Aquaman Becomes Poster Child for British Petroleum Spill

Comics News
Aquaman Becomes Poster Child for British Petroleum Spill
By Hervé St-Louis
June 6, 2010 - 21:36

Aquaman is no stranger to been talked about in the media. The character, as well as having an illustrious career in television and even as a much celebrated television pilot, has often been the butt of jokes on television shows like the Simpsons, Family Guy and Seinfeld. On the Web Seanbaby.com has made it his life goal to continuously find lame things about DC Comics' sea king.

Well Aquaman, created in 1941 by Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris seems to have had the last laugh after all. The blogger in charge of the Aquaman fan blog the Aquaman Shrine has modified and posted on his blog an image based on an issue of Aquaman drawn by artist Nick Cardy to comment upon the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico attributed to British Pretroleum (BP).

Viewers across the world have seen countless images of birds and other marine animal caught in the spill. This has lead to severe criticisms of BP. But when a fictional character is used to highlight a crisis, the effect of the commentary takes another life of its own. No longer is Homer Simpson pleading Aquaman to save him from drowning. Now, its the world that must save Aquaman from drowning. This take on Aquaman feels like a Benetton ad.

Comic book and animated cartoons featuring Aquaman have often included criticism on the action of humans on the environment but DC Comics, the publisher has never used Aquaman in any publicity material as a spokesperson for any ecological cause. It's interesting to see that it's the public who has breached that barrier.

Neither DC Comics nor British Petroleum have commented publicly on the use of Aquaman to highlight the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.