Well... no. I mean, I got the basics. Atlantis had been drawn into something called "The Obsidian Age" with some bad juju. Aquaman had to re-sink Atlantis to save it in some unclear capacity, as well as the JLA. The Atlanteans had then decided that their former king had ruined everything and betrayed his people for his true friends, and therefore must die. DC's Atlanteans (or actually Poseidoneans, as Aquaman actually presides over a domed city-stated, not the full continent) have always been a murderous and superstitious lot, prone to attempting to kill little babies and young children over their having the wrong colored hair or eyes. Their turning to regicide is on-brand, including the involvement of Vulko, who is basically Aquaman's Alfred if Alfred substituted being openly catty with constant outright backstabbing. Aquaman being in any way associated with this lot makes him look worse.
Guided by Mera, Aquman's crazy ex-babymama (before her Geoff Johns glow-up,) the Atlanteans busted Aquaman's Justice League signal and harpoon hand. Through sorcery, they were able to all ocean life against Aquaman, rendering his telepathy useless. Certainly not against the *snort* barnacles that bound him to a surface rock until he died by desiccation. Around this turn of events, Aquman was seeing flashes of his past that would be obtuse to anyone not well versed in at minimum a half-dozen Peter David written comics from a decade earlier (across a volume, a mini-series, and an annual, no less.) There's no in-depth captions or editor's notes elaborating on any of this, just an aggressive indifference to any potential new readers no arriving directly from JLA. Most of the rest of the issue is Aquaman breaking loose of the barnacles, continuing to be driven away from the sea by the Atlanteans, and most unintentionally funny, being swarmed by crabs. At least, I think it was unintentionally, rather than a piss take. Don't get me wrong, if this were happening to Capt. Storm or some other normal human protagonist, it could be harrowing. In a super-hero comic, it turns Aquaman into a clownfish.
Near death, in Ireland of all places, Aquaman tosses his useless spearhand into a body of water, and it's caught by... The Lady of the Lake?!? Because King Arthur, see, like we haven't been down this road before. Never so incompetently, though, as I don't think they actually refer to Aquaman as "Arthur" until going full Arthurian. So the Lady of the Lake not only heals all of Aquman's wounds with the water of The Secret Sea (I guess,) but she also gives him a bracelet that allows Aquaman to form a... water hand? They make a point of saying he can make it solid enough to grab things and such, plus he eventually has visions in the palm of it, but nobody's impressed with a water hand, dude.
As for the cameo, the Manhunter from Mars caught a bit of Aquman in the "JLA neural net" during the Sea King's semi-failed telepathic call for help. J'Onn J'Onzz was flying around the general area, while also having a psychic exposition dump with Wonder Woman, Batman, and Superman... on page 20, way after the reader I either figured it out and stopped caring. And again, it's too vague to qualify as useful-- mostly just restating what we already knew instead of expanding upon it. Mostly, it just absolves the JLA's absence by stating that he wanted to deal with his (murderous) people on his own. By the time the Alien Atlas locates his teammate, Arthur is relating the Arthurian developments like we hadn't already read that part. This continued into the second issue, where J'Onn got some clothes and credit cards for Arthur, while they sniped at each other over who was the most stand-offish or least likely to stay with the Justice League. Aquaman then goes on alone on some meandering adventure involving captaining some old man's boat through a storm, using his water hand for magic CPR, fighting those Atlantean stormtroopers a little, and weathering a police investigation. Or something. I checked out four pages in, when the cameo stopped, but after another dumb dream sequence that alluded to stuff I didn't care about.
"Castaway" and "To Die by the Light of the Sea" were by Rick Veitch, Yvel Guichet, and Mark Propst. The writer seemed inclined toward Silver Age cheese, but lacked the chops of Silver Age revivalists like Morrison and Waid. The art was fine, but I had to actively remind myself that it wasn't by the same art team as did the JLA arc. The year that this lasted yielded few waves, but the book would pick steam in the second year under another Mahnke-indebted creative team and the premise of "Sub Diego."
