This was indeed a sad issue for me as a teenager, not at the time it was published, but two months later when Aquaman #57 did not arrive and we learned that the book had been canceled. I've said a few times here that growing up, this was my favorite comic book series and my favorite creators, and I have to give the credit to Dick Giordano's editing of the book. He brought in from Charlton a creative team that was young and developing (Steve Skeates and Jim Aparo) and let them and cover-artist Nick Cardy just run wild. And over the two and a half years they all worked together, Skeates became as innovative and skilled an author as any in the field, and Jim Aparo transformed from this bulky, blocky style, to a master story-teller, propelling thinly muscled characters from panel to panel, page to page.
We begin this last issue of Aquaman for six years with "The Creature that Devoured Detroit!" by the creative team of S.A.G., Steve Skeates, Jim Aparo, and editor Dick Giordano. It begins with a guy arguing with his wife about the quality of her beef stroganoff when all he wants to do is watch the Warren Savin Show on TV. This show is a thinly veiled Tonight Show with Ed McMahan and Johnny Carson, drawn beautifully by Aparo. The show is interrupted by a news bulletin about an emergency in Detroit, where the city is being overrun by algae from Lake Erie, which has been growing at an alarming rate ever since Detroit has been experiencing 24 hours of daylight for the past week. It is believed to be caused by a satellite in orbit using mirrors to keep Detroit lit at all times. Aquaman was supposed to appear on the show but disappeared during the news bulletin.
Aquaman swims to Detroit and finds the city streets clogged with algae and decides to see an old friend in the police department, Don Powers. Cut to the Crusader, Detroit's own hometown hero where he goes at it with some goons repainting stolen cars. Meanwhile, Aquaman finds a cop and asks about Don, only to learn that he left the force and runs his own Private Investigation Lab.
Aquaman tracks Don down and while talking to his old friend learns that the crime rate in Detroit is down 38% in the last week. Don lets Aquaman know that he put the satellite up there and it is working great at decreasing the crime rate. Aquaman cannot believe his old friend is actually the cause of the problems and when he explains that the city is being evacuated, Don sluffs it off as left-wind conservationist hysterics. When Aquaman looks for a way to destroy the satellite, Don and his men knock him out and Don tells his men to dump him on a park bench,
Don then goes into his office and changes into his Crusader costume. We learn that he put the satellite up to lower the crime rate, but also because his eyesight is failing and he can no longer see well enough at night to fight as the Crusader. He is after a ring of car thieves and plans on destroying the satellite and retiring from crime-fighting as soon as he captures the ringleaders.
Aquaman wakes up on the bench and saves a young girl from the clutches of the ever-increasing algae. In a typical Skeates moment, a senior woman blames the algae on the "younger generation" and laments that this happened to Detroit instead of Cleveland.
On his way back to Don's offices, Aquaman sees a crowd up the street and investigates. They are surrounding the dead body of the Crusader. One witness says he doesn't understand what happened; the Crusader was running along the rooftops then tripped and fell over some wires that were in plain sight. Someone pulls off his mask and Aquaman recognizes his old friend Don. He rushes back to Don's lab, beats his way past the guards, and pushes a button that destroys the satellite.
This should be the end of the story, but four years later, Steve Skeates is now working for Marvel writing their undersea hero, the Submariner. In Submariner #72, "From the Void It Came..." the story begins with a hand pushing a button that destroys a satellite that has just been boarded by the Slime-Thing. The narrator makes the odd remark that the identity of the person destroying the satellite is not of the reader's concern. This may have been the first crossover between Marvel and DC that was not a joke.
The back-up is a one-page Aquagirl story "The Cave of Death" also produced by S.A.G. Aquagirl watches a group of children playing ball on the outskirts of Atlantis. She sees one chase the ball near a cave. She races to pull the boy away from the cave entrance. She explains that no one who has entered the Cave of Death has ever returned.
The entire issue was reprinted in Aquaman: Deadly Waters The Deluxe Edition (2020).
Edited by the master, Dick Giordano.
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