are pages just loaded down with descriptions of destiny and empires and such that feel almost like reading a history text instead of a comic, and there are also whole sequences that feel like they’re sort of padding out the narrative. However, even if some of the pages almost caused my eyes to glaze over, the book in general is packed with enough awesome to overcome a few slow moments, and in terms of price and size, Aqua Leung is a huge bargain. 180 pages of story, plus 20 pages of pin-ups by a variety of talented artist and a few behind the scenes pages, makes this a pretty good bargain for $18.

Aqua Leung represents a truly ambitious work with great art, a smart sense of humor and a lot of the elements that really make epic fantasy work.

Aqua Leung Vol 1 is scheduled to be in stores on April 9, 2008. This is an advance review.