WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Aquaman: Deep Dives #7, by Steve Orlando, V. Ken Marion, Sandy Florea, Andrew Dalhouse and Wes Abbott, on sale now.

As the King of the Seven Seas, Aquaman is an incredibly powerful leader and hero. Able to survive on land or sea and strong enough to knock even Superman off his feet, Arthur Curry is truly a force to be reckoned with. Despite all this, Aquaman’s most famous, and most ridiculed, power is his ability to communicate with sea life.

After years of being seen as a joke throughout pop culture and even the DC Universe, Aquaman commands a lot more respect than he used to, but plenty of people still think he can't do much more than simply talk to fish. However, Aquaman: Deep Dives #7 goes a long way towards proving why Aquaman's mental powers are much more significant than people realize.

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Throughout the “Stinging Tide” story arc in this digital-first, non-continuity series, the evil organization known as Scorpio has sought to undermine Aquaman’s rule of Atlantis. The situation comes to a head in Deep Dives#8, as they engineer undersea riots all over Atlantis with Aquaman and the Sea Devils protecting Bazilia while Arthur's Queen Mera fights to save Poseidonis. This culminates in a ferocious battle between Arthur and Scorpio’s true leader, his ancestor Kordax, an ancient Atlantean criminal, discarded from the royal bloodline for his grotesque appearance and the crimes of his father. As the battle rages on, Arthur and Kordax taunt one another, both tearing into their enemy on a level that only family can. The two trade vicious blows until Arthur decides to use their familial connection to his advantage by linking their minds through the medium known as the Call, the psychic connection that they both have with sea life.

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Once their minds are joined, Arthur and Kordax find themselves transported to the Celestial Isthmus, a mystical realm of pure thought which Arthur describes as the psychokinetic sea that connects the two to all sea life. Kordax presses on, refusing to rest until his descendent is dead and dishonored by his hand, but his lack of experience within the Celestial Isthmus proves to be his undoing.

As he is about to strike a killing blow on Aquaman, Kordax is seized by a giant creature summoned by Arthur. Aquaman, having spent a great deal more time exploring the Isthmus and unlocking its secrets, had a telepathic connection with the creatures of the Isthmus mirroring the one he had with the creatures of the sea, something Kordax could never utilize because of his aggressive and domineering nature. The conflict ends with Scorpio defeated and Kordax braindead, his mind lost to the Isthmus.

This is far from the first time that Aquaman has displayed such powerful telepathic capabilities. During the “Drowned Earth” crossover between the Justice League and Aquaman series by Scott Snyder, Dan Abnett, Francis Manapul, and Howard Porter, it was revealed that Arthur is connected to the Life Force: one of the seven hidden forces of the reality that connects him not just to all life in the sea, but all life across the cosmos that sprung from any life-giving waters. Years before this Life Force was revealed, Aquaman had already demonstrated this ability to impact non-marine animals in the pages of Grant Morrison, Howard Porter, and John Dell’s JLA run. While facing the White Martian supervillain known as ZüM, Aquaman uses his telepathy to trigger ZüM’s basil ganglia, a portion of his brain inherited from his marine ancestors, thus giving him a seizure and incapacitating a being as powerful as the Martian Manhunter himself.

By entering an astral plane and summoning an otherworldly mystical creature, Aquaman has shown, once agian, that his telepathic abilities far outstrip the idea that all he can do is summon a goldfish. A feat like that requires a truly powerful telepath, and Arthur fits that bill to the letter. While it may not be the most conventional form of telepathy, it’s an incredible power set that's worthy of the King of Atlantis.

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