The New Warriors (1990) #14, "The breeze of an Underwater Wind"

Namorita's appearance in an issue of the 1990s Namor series that I reviewed earlier this month reminded me that I'd squirreled away an appearance by the Avenging Son in a New Warriors book from around the same time. Namorita was a regular on the New Warriors and arguably one of its most popular characters.

There is very little substance to Namor's inclusion though, unfortunately.

The shirt and tie on Namor should have tipped me off as to the nature of his contribution to this story.

Namorita and Speedball *groan* come upon a bunch of guys emptying a ship of its cargo at an unusual time of night. The natural response is to assume the worst and begin beating on them. They do just that and in doing so, discover that they were hauling Atlantean artifacts. They also meet another crap character from that era.

"Call me your worst nightmare! Call me Darkhawk!"

Dear lord...That dialogue is my worst nightmare.

Namorita is appropriately unimpressed so the two do what heroes do when they first meet. Fight!

Speedball is the voice of reason (yeah, okay...) and breaks it up but the scrap enabled the smugglers to get away. Good job, Warriors.

Namorita goes after them, being the only one with the ability to do so, and encounters our villain-du-jour.

Perhaps as an act of overcompensation, Urchin beats the hell out of Namorita and "scalps" her. In this book, that just means he cut off her ponytail.

This is where Namor comes in, finally. When Namorita's body is found floating in the drink, she is brought to her cousin's place. She explains what happened and Namor just kind of...shrugs.

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow! The guy nearly beats your cousin to death and this is your reaction?

Namorita quite understandably storms out in anger and when Namor tracks her down again...

The custom behind the armour basically abbreviates to "kill or be killed". Namor attempts to prevent Namorita from laying a pounding on Sea Urchin but she tells him off and splits.

The saving grace to Namor's lame behaviour is provided during this segment. Namorita suggests that the treatments begun in the early issues of Namor's own series, which are intended to calm his rash nature, may have taken things too far the other way so now he's a milksop. That's good continuity and explanation, so we'll accept that.

Anyway, Namorita finds and fights Sea Urchin and defeats him but overcomes the urge to kill him, making herself unworthy of the armour.

That's about it. The issue had a transitional feel to it, the kind that is published between two major events.

And while Namor's contribution may have been on the weak side, at least it was better than Darkhawk's. All that poser did was enable criminals to escape.