This is "How Can I Explain?", which is a feature spotlighting inexplicable comic book plots.

The other day, I wrote about when we first saw Aquaman use a trident in the comics. The interesting thing, though, is that in recent years, Aquaman has been ALL about the trident. Check out the first issues of his last THREE series!

It's ALL TRIDENT, ALL THE TIME. So, naturally, when Aquaman got his own blockbuster film, he rocked a trident a lot...

He used one in the Justice League film, as well.

That's totally fine, though, of course, as there are plenty of character bits that popped up late in the history of a character that happened to happen right before the character was then adapted into television and/or movies and so that recent idea suddenly becomes a major part of the character's status quo going forward. An example that I have used before was Barry Allen's mother dying and his father being framed for her murder. That did not exist until Flash: Rebirth in 2009 and yet it is now a part of all of the Flash television and movie adaptations. So that's not that unusual that something that Aquaman only really started using in 2011 would become such an accepted part of his repertoire (it did not hurt, of course, that the guy who launched Aquaman's 2011 comic book, Geoff Johns, also played a major role in the shaping of the DC Universe in television and film).

So that's it, right? "Oh, it wasn't really even a recurring bit until the 1990s and wasn't an every issue thing until 2011, but that's just how these things go."

However, here's a weird thing about Aquaman and his trident - he's totally known for using a trident. It just wasn't in the comics!

Oh, so maybe in the super-popular Superfriends cartoon series?

Nope (come on, they barely let heroes hit the villains, you really think they were going to be okay with Aquaman using a trident?). And yet, the image persists in our minds.

Alex Ross is one of the top comic book artists in the world and he is also someone that is very upfront about his cutoff point for what he views as his sort of "head canon" for the DC Comics superheroes and it mostly ends at 1980 and yet, Alex Ross' image of Aquaman rocks a trident...

So what gives?

I have some thoughts on the topic...

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Why do we think about Aquaman as having a trident?']

You might say, "Oh, Brian, it is when the Super Powers Aquaman action figure came out in 1984, THAT'S when it all came together," and I cannot say that that action figure was not a big influence on people, because it totally was...

However, the image of Aquaman with a trident definitely predated the action figure, because it can be seen in the iconic Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez 1982 DC Style Guide. The great comic book artist, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, is famous for the fact that his art was used for most of DC's licensing for DECADES. Essentially, if you were to license DC characters for some product, you would typically pick one of the Garcia-Lopez pieces from the guide. Meanwhile, it was also used by other DC Comics artists to keep their drawings on point.

Here's the Superman from the guide...

Here's Aquaman...

However, here is ALSO Aquaman...

And sure enough, he's using a trident.

Reader Steven Getman reminded me that Aquaman also appeared with a trident in the 1966 Captain Action Aquaman set-up. The idea of Captain Action is that you could turn him into different characters by changing his clothes and his accessories. As part of that deal, then, each different set-up had to come with accessories to make the package worth buying, so they had to come up with stuff for each character and so obviously, that led to Aquaman coming with a trident...

Honestly, I think it ties into my previous article about when Aquaman first used a trident in the comics. It was in this early Aquaman story...

But it's not in the comic story itself, just the splash page.

And I think it is just because aquatic character inherently are associated with tridents.

Check out the first issue of Namor's ongoing series for Marvel in the late 1960s...

\

Here's a little experiment. Go to Google Images and type in "Poseidon" and you'll see that almost every image has a picture of Poseidon with a trident. Do the same with "Namor" and while it isn't AS ubiquitous as Posiedon, it is still pretty darn common in the results, right? Including the most recent Namor one-shot.

I think the same just went for Aquaman. Once we got to the Super Powers action figure, then yeah, maybe THAT was what people got stuck in their head, fair enough, but before that point, it was just something that people figured that an aquatic hero would have, as seen with the Captain Action figure.

Or hey, maybe it's something else entirely that I'm missing. I'm sure you folks will let me know if you think I'm missing something!

If anyone has a suggestion for an inexplicable plot point for a future How Can I Explain?, write me at brianc@cbr.com!