Absolute Aquaman Pitch + Basic Design Sketch
I got the idea for this while reading Aquaman Rebirth and seeing how they'd updated Dolphin's design and done the whole Ninth Tride plotline. The basic concept is that Orm and his brother, Orin \[this universe's equivalent of Arthur Curry\], grew up living under their father, Orthax. Orin was the legitimate son and heir and, by all accounts, was considered perfect in every way. He was a talented warrior, a gifted strategist, and a strong leader. He had the charisma, the pedigree, and the talent. His father had even granted him the rank of Ocean Master, the highest military honor, for his achievements in the conquest of Xebel.
In comparison, Orm was a bastard. A child born from a servant girl whom Orthax had deigned to "use" one day. While he suffered a far more merciful fate than most bastards, being granted legitimacy and a place within the royal halls of Atlantis, he was eternally shunned by others of his social strata for his lowborn blood, which manifested as the more pronounced fish-like characteristics on his body. To make matters worse, people saw him as weak. He lacked the talent for war that his brother had; he was better suited to scholarly pursuits. However, an understanding of history did little to line the nobles' pockets. It wasn't grand, it wasn't impressive, and it certainly wouldn't grant them new lands and opportunities for profit. In many ways, he was seen as dead weight.
His only solace was that Atlanna, his adoptive mother and the Queen, seemed to love him as one of her own despite everything. She was the brightest light in his life, and her disappearance left a permanent void that he could never hope to fill- a void that drove him to leave the confined walls of the palace in search of her, a journey that brought him face to face with the sheer terror that his father had wrought. He saw the ruins of Xebel. He saw the corpses and the skeletal remains of once-great buildings. He saw the subjugated souls forced to work themselves to the bone in labor camps, and the systematic replacement of a culture; as he returned to the safety of his castle walls, he found himself utterly unable to ignore it.
Unable to fight for the people as a Prince of Atlantis, he chose instead to don the visage of the Trench, a once-great people cursed into savagery by his "great" ancestor Arion's actions, becoming a fist for the downtrodden and the oppressed as The Aquaman.
Basic Ideas:
\- I thought it'd be interesting to reflavor the Ocean Master helmet as a symbol of revolution rather than one of power, and having the Trench be innocent victims, not unlike the people who suffered from the after-effects of Agent Orange after the Vietnam War seemed like an interesting change to their usual origins.
\- I thought having Orm appear Southeast Asian or Polynesian would be a cool way to not just include and represent cultures with strong ties to the sea, but to also help sell his mixed ancestry and part of why he feels like an outsider among his more traditionally European-looking contemporaries within the nobility beyond just the fact that he looks more fishy than they do.
\- I also thought switching the whole concept of Aquaman being a person existing in two worlds due to species to being about someone existing in between two separate social classes, neither of which he truly belongs to, would work as a fundamental twist on the formula from Darkseid's meddling. It strips Aquaman of his humanity and emphasizes his core characteristics as a result.