Aquaman Volume 6

Well, Aquaman Volume 6: the Maelstrom was better than Volume 5.  But still nothing about the other kingdoms being reunited.  :(

This time, Aquaman has to fight the Chimera, the crazy experiment a Triton Base scientist cooked up using the brain of an Atlantean monster.  The Chimera was able to camouflage as things, and had all the super powers of all the predators under the sea.  He thought he'd be able to mind control Arthur (especially since he was able to control the minds of fish better than Arthur), but he totally failed.  But he lived to fight another day, so I guess we'll see the Chimera again sometime. 

After that, Arthur invited Dr. Shin, Daniel Evans, and the Martian Manhunter into Atlantis to help him solve a problem: why are the seaquakes happening?  It turns out, they're because Arthur is king, but he is part surface dweller, so the living kingdom (it absorbs the thoughts and feelings of dead Atlanteans) has not completely accepted him.  It should have been fine when his mother died.  Which leads to a bigger mystery: where is Arthur's mother?  Her body should have been in its tomb/casket.  But it is missing.  So Arthur and Mera go off hunting through gates to find her.  They make their way to Katangala, the land of psychic talking apes.  And eventually find Atlanna's trail leads them to the Maelstrom.  But Atlanna was told Arthur and his father were murdered by her Atlantean husband's hand.  Will Arthur be able to convince her that he is who he says he is?

Oh, we also got the origin story of Mera (of how she left Xebel and decided not to assassinate Arthur).  That happened nearer the beginning of the volume, but was pretty out of place with most of what happened. 

Like I said, this was better than Volume 5 though.  The stories fit together a lot better, rather than being random weird, almost unrelated things. 

So *hopefully* I get the story I'm waiting for in Volume 7!

Aquaman Volume 5

This....was not the story I thought it was going to be.  Aquaman Volume 4 left off with Arthur Curry's half brother being visited by the king of Xebel, who was reuniting the rulers of the seven sea kingdoms to take down Aquaman.  It had long been thought that Atlantis was the last one.  Turns out that's false.  So I was super excited to read that story. 

Hopefully it's in Volumes 6 or 7?

Aquaman Volume 5: Sea of Storms was kind of all over the place.  Aquaman discovers there's a human base in the sea.  He wasn't able to deal with it at the time though (for reasons).  The base is experimenting with a piece of the brain of an Atlantean monster that Arthur had to kill.  After that, Arthur and Mera attended his high school reunion (where he discovered that many of the people he went to school with are still okay with him, even though he ran off from high school).  While he was at the reunion, an archeologist stole Arthur's trident and used it to open a portal.  He thought it would go to Atlantis.  Turns out it just went to Hell, releasing the Giant children.  So Arthur and Wonder Woman dealt with most of them.  Mera and Wonder Woman dealt with the rest.  But then there was a giant algae monster that Arthur had to deal with because it was killing a reef.  He battled the green avatar for no reason (the green avatar kept telling him to stop, but apparently Arthur Curry is kind of dense like that).  Eventually the green avatar went and dealt with it (but was almost nuked by Atlantis in the process).

So yeah.  This was a super weird volume.  A different writer took over from Geoff Johns, so that might have made a lot of the difference.  Hopefully Volumes 6 and 7 will be more coherent!