Namor The Sub-Mariner (1990) #1

John Byrne is one of those creators for whom I need to separate the person from the art. There are many aspects of his personality that I dislike and that make me want to avoid supporting him but I can't deny that his work was often outstanding.

There is also little question that he enjoyed and appreciated this character a great deal. Carving out Byrne's contribution to the Sub-Mariner legend undeniably diminishes it greatly.

I reviewed one issue from this series already (#60, if my memory is sound) but at that point Byrne was long gone. Let's go all the way back to the beginning and see how Byrne launched it in the first place.

Byrne chooses to tell this story in prologues and epilogues which is a little strange at first because you wonder if you haven't missed something.. This would have made a great zero issue but I'm not sure those were a thing in 1990.

We begin six months earlier as a father/daughter team of marine biologist or researchers or something named Alexander are...researching...when suddenly...

Apparently at this point in his history, Namor is believed by the rest of the world to be dead, making this sudden appearance all the more surprising for the Alexanders.

The Prince Of The Blood lands on an island in the Pacific. For a moment, it appears that he may have lost his memory yet again, but he shakes it off. He comes upon some primitive tribe. When said tribe treats Namor as an intruder and attacks, he kicks their primitive asses.

Ah, he's in one of his "cursed to be alone" phases!

The Alexanders track him down and convince to come back to their boat.

Once on the boat, the gentleman pointlessly tells Namor's origin story. As if Namor needs to be told that he's half-human and half-Atlantean (and therefore technically the first mutant, see). But I suppose we have to think of new readers.

On the flip side, I don't believe that Namor's mother has been seen very often and in this book, she looks great (the 40s version was hideous).

The old man does introduce Namor to a theory to the effect that an oxygen imbalance causes the Prince's rage. Too little oxygen when Namor's underwater, too much when he's on land. What's a brother to do? But evidently anticipating that one day he might meet Namor, the geezer has built a machine which regulates the oxygen balance. So...good for that.

The encounter causes Namor to run off to think. He comes back some time later with a treasure chest and a plan.

Oh look, an old dude putting the moves on a significantly younger lady. This must be a John Byrne book. It's not out of character for Namor to play the smoothie on occasion though. At least there's that.

The book concludes with a wealthy brother/sister combo talking business just after the lady stopped her brother from shooting himself in the head out of boredom.

Can you guess?

Namor's plan is basically to save the planet (read: the environment) through the business world by flexing the vast amount of wealth to which he has access.

That is certainly a new spin on a character that to this point was usually more interested in doing away with the surface world altogether. So while portions of the book felt like filler, its premise is (was) certainly intriguing enough to continue reading.