Water Logged

Aquaman: the Rodney Dangerfield of superheroes. Lately, DC Comics' King of the Seas faces his greatest threat not from archnemesis Black Manta but from a trickier foe: derision. The lameness of an Aquaman movie has been a running gag on Entourage, in which Vince (Adrian Grenier) vied for the main role. As if that weren't enough, the Atlantean also gets soaked in Steve Carell's upcoming comedy The 40 Year-Old Virgin: The title dweeb treasures his Aquaman action figure. (Not exactly the endorsement a seaman dreams of.) So is the great Trout Whisperer an also-swam? ''I don't think that's fair,'' says DC president (and former Aquaman writer) Paul Levitz. ''Aquaman was created in '41. He's been a part of the culture ever since. There are a lot of people who'd aspire to that level of achievement.'' Adds Levitz: ''He was one of the earliest superheroes to get his own TV show: CBS Saturday morning in 1967 had The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure.''

Okay. But unlike Supes, Aquaman's had trouble holding on to his rep — perhaps because he lost a hand in battle in 1995. (It was replaced with a harpoon, then, weirdly, a ''water hand,'' which sounds like a frat prank but is a hand made of water.) Still, this dubious PR is more buzz than Aquaman has logged in years. Any chance it might spawn a real movie? Says Levitz, ''There have been talks.'' All of them, sadly, in unintelligible fish language.