Yesterday, we reported that Kurt Busiek will soon be leaving the regular writing duties of Dark Horse’s Conan.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, DCU Executive Editor Dan DiDio told us that, as of issue #40, Aquaman would change its title to Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis. Going back even further, DiDio told us that, frankly, Aquaman was on the cusp of cancellation until a fairly radical pitch came in that literally, save the series bacon.

Oh, and Jackson Guice hasn’t been seen as a regular artist on a series recently.

Now, connect the dots.

Brunt of jokes on HBO’s Entourage, and soon to have his own shot at a television series, Aquaman is getting a fresh take in a big way at DC.

As part of DC’s “One Year Later” event, Busiek and Guice will helm an all-new take on one of the mainstays of the DCU, and the creators and DC say “all-new,” they mean it.

We caught up with Busiek for more information on the upcoming stories of the king (?) of Atlantis and just what might be going on in the months to come, under the sea.

First off, that more than a moutful of a title...

“The new title was my suggestion,” revealed Busiek, “and I wanted to do it to clearly signify, right from the logo on down, that this is a different approach, this is a break with what's been going on and a new direction, a new flavor. I'm glad to have seen so many people assuming that the title means more of a sword & sorcery direction, because that means the title works -- that's exactly the impression we want to give."

The writer explained this new take on Aquaman will be more of a high-fantasy adventure book … “with swords, wizards, exotic locales, wars, monsters, ancient gods and more, all taking advantage of that undersea setting that makes the seascape practically an alien world, full of mystery and wonder,” Busiek said.

”But it's not just swords & sorcery,” he continued. “There's also science, corporate skullduggery and the occasional superhero in the mix. Think of it as sword & sorcery if the next kingdom over is a fully-industrialized hi-tech nation with tanks and guns and worse ... boards of directors.”

Before Busiek goes too far, however, one thing he wanted to reveal upfront (“I should rip the Band-Aid off fast for longtime Aqua-fans”), is that this Aquaman stars a “new guy” … a new Aquaman.

”So in that sense, it's the start of something brand-new -- a new hero, setting out on new adventures.”

But Busiek was also sure to point out at the same time, he, Guice, their editor, and DC are not scrapping any of the past history of Aquaman, of Atlantis, and of all the mythology that's built up around the undersea world over the years.

”It all happened, it's all still out there,” Busiek explained. “Mera, Tempest, Koryak, Cerdian, Lorena ... we're not throwing anything away, even if we don't necessarily use it all right away. And we're not killing Orin (the current Aquaman), not making him a villain, not scrapping him -- in time, he'll turn up in the series again, and his story is anything but over. We're actually giving him something new to deal with, some issues to wrestle with that ought to be a lot of fun.”

As for the new series’ setting...

”I don't want to give away any of the developments and surprises coming in John Arcudi's last few issues (particularly not since he was nice enough to call me and offer to set up anything I wanted him to set up for the new direction, and we worked out a couple of bits that'll feed right into what I'm doing), but suffice it to say that Atlantis is hit pretty hard in those issues and in Infinite Crisis, and its status is anything but quo,” Busiek revealed. “Huge upheavals on the Atlantic oceanscape, and a chaotic situation full of danger, opportunity, war, political maneuvering and more. Things are bad between the people of Orin's Atlantis and the people of Lori Lemaris's Atlantis, barbarian tribes are coming out of the woodwork, the smaller kingdoms of the seafloor are on the march, ancient forces have been disturbed, sorcery abounds, and lots more.

”Into that, we drop our new Aquaman -- an outsider to Atlantis, to the whole oceanscape, dropped into this rich and complex fantasy setting. And he's going to have to figure out his path, find his place in this world -- and in the surface world! -- as he goes.|

”By the end of our first issue, #40, he'll be traveling with two companions -- the Dweller in the Depths, a mysterious and not-entirely-trustworthy sorcerer who's essentially appointed himself our guy's guardian and guide on the hero's path, and King Shark, the old Superboy villain -- a vicious killer who's the half-breed son of a shark god and a human woman (or at least, so goes the legend). Why the Dweller is helping Aquaman, and why King Shark is partnered up with anybody, much less a hero, are things we'll learn more about as time rolls on.”

In writing the series, Busiek explained he’s using the kind of “heroic-fantasy muscles” he’s had fun with had fun with on Dark Horse’s Conan (a series Busiek will be leaving shortly), “without trying to do the same thing…”

”It's high-fantasy, but its own flavor,” he said of the new series. “But I do want this Aquaman to be much more a fantasy adventurer, much less a conventional crime-fighter. But that's only part of it. The oceanscape is rich in possibilities, rich in exploitable resources, and that means that corporate interests are looking the ocean's way, too. The way I look at it, the seascape is a fantasy realm in chaos, facing internal troubles, but also threats from both above and below -- from above in the form of corporate and other air-breathing interests that want to exploit or otherwise profit from this world, and from below in the form of dark and dangerous forces that have been confined to the deepest chasms of the ocean until now.

”Think of it as a world trapped between the invading forces of Tolkein and Robert E. Howard on one side, and Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton on the other, with a few superheroes and supervillains thrown in for good measure.

”And Aquaman -- a new hero, unsure of his role and of just who the good and bad guys are in all this -- is stuck in the middle.”

Busiek also reports he’s “thrilled” to be working with artist Butch Guice on the new series…

”Aside from being a terrific artist and strong storyteller, Butch can really make you believe in the exotic fantasy worlds of the Atlantic oceanscape. And he draws a great King Shark -- and a creepy Dweller, to boot. And cool warriors, gorgeous women, strange creatures and more. He's the perfect guy for this book, and I've wanted to work with him for years.”

Responding to a few of Newsarama questions, Busiek explained that it was a mixture of factors that led him to create a new character as opposed to continuing the adventures of Orin/Arthur…

”Mostly, it's to have a fresh start,” he responded, “and not to constantly be dealing with some of the narrative problems that have plagued Aquaman over the years.”

”I think there's an inherent problem with action-adventure heroes who are kings,” Busiek went on to explain. “Not an insurmountable problem, but it's there, and it's got to be dealt with

”Kings aren't supposed to go and have adventures -- they're supposed to stay home and rule. It's why Conan's more exciting than King Kull -- the prototypical Conan story starts with Conan in a bar, boozing it up and propositioning some gal, and he gets swept up in an adventure that gets him into a big fight, tempts him with money and lets him get the girl.

”Meanwhile, the prototypical Kull story starts with him sitting around on the throne, bored. And one of his pals says ‘Hey, let's go hunt leopards’, and that sounds good to him because he's bored, so they do that, fall into some sort of adventure and by the time it's done he's headed home to be bored again. He's already got lots of money, he's got power, he's just shirking his real duties because being a king isn't exciting enough for a man of action.

”The thing is, winning the throne is usually the end of the story -- the hero's reward, at which point it's time for ‘happily ever after’. But in serial adventure, you gotta keep going. And I don't think it's any coincidence that Aquaman, as a character, was published continuously from 1941 on -- until the series that set him up as king of Atlantis, had him win a beautiful queen, get married, have a kid and in general accomplish all the stuff a hero gets to do at the end of the story. Once that series wound down and was cancelled, what happened to Aquaman? His kid was killed, his wife went nuts, the people of Atlantis kicked him out (over and over), and in general, his life was made miserable because he'd already won it all, and the only way to keep things popping was to yank it away from him. And he'd inevitably wind up getting Mera back and his throne back -- and then lose them again, when the next guy wanted to shake up his life. So we often wound up on this see-saw of Aquaman getting to the place we know he's supposed to be (on the throne, with Mera), and getting his life messed up so he could do something else for a while -- and then he wins the throne back, and then he gets knocked off again, and aaaaaaaaih.

”That's not to say that it's impossible to write the adventures of a king well. Some people have managed it nicely, like Christopher Priest's run on Black Panther, or, in Aquaman, in Peter David's and Dan Jurgens' runs. But I don't want to just do what they already did, so I want to try solving that problem a different way -- by starting out fresh, with a guy who hasn't already won it all. The new Aquaman gets to start from the bottom, and anything he wins will be an accomplishment, a new legend, new victories -- not regaining something he used to have or fighting to protect the old status quo. Or at least, it'll work that way as long as the Dweller doesn't -- ah, but that'd be telling.”

During the course of our Q&A, Busiek also explained how he’s been “intrigued” over how Aquaman has "slowly, slowly" been changed over time, until becoming what the writer feels is almost a “complete reversal” of the original idea…

”The original Aquaman, back in the Golden Age, was the son of a scientist, a human being biologically-augmented to be a water-breather,” Busiek explained. “And over time, we learned that, no, he wasn't that guy, he was the half-breed son of a human lighthouse keeper and an Atlantean princess. But wait, no, he was a foundling, discovered by that lighthouse keeper. He was actually the son of an Atlantean wizard, was the latest bit we learned -- so by the time you get all through this, he's not human at all, and not the product of science, but entirely Atlantean, and the product of magic.

”I thought it'd be an interesting exploration to start with something more like that original idea, and plunge him into the world that's built up around the other guy over all these years, and see what happens.

”And hey, I haven't mentioned Viatha, or the Knights of the Abyss, or Coral, or...”|

Asked to explain how the idea of a new Aquaman came together (did he come to DC with the idea for a new lead charactern, or DC to him?), Busiek explained the secret origin of Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis…

”What happened there was that [editor] Joey Cavalieri called me up to offer me the Aquaman series, an there was an idea attached, an approach suggested by Dan DiDio. And I didn't think it would work,” he said.

”But I thought it was an interesting challenge, so I thought about it awhile, and I built up a freaky idea using Dan's idea as a core, one that involved Aquaman in disguise as a villain and a team around him dealing with weird craziness that probably would have fit well into Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol. And Dan didn't think that would work.

”So we ended up talking about the character, and what's been done right and wrong with him over the years, and what's hard to deal with and what works, and when I mentioned that bit I just said about the way Aquaman's changed over the years and it'd be interesting to do a new character, a new twist on the original idea, Dan perked up. And when I mentioned that I thought Aquaman was a book that could really take advantage of heroic-fantasy elements, of the kind of stuff I've had fun with in Conan, he perked up again.

”So I spent some more time thinking about that, and all at once the different elements fell together into a pattern that worked. And the screwy part was, it wound up something that had all the elements of Dan's original suggestion that I wasn't all that hot on, but in such a different way that you'd never have recognized it if you didn't know it was there.

”So I outlined that to Dan and Joey, and they liked it, and here we are!” Well, here we will be anyways. Like all DC Universe series come March-April, Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis will pick up “One Year Later”. We asked Busiek how he’ll incorporate the “jump” into this series? Will readers learn the fate of Orin and how this new lead character came into prominence right away, or will that be something they’ll learn later and/or slowly..?

Responded Busiek, “One Year Later? One Year Later I was transferred to the Moon. Worse pay, better hours. Worse pay, better fellow …

”Sorry. Was Not Was flashback.

”We start One Year Later, of course,” continued Busiek, firmly re-established in the present. “And we start at the very moment our new Aquaman is dropped into the undersea world. So you'll get to see his rise to prominence as it happens. As for Orin, well, you'll see some hints of what's coming in the last few Arcudi issues, but we won't tell you instantly where he is and what's going on with him. He will turn up in time, though, and we'll learn what happened, what it means and how it'll affect the book, the character and the oceanscape over time.

”More than that, I cannot say.”

Fair enough, but we had more questions, including what sort of role this new Aquaman may or may not have in the larger landscape of the DC Universe? Afterall, he’s really “Aquaman” in the surface world, his title coming from his role as hero and member of the JLA. Busiek’s response?

”I think our first job is to establish the character as interesting and involving in his own book, his own setting, before making all sorts of DCU connections. That said, we're not walling him off from the rest of the DCU, and he'll have various contacts over time, but let's let that happen organically.

”At first, we'll be more concerned with connections to and developments in the oceanscape. We'll be seeing Mera in our second issue, for instance, and giving Aquaman his first land-based adventure (along with some hints about the current status of Sub Diego) starting in our third issue. But for all that we've got lots of stuff to work with, and stuff to draw on from such places as The Atlantis Chronicles and Arion and more, we want to make sure it's a book that new readers can enjoy as much as longtime readers, where the world that's been established to be out there is an important part of the book but nobody gets overwhelmed with references to the past that they can't understand.

”But as far as other DCU characters go, he will meet his first superhero by his fourth issue, I'll tell you that much.”

As to whether this new Aquaman will eventually have lots of interaction with established DC heroes and villains an maybe even take the “Aquaman” role among of the DCU’s elite superteams..?”

”Anything's possible,” concluded Busiek, “but let's give him a chance to, uh, get his feet wet first.”

Related “One Year Later” Stories: