Aquaman’s Architect: Robson Rocha in Memoriam

Dramatic close-up of Aquaman, hair blowing in the wind.

In July 2021, the comics world was hit by the news that artist Robson Rocha passed away, having been hospitalised earlier in the month with COVID-19.

Rocha had been working at DC Comics for a decade. During the New 52 era, he drew several issues of Birds of Prey and Earth 2: World’s End; come Rebirth, he became a regular artist on Green Lanterns and Supergirl. Other comics he worked on include Batman/Superman, Teen Titans, Justice League, Worlds’ Finest, Demon Knights and Superboy. His final major contribution to the comics world, however, was as the primary penciller on the December 2018 to November 2020 Aquaman run, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick.

The final cover of Aquaman #43 alongside its original pencils. Both show a shirtless Aquaman striking a pose.

As franchise characters go, Aquaman provides fertile ground for comic artists. He inhabits a sprawling fantasy world filled with various fish-person races, yet this world has often been neglected. While the days of the character being a punchline are over – the New 52 revival and the successful film with Jason Momoa saw to that – there remained ample room for a creative team to build up Aquaman and all that comes with him, to ensure that his Atlantis is developed as lovingly as Metropolis or Gotham. Generations of Superman artists have found inspiration in the work of character-defining artists such as Joe Shuster, Curt Swan and John Byrne, while those drawing Batman’s exploits have drawn upon the work of Neal Adams, Frank Miller and Bruce Timm. But who was to take on an equivalent role for Aquaman?

Rocha, aided by the storytelling of DeConnick, was the right person for the job.

Pane;s from Aquaman #43. An image of a crying baby in red cloth is followed by a conversation between Aquaman and Loc over a bowl of soup.
Page from Aquaman #43. Pencils by Robson Rocha, script by Kelly Sue DeConnick, inks by Daniel Henriques, colours by Sunny Gho, letters by Clayton Cowles. Published by DC Comics,, 2018.

In their first story arc, “Unspoken Water,” (which ran from issues #43-47) Rocha and DeConnick were joined by inker Daniel Henriques, colourist Sunny Cho, and letterer Clayton Cowles. The story sees Aquaman stranded in a small island village with no memory of his true identity. But he is far from alone, as he is surrounded by a community of fellow castaways – who view the sea with religious awe.

“The ocean brought us here,” says one of the islanders. “Each of us… from far away. Like disrespectful children, we had sinned against her. She took us from our homes, our people.” Another castaway utters similar sentiments: “We didn’t know why at the time. We believed we were being punished. And so we wished to earn back the favor of the ocean.”

This narrative of sin and punishment also has a devil-figure. The one person immune to this reverence of the sea is a woman named Namma: “Namma felt no shame. She raged against the sea. She loathed the ocean that would dare to judge her.” And so Namma is exiled, but left behind her daughter Caille. The islanders retain their fear of the dark witch who once lived amongst them, and believe that their only hope of making peace is to reunite the dark witch Namma with her child.

Page from Aquaman #43. Caille stands on the coast, her dress billowing in the wind.
Aquaman #43. Pencils by Robson Rocha, inks by Daniel Henriques, colours by Sunny Gho, letters by Clayton Cowles. Published by DC Comics,, 2018.

In writing her story, DeConnick plays with world mythology. The islanders turn out to be human incarnations of various water-deities: the Aztec rain-god Tlaloc, Amanikable from the Philippines, the Hindu deity Varuna, Atabey of the Taino, the harpoon-wielding Ainu god Repun, Manannán mac Lir from Ireland, the Vodun Loa Master Agwe, the Maori god Tangaroa, and so forth. From here, the comic develops its own aquatic mythology.

Issue #45 illustrates how Father Sea and Mother Salt begat the four gods Earth, Sky, Fire, and Wind. These gods begat more gods, and the primordial Ocean was joined by Land. Father Sea came to feel neglected by his offspring and decided to destroy the world, only to be murdered by his children. His anguished widow, Mother Salt, sent seven beasts to fight the gods, the ensuing battle leading to the creation of the wider cosmos – including humanity. Finally, we learn that the aftershocks of this battle linger in the story’s present: Mother Salt was reborn as Namma, while Caille is an incarnation of the sole survivor of the seven beasts, Cailleach. Again, DeConnick is freely mixing-and-matching mythologies: Namma is the name of a primeval dragon-goddess in Sumerian lore, while Cailleach is a hag-like figure in Gaelic mythology.

Mythical monsters rising from the sea, merging in and out of each other
Robson Rocha’s pencils for a scene from Aquaman #47.

All of this gives any artist plenty to work with, and Robson Rocha (aided by inker Henriques and colourist Cho) rises to the task. Locating the story in a landscape of broken crags, tempestuous skies, weatherbeaten shores, and tumultuous seas, Rocha’s pencils on Aquaman stand alongside Stephen Bissette’s legendary work on Swamp Thing as a comic depiction of natural splendour. The world drawn in the comic is not a series of still landscapes but a living thing, energy coursing through the sequential panels.

Rocha’s work shows mastery of the heroic mode necessary for the principal characters: Aquaman is appropriately muscle-bound and statuesque, while Celtic maiden Caille is given a sumptuous costume with fold upon fold to billow in the wind. That common comic-art pitfall – the inability to draw anything other than the heroic ideal – is blessedly absent. The incarnate gods are a varied set of characters whose appearances belie their divine origins: Tlaloc, for example, is depicted as a skinny, mole-like little man. However, all of the characters, from the idealized to the caricatured, are drawn with equal amounts of care and affection.

Depicting the mythic battle of the comic’s backstory, Rocha provides an impressive set of gods and titans. The core designs are admittedly standard fare for the post-World of Warcraft fantasy landscape, with a heavy emphasis on tusks, horns, and assorted spinosaurus-like spikes sculpted to resemble crowns and armour, but where Rocha truly succeeds is in the amorphous energy running through the sequence. Waves of sea, gusts of feather-like wind, billowing flames, and clouds of crumbling salt flow in and out of each other in forming a backdrop to this primal world.

Pencil depiction of a horned woman at a cliff-edge.
Robson Rocha’s pencils for Aquaman #47.

Then came the storyline “Amnesty,” which ran across issues #50 to #55 and #57 (issue #56 carrying a flashback story with different artists). For the most part, “Amnesty” had the same creative team as “Unspoken Water,” with Rocha remaining as penciller – although co-pencillers Eduardo Pansica and Jesus Merino aided him on certain issues.

“Amnesty” is a more complicated story than “Unspoken Water.” Aquaman returns to his old home of Amnesty Bay – with the incarnate water-gods in tow – and finds out how much has changed during his absence. This involves an elaborate family tree. The central antagonist in the story is longtime villain Black Manta; in a crossover with DC’s “Year of the Villain” event, Manta makes a deal with Lex Luthor who provides him with Mecha Manta, an enormous robot with an AI based on the personality of Black Manta’s deceased father Jesse Hyde. Black Manta himself has a son – Jackson “Aqualad” Hyde – who serves as Aquaman’s young ally.

The backstory involves a local legend of an eighteenth-century sea captain named Tristram Maurer who became a lighthouse keeper before finally vanishing altogether, leaving behind “crazy monster stories” in which he “wrote of weeping from fear, as if something was hunting him from the sea.” These stories lent him immortality: Aqualad is familiar with Maurer, having enjoyed a role-playing game based on his tales. In a twist revelation, Maurer turns out to have obtained immortality of a more literal sort when he arrives back at Amnesty Bay alive

Double-page spread from Aquaman #52, showing a beach being terrorised by a Cthulhu-like monster.
Aquaman #52. Pencils by Robson Rocha, script by Kelly Sue DeConnick, inks by Daniel Henriques, colours by Sunny Gho, letters by Clayton Cowles.

Maurer is an obvious homage to H. P. Lovecraft, combining elements of Lovecraft himself with the sorts of characters that Lovecraft used as protagonists: even his status as an immortal man of the eighteenth century recalls one of the writer’s lesser-known stories, “A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson”. When Maurer returns to Amnesty Bay he is accompanied by the creatures of his imagination: his “bitter humors” incarnated.

This story demands a vision of a world filled with opposites, and Rocha again proves himself as an artist. He shows an aptitude for drawing the superheroic likes of Aquaman and Mera (and Wonder Woman, who puts in a glamorous guest appearance), but also for the ordinary folk who populate Amnesty Bay. His flashbacks to the eighteenth-century exploits of Maurer have the requisite historical details, but he also pulls off the futuristic techno-fantasy embodied by the rampaging, energy-blasting Mecha Manta. His depiction of the natural world is as inviting as ever, but he also does a good job of illustrating the resolutely unnatural figure of Maurer’s Cthulhu-like creation.

The centrepiece is a Lovecraft-does-kaiju battle between Mecha Manta and Cthulhu, but the sequence that does an even better job of encapsulating Rocha’s talents is the one in which Mera creates a vast avatar of herself from seawater. His talent for drawing the elements of nature is on full show, with each bubble and sparkle rendered with care and poured into one of Rocha’s statuesque superhero figures, creating an image that touches on the mythic. What could be more apt?

Panels from Aquaman #55. Aquaman is held in the palm of a vast avatar of his wife Mera, formed from water.
Aquaman #56. Pencils by Robson Rocha, script by Kelly Sue DeConnick, inks by Daniel Henriques, colours by Sunny Gho, letters by Clayton Cowles.

“Amnesty” takes us on occasional trips to Atlantis, and Rocha is tasked with drawing Aquaman’s sometimes home in issues #50 (co-pencilled by Eduardo Pansica), #51, and #54 (co-pencilled by Daniel Henriques). Of these issues, the first two depict Atlantis in organic terms as a kingdom decorated with numerous varieties of aquatic plants, while the third is much more technology-focused in turning the setting into a high-tech land of metallic undersea corridors occupied by gun-toting soldiers wearing what look like Halo uniforms with customized fins.

The comic’s undersea world became the primary setting after the “Amnesty” storyline, although Robson Rocha had little involvement with these adventures, which were mainly drawn by other artists. His final issue as penciller was #59. Here, Richa sends Aquaman back to Atlantis in style as the character uses his oft-ridiculed gift for fish-communication to send a shoal of sharks after Orm. Rocha’s takes on the characters are as strong as ever, the issue’s cast ranging from a costumed supervillain to nymph-like figures straight out of nautical legend. Although the emphasis is very much upon foreground action, the issue allows glimpses of a richly-rendered aquatic world. We see structures where architecture meets the organic, and vehicles that blend the historical with the futuristic. All in all, this is an Atlantis simply beckoning its visitors to explore further.

Double-page spread from Aquaman #59. Aquaman blasts into action in Atlantis, wielding a trident and surrounded by sharks, plus bystanders looking up in awe.
Aquaman #59. Pencils by Robson Rocha, script by Kelly Sue DeConnick, inks by Daniel Henriques, colours by Romulo Fajardo Jr, letters by Clayton Cowles.

The remainder of DeConnick’s run charts the ensuing Atlantian conflict before reaching a happy ending with the trident-wielding superhero surrounded by old and new friends alike. One last issue (lacking both DeConnick and Rocha) followed to tie in with the “Endless Winter” crossover story, and thus concluded the eighth volume of Aquaman.

The series is set to be revived this February with a new creative team as Aquamen; and this will, with equal inevitability, be followed by subsequent revivals. But those in charge of Aquaman’s future adventures will look back at their forebears – and Robson Rocha deserves to be remembered as an artist who brought a mythic dimension to Aquaman and his undersea kingdom.

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Doris V. Sutherland

Doris V. Sutherland

Horror historian, animation addict and tubular transdudette. Catch me on Twitter @dorvsutherland, or view my site at dorisvsutherland.com. If you like my writing enough to fling money my way, then please visit patreon.com/dorvsutherland or ko-fi.com/dorvsutherland.

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