Namor The Sub-Mariner (1990) #2, "Eagle's Wing And Lion's Claw"

After reviewing an issue of Tales To Astonish from the mid-60s, I figured I would continue to look at material in which Namor was the main man instead of a guest-star or a team member. I also want to move forward with some of the storylines begun earlier. In that light, the next two blog posts will feature issues from The Avenging Son's 1990s series.

Issue #1 was reviewed here.

The father/daughter combo that Namor met in the first issue are having a chat about the daughter's possible romantic connection to Namor when the Griffin crashes through the windows and abducts her, wounding Pops in the process.

So Mr. Alexander seeks help elsewhere in the building and finds it in the form of...Namorita!

Always good to see the little cousin.

Namorita goes straight to Namor with the old man's story. Namor happens to be watching a news story about a woman's shoe crashing through a cab window and dicking up downtown traffic.

Namor figures that was probably his new girlfriend's shoe that nearly killed a cabbie. He follows a straight line from the building in which she was abducted to where the shoe incident took place, continues to follow that line and ends up at the statue of liberty where, sure enough...

Nice detective work, your highness. You're a hothead but not a meathead!

And sweet research work, Mr. John Byrne. Unless, it's completely coincidental, since Neptune wielding a trident is common knowledge, Namor's outburst above probably makes reference to the very quest from Tales To Astonish that I wrote about in the previous post. It makes complete sense for Namor to use that expression. Nice attention to detail from the writer/artist here.

As this is going on, a drone of sorts captures the fight for the two creepy siblings with the Lannister vibe from the first issue.

Namor was believed to be dead at this point in comics lore so his presence would be doubly interesting for that reason, no doubt.

Now the Griffin may not be A-list but he's rather powerful nonetheless so rather than fight him on land, Namor takes the battle underwater.

But when his young (they always are with Byrne) lady friend manages to escape from being trapped by Griffin in the statue of liberty and sees signs of underwater turmoil, she prays that Namor is victorious. That doesn't work out so well.

This was a very fun read. Byrne did a good job of building from his first issue. The Griffin was made into a credible threat and seeds were sewn for the challenges that would emerge as Namor's plan began to unfold. It is easy to see with this particular issue why this book got good word of mouth at the time it was released.