I kind of liked the bearded look that JL/U used for Aquaman. The man is an undersea king whose flesh is nigh-invulnerable anyway, little need for an orange jumpsuit. I was never too keen on the "harpoon hand" though. I always saw that as a way to give him a "claw", which was IN during the 90's.
I will say, though, that I don't have anything particular against the classic Aquaman costume, though. The problem with a lot of DC heroes is that they have had certain costumes for well over 50 years and so seeing them in anything else seems "wrong". I mean, Superman's costume is by no mans a great design. It is a standard superhero costume, which makes sense because he was basically the first popular one. For 1938 it was darn spiffy, for 2006 it looks dated. The problem is that suit is as much of an icon as the man inside it, and so changing it will offend people. Especially when the designs that are usually brought up to replace these "iconic" looks are overwhelmingly NOT as keeping or timeless and usually are designs that symbolize that particular time period. Like WW's failed "70's spy" look, or Batman's "90's clawed-tech armor" look of Jean-Paul Valley, or even "Electric Superman".
And this also applies to characters from the Silver Age, including most of Marvel's mainstays. The Iron-Spider design for CIVIL WAR seems to be destined to become as much of a footnote on a rich character's history as Electric Superman was.
With all that said...Dr. Polaris got a MUCH better design in the 90's, even if purple on a magentic guy will forever scream "Magneto". Without that, though, he looks like he was built by Dr. Wily.
