Do you see black and blue or white and gold? Aquaman® sees a suit of great responsibility.

Aquaman® was beside himself. He was absolutely pissed. It was supposed to be his day of serious rest and relaxation. Instead, taking the advice of his main man, Vulko®, he found himself speechifying in front of a small group of mollusks, assorted crustaceans, and starfish in order to strengthen support from all of his subjects. There had been a great divide after an offhand ichthyologist joke he made in an interview with robot Lester Holt®. All because of an offhand pun about sea anemones, enemies, and frenemies. It was a rhyme. It was cute. He didn’t mean it.  In short, Karma® sucks. Apologizing wasn’t enough, so now he was on this tedious spin tour. Keep in mind, he was the type to wear his heart on his sleeve, thus it was reflective in his body language. He took the stance of a vegetarian at a meat festival behind the podium, hunched over and anxious. It was painfully obvious that he had better things to do.

“As your ruler, I want to make one thing clear. I am not without empathy. Your concerns are my concerns. I am, and will never be, a senseless dictator. If I were, I am not sure if half of you would even be alive today.”

He paused, waiting for a response. There was none. He looked around and swore that next time, he would pre-record a speech. Worst audience ever. He was going to fire his writers when he got back home. He laughed nervously.

“Furthermore, all life, no matter how great or small is equally significant. Technically, this is not completely true, for am I not the King of Atlantis?”

His words were met with a deafening silence and a profound stillness. Aquaman® leaned forward as he promised to himself that he would not only can his writers, he would do so with his foot, thus bruising their asses severely before exiling them to the surface world called Terre Haute, Indiana®.

It was with this failure to communicate that Aquaman® tossed his index cards aside. “Screw this. You, all you all, did not come here to hear me read. You want heartfelt reassurance and recognition. You want a ruler that can read a room. That is why I’m here. I cannot promise you eternal life and bliss, but I can promise you this. I will always care for all sea life.”

He raised his trident triumphantly into the air. In doing so, he skewered a passing barracuda. In defense of Aquaman®, barracudas are lazy, stupid and sluggish. They deserve the bad things that happen to their ignorant asses. The guts of the speared fish seeped above the King’s head making him appear as a comic strip character with red murky thought balloons. Aquaman® snuck out of the melee and never looked back.

Sleeve