DC Universe: Two Lost Cities of Atlantis?

[Northern Piper]

To paraphrase Lady Bracknell, "To lose one city of Atlantis, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness."

I was browsing some of my old comics the other day, and remembered something that has always bugged me: did DC ever explain how they had two lost cities of Atlantis, one with mer-people and the other with leg-people?

One lost city of Atlantis was populated with mer-folks. All the inhabitants of that Atlantis had fish-like tails instead of legs.

Then there's Aqua-Man's Atlantis, of which he was king at one time, complete with Queen Mera and annoying side-kick, Aqua-Boy. Everyone there had legs.

And, these can't be explained by alternate continuities, since Supes appears in both Atlantises (Atlanti?). He has the occasional dalliance with a mermaid (and Superboy appeared in mer-Atlantis at least once, only to have his memory wiped at the end of the story so he wouldn't remember it later when he was grown up. Honestly, Superboy's memory was so many seives, given the number of things he had to forget, like his Legion memories. However, that's beside the point.)

Supes also knows about the leg-Atlantis, since Aqua-Man is one of his colleagues in the Justice League.

Was there ever a point when Supes actually asked Aqua-Man about how many lost cities of Atlantis there were, or the omniscient editors tried to make sense of it?

[Lumpy]

Originally it was simply a lack of continuity; different writers came up with storylines with no regard for what else had been written before. I'm not sure if it's post-Crisis but at one point there was a story explaining the two different Atlanti. After the sinking of Atlantis, there was a schism over how best to adapt to an underwater existence. The people who were Aquaman's ancestors believed that they should become water breathers but otherwise remain as human as possible. A minority believed that they should acquire fish tails for better underwater locomotion. I believe the mer-people's underwater city was sometimes called Tritonis to distinguish it from Aquaman's home.

[middleman]

They can decide what evolutionary changes they want to make WHILE UNDER WATER, and we can't even cure herpes!

[cmkeller]

Yes, it's explained in the 7-part miniseries The Atlantis Chronicles, which I highly recommend. (Unfortunately, it's never been collected in Trade Paperback.)It's written by Peter David, with the mix of humor and drama that he executes so well.

In a nutshell, long, long before the sinking, Atlantis was a whole continent. Thaty was the Atlantis of Arion, with an advanced civilization. Then some disaster happened, destroying most of that, reducing much of the planet's population to barbarianism (those would be the ancestors of modern DCU surface man) but leaving civilized Atlanteans with territory consisting of several cities, the main population center being Poiseidonis. To protect themselves from barbarian attacks, the Poiseidonians put a dome over their whole city. When the meteor that would sink Atlantean territory was sighted, all Atlanteans were gathered into the domed city of Poiseidonis, the dome was sealed, and the city survived underwater.

The King of Atlantis at this time was a scientist named Orin, his brother, Shalako, was the high priest and sorcerer, who disdained science. After the sinking, Shalako and his followers decided they didn't want to be cooped up with Orin's crowd. Shalako, as a sorcerer, made a deal with the "Dark gods" of another dimension, who gave him the ability to create "hard water" (a power that Aquaman's wife, Mera has). Shalako led his followers through underwater tunnels to the nearby city of Tritonis, where he created a dome of hard water.

A year or so later, scientists in Poiseidonis created a serum which would turn people into water-breathers. All of Poiseidonis took the serum, which freed them from confinement within the dome (though the dome remains to protect the city from sea predators). They then offered the serum to the Tritonians. Shalako told them not to take it, but they all wanted to be like the Poiseidonians. So Shalako prayed to the Dark gods to curse them. The next day, the Tritonians who took the serum found their lower extremities covered in scales, and their feet had become webbed flippers. The generation born of the scaly-legged parents was born as mer-people.

So essentially, Poiseidonis, where everyone looks like surface humans (except for their ankle-fins), is where Aquaman rules. Tritonis is the city where Superman's old girlfriend, Lori Lemaris the mermaid, comes from.