The New Mutants (1983) #76, "Splash!"

I bought the first few issues of this series as they came out, when I was a kid. I didn't pursue it for very long and now, 35 years later or so, I remember why.

We hop into the story as the New Mutants as they fly towards a town. It is explained to new readers that the school for mutants has been blown to bits and the youngsters have nowhere to go, yet they seem to be in good spirits for all that. They try to phone their parents from a pay phone at a mall but are once again the victims of discrimination, fear and loathing and have to get the hell out of there.

The group instead chooses to head towards the HQ spaceship (or something) apparently owned by X-Factor but currently only populated by a team called the X-Terminators. Sounds like it would be your go-to destination if you're a mutant whose own residence has been obliterated but it didn't occur to these guys right away. Maybe the ship doesn't have a pay phone?

As this momentous decision is made, we transition over to said X-Terminators team mid-dive.

The ship made them diving suits and everything.

Naturally, they come across squid and sharks and what-not, which is pretty much exactly what you would expect to happen, but there is one interesting aspect to this book.

Damn right it isn't. Read the classics, kid!

That is the Horn of Proteus (or Proteus Horn), the very same one used to call upon Giganto in Fantastic Four #4, as seen below.

The kids screw around with it and eventually manage to blow it. This act, of course, calls on some giant octopus to stir itself awake now that Giganto is no longer. Evidently, these monsters knew to take turns.

This one attacks the closest thing it can wrap tentacles around and that happens to be the ship these kids are on. The New Mutants arrive as this happens, but even the combined "power" of these two scrub teams full of characters with shitty names like Wolfsbane, Rusty, Rictus and Boom-Boom can do little against the beast.

And then, our guest-star arrives, at last.

Oddly enough, Namor doesn't do all that much from here on in. He throws a few punches at the octopus but when the kids plan to place dynamite in its mouth (similarly to how Giganto was defeated) he just hangs back and lets three of them take on that task.

The plan does work, however, so the creature is beaten just as X-Factor (at that time, the team of the five original X-Men) arrives. Namor puts in a good word for the kids and takes off with the horn.

All told, this is by and large a throwaway story bordering on filler, but credit writer Louise Simonson for working in a slice of 60s history.