I've been having a good conversation with Sub-Mariner fan "John" in the comments for this 2017 post, so I thought I'd dish out a few more observations on Marvel's waterlogged warrior.
One thing I didn't mention in my 2017 essay is that from time to time I go searching through the SUB-MARINER comics of the forties and fifties, looking for stories that fit my specialized category of "mythcomics." What I've found so far as mostly decent formula stories with really fine Bill Everett art. This isn't a knock against the Golden Age version of the character. Dozens of long-lived characters were better served by their art than by their plots or characterization. Everett's SUB-MARINER is in my view on the same level as Jack Cole's PLASTIC MAN; great to look at, but not that much story-wise.
Still, there were some interesting twists here and there. In issue #38 of the second SUB-MARINER series (February 1955), Everett apparently felt that other people's stories had taken his once-popular character and powered him down too much. So his solution in "The Sub-Mariner Strikes" was to "re-power" Namor with the idea of restoring his superman-status. After he's restored to his former status, the Emperor announces that he wants to launch a new war of conquest against the surface-dwellers-- a war that never gets off the ground, aside from the one task he gives Namor: to dispose of an air-breather ship. Namor ends up sparing the humans' lives, though not without regrets, since they act like assholes to him. No further suggestions of aggression by Namor's people take place in the ensuing stories, so perhaps the editors decided that they wanted Everett to confine himself to done-in-one tales.
Then in issue #40-- three issues away from the title's cancellation-- Everett wrote and drew "The Sub-Mariner and the Icebergs," a tale which might have provided some tropes that Stan Lee used in his 1960s revision of Namor's origin.
An American fleet of ships intrudes upon the arctic oceans where Namor's sub-mariners live. Namor immediately believes the flotilla is an invasion force and uses his people's tech to surround the ships with icebergs. In self-defense the ships' leader orders the icebergs dynamited, which causes some destruction of the sea-dwellers' nearby city-- which recalls the mission of Captain McKenzie in the Marvel Origin. Everett then has the Emperor send Namora to sabotage the ships, which resembles the way Namor's mother Princess Fen infiltrates McKenzie's ship with some idea of spying on the humans. (How she was going to spy with her blue skin hanging out was never explained.)
Namora is captured and held hostage, which forces Namor to talk turkey with the captain of the flotilla. He claims to be the head of a scientific expedition looking for uranium-- and though this isn't necessarily a venture without ANY military applications, it proves true that the humans aren't intentionally encroaching on the sub-mariners.
Namor accepts the humans' pledge of peace, but his evil cousin Byrrah tries to re-incite hostilities. However, before he can do so, the humans inform Namor that his own interference with the icebergs has triggered an unstoppable seismic reaction that will destroy the sub-mariners' city. Over Byrrah's protests, Namor evacuates his people-- and sure enough, the city is destroyed by a seaquake. The story ends with a plea for peace and a touch of tragedy as the subsea people seek to rebuild "their shattered empire." In FANTASTIC FOUR #4, Stan Lee may have remembered "Icebergs" when he had Atlantis destroyed by nuclear tests and its people scattered, though only a few more Sub-Mariner stories transpired before Namor was reunited with his people once again.
7 comments:
hey! i just found it. thanks for the tip about it and for the shout out. i have book marked this one. 'will read it later and get back with you. thanks again.
great review. thank you. i agree with your assessment about the 40's everett sub-mariner and jack cole's plastic man. i love reading those namor stories from the 40's and 50's. they had a very adventurous yet wacky/goofy/quirky quality to them and everett's art is beautiful to behold. thanks again.
Glad you liked the essay. Everett's art deserves to be better regarded by fandom.
yes, it was, as always, a very well written essay. yes! i agree! everett's work is some of the most beautiful of the golden age. when he returned very briefly just shortly before his passing to illustrating sub-mariner it retained the old magic with just a touch of Kurt Schaffenberger. thanks again.
i have read that namor has the most inconsistent power set of all the marvel characters. i can believe that. i have also read that during the 60's and 70's namor had the best track record when battling the hulk of all marvel characters. he/namor never suffered a loss to the hulk during this period. he either had wins or stand stills. i will say this my all time favorite super-hero battle is namor vs. the hulk in hulk 118. my second is namor vs. hulk in defenders 52. my third all time favorite super-hero battle is namor vs. the thing in sub-mariner 8. i liked the way namor was portrayed in avengers 9 from 2018 where he single handedly defeated all the avengers which included iron man, a not quite fully powered thor, captain marvel, simple minded, but gamma bomb explosion producing she-hulk, cosmic ghost rider, black panther. captain ameirca had to talk namor down basically before he annihilated the entire team. however, i am pretty sure they have not stuck with this amped up version of namor. a namor story i always liked was when atlantis awakened in super-villain team-up 13. other than the mini-series revolutions and the depths (non-canon) there are few times marvel has used namor effectively in the last many decades. i really liked the short lived 2010-2011 namor first mutant series. except for the covers, i thought the first two issues were perfect. i liked the treatment of namor's personality during that short run. the art was inconsistent however and had like 4 artists on a single issue!
The thing that makes the undersea Hulk-Namor battle as good as it is is that there's no "Namor loses his strength when he's out of water." I believe that Marvel instituted that rule, and though I understand its utility for writers in terms of generating suspense, it got monotonous after a while. Even with that handicap, Namor was often able to challenge the Hulk even out of water-- and yet, in his one major matchup against Thor, somehow Namor couldn't give the Thunder God a good fight on dry land. There might have been a lot of factors that led to the demise of the sixties series, but the way Namor kept having to "juice himself up" might have contributed. Why not just come up with some excuse for Namor to be Hulk-strong all the time? It would just lead to giving him foes like those of the Hulk, able to contend with Marvel's heavy hitters.
I don't think I read the 2010 series, so I'll check it out!
yes, i agree. in the golden age namor was at home in all environments. the amount of time out of water it takes for namor to get weaker and just how much weaker he gets in the marvel age varies wildly. not having his own title for so very long gives namor less opportunity for upgrades; whereas with characters in their own titles the writers are under 'pressure' to continually out do themselves. it seems the surface dweller side of his heritage would insure namor was indeed at home on land/all environments. namor's defeat in his own title in issue 58 to thor was always embarrassing to me. worse yet was his defeat to thor in invaders 33, 34. he did not get a good showing in either encounter. worse yet was namor defeat to wonderman in avengers 155 where wonderman has a much more impressive battle with Tyrak underwater than namor did. i think had his own title not been cancelled or if a new solo title had been introduced sooner namor may well have over come his handicap. in the defenders when they faced the offenders hulk went up against red hulk, strange faced off against baron mordo, the surfer met Terrax in battle and namor ... namor met tiger shark who by that point had been defeated by it seems everyone in the marvel universe and he even feared the hulk. tiger shark had been reduced to being a joke.
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