As the longtime adversary of Aquaman, Black Manta would love nothing more than to be able to dispatch his foe for good. However, doing so would rob the villain of his life’s purpose, leading him to create an interesting alternative.
Few villains are as committed to destroying the lives of their archenemies as David Hyde. Black Manta has terrorized Arthur Curry for years and is one of the few villains to repeatedly harm him. Black Manta has actually killed Aquaman’s infant son, cementing himself as one of the King of Atlantis’ most evil rogues. Hyde has practically turned hatred into a way of life, but in spite of his torment of the seafaring hero, Manta has never been able to put Aquaman down for good.
As it turns out, a very good reason for that is provided in New Suicide Squad #7 by Sean Ryan, Tom Derenick, Rob Hunter, Vicente Cifuentes, Blond, and Dave Sharpe. Manta and his fellow members of the Squad embark on a mission to track down and kill an escaped metahuman clone created in a Chinese facility. The team comes under attack from the clone and, amid the chaos, Black Manta confides in Captain Boomerang that unlike the others on the team, he signed up for the Squad of his own volition. Hyde tells Boomerang that when he briefly believed Aquaman to be dead, he felt devoid of purpose and found a way of getting it back by joining the Suicide Squad. While some comics show Black Manta’s helmet as ridiculous, it’s anything but in this issue. Thanks to an alteration to his helmet, he can see anyone he desires as Aquaman and he endures Amanda Waller’s Squad so he legally kill his archenemy as many times as he wants.
It really isn’t a shocker that killing Aquaman drives Black Manta as much as it does. Aquaman #9 revealed that Arthur Curry accidentally killed David Hyde’s father, sending him on a warpath that would last for years. In fact, Black Manta’s commitment to antagonizing Aquaman runs so deep, he threw away a perfectly normal life by burning a fish market he operated to the ground the moment he learned his archenemy is alive. More recently, Black Manta went so far as harvesting Aquaman’s Kryptonite without regard for how it could harm Atlantis. The supervillain would do anything to harm Aquaman.
The interesting thing about the dynamic between Black Manta and Aquaman is how much Manta needs the hero alive in order to truly thrive as a villain. While Joker has his own personal reasons for not killing Batman and the Reverse-Flash literally can’t kill Flash without creating a paradox, Manta refuses to kill Aquaman in spite of his desire to kill him. However, using his helmet to kill ersatz versions of Arthur is a dark, but interesting compromise to get the revenge he desires without robbing himself of the fuel he needs to be a successful criminal. Black Manta may never kill the real Aquaman, but that doesn’t mean he can’t repeatedly fantasize about it.
