The Atlantis Chronicles are a side story to the Aquaman comics, published by DC Comics in 1990. They were written by Peter David and illustrated by Esteban Maroto, Eric Kachelhofer, and Gaspar Saladino, and are presented as real-life documents.
Detailing the history of Atlantis through its various chroniclers, all of whom have their own quirks and biases, it tells of the sinking of the city via meteor and the people's attempts to rebuild and forge new lives under the sea as the people of Poseidonis and Tritonis found separate ways to deal with the new situation. Also included are major historical figures, such as Arion, Orin the First, Shalako, Cora, Dardanus, Honsu, Atlan, Atlanna, and the cursed Kordax, whose control over sea life made the people fear anyone born with blond hair.
Elements of this series were included in Aquaman (1991) and to a much greater extent in David's Aquaman (1994), which he used as a stepping stone for much of his worldbuilding.
This series compares to The Krypton Chronicles, a similar series detailing the history of Krypton, the home world of Superman.
These Chronicles contain examples of:
- Awesome Underwater World: When Orin takes the serum allowing him to breathe underwater, he happily dances among the sea creatures, and the art takes pain to show how beautiful it is.
- Call-Back: The Cave of Death was last seen in Aquaman (1962) with its properties completely unknown. Here it's revealed it was the birthplace of Kordax and a nexus of magic for the sorcerer Shalako.
- Colony Drop: Atlantis was originally sunk by a massive asteroid. Shalako and his followers believed it to be this, sent by the Goddess of the Sky to punish the Atlanteans for forsaking her. But most assume it was just a natural event.
- Death from Above: A skull-faced meteor crashes down onto Atlantis, sinking it and killing countless people.
- Dramatic Irony: The comic gets a lot of mileage out of the fact that the text-boxes are directly from The Atlantis Chronicles, but the events on-panel are what actually happened. This is generally played for laughs, but it turns horrific at the end of issue 3, where the chronicler notes that the princess was reportedly frigid on her wedding night, and chalks it up to nerves (it being her first time and all). The reader, however, knows that she had been raped the previous night.
- Fantastic Racism:
- Once the Tritonians gained fish legs, and later tails, it wasn't long before the Poseidonians looked down on them as fish-heads.
- Due to Shalako's magic and Kordax's control over sea life, the people of both cities feared anyone born with blond hair, including the future Aquaman.
- Generation Xerox: A basic theme of the series is feuding royal brothers, dating back to the founding of Atlantis; the present day Aquaman and Ocean Master are just the latest generation.
- I Just Write the Thing: Peter David steadfastly rejects any suggestion that he was ultimately in control of the plot and claimed events came to him as they happened in 'real life'.
- Metafictional Title: The series explores Aquaman's ancestry through The Atlantis Chronicles, the collected archives of Atlantean Royal Historians.
- Mystical Pregnancy: Atlan visits Atlanna in her dreams to have sex with her, with Aquaman being born from their union.
