Marvel Two-In-One (1974) #2: "Manhunters From The Stars!"

After spending some time focusing on one of Namor's less common foes/allies, we're going to have a look at a book featuring one of his most frequent in the Thing.

The book starts with an appearance by Namorita, which is a nice unexpected treat. A character named Wundarr falls from the sky into the ocean near Hydrobase where Namor's cousin is conveniently hanging out. She leaps to the rescue.

She gives him mouth-to-mouth and starts to crush on him right away. This Wundarr guy is clearly confused though and when Namor shows up, Wundarr panics and beats it. Namorita knows something's up and begs Namor to help her help him.

Cease your prattling, woman! There are so many such scenes in the comics of the time...

But what IS the deal with this Wundarr fella? We sneak onto a spaceship to find out. Would you believe that is dad was an astronomer who predicted that their planet was going to be destroyed and...

How ludicrous, right? 😐 

We'll ignore the familiarity of all that (I assume it was done with a wink anyway) and see what happens when Wundarr reaches dry land again. He crashes into New York city, wrecking a couple of cars and getting plowed into by a cab. His child-like minds perceives the cab episode as an attack against him and he seeks to defend himself. 

Wouldn't you know it, the Thing is walking nearby. It seems that wherever Wundarr goes, a member of the Marvel pantheon happens to be out chilling. The Thing sees Wundarr freaking out and decides to put an end to it.

I would buy a book of nothing but punches drawn by Gil Kane. 

Namor and Namorita and arrive and, for a change, Namor attempts to prevent further fighting. 

The aliens who had been tracking Wundarr feel that Namor's sudden presence will probably make it less likely that the Thing will end up killing Wundarr so they beam down with their robot assassin. For all that their "mortoid" got partial cover treatment, the two heroes dispatch it in a page and a half.

The aliens are impressed by this and decide to beam back to their ships. Namor and Namorita, who was so concerned about Wundarr's well-being earlier, essentially say "okay bye!" and take off as well, leaving the Thing holding the bag, so to speak.

Apparently they can.

 
I had a few of the later issues of this series as a kid and hated them because the Thing was among my least favourite characters. I tended to buy them for the guest star.

This one surpassed expectations and while the panels above may not demonstrate it fully, a big reason for that was Gil Kane's dynamic art, particularly during fight scenes. I've owned this book for months,  picking it up for a buck during a sale at the time, and I'd been holding off reading because I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. If I'd have known Kane had handled its art chores, I would have read it much, much sooner.

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.

Namor The Sub-Mariner (1990) #4, "Black Water"

A recent post about an Alpha Flight issue put me in the mood for more John Byrne material so today we move ahead a bit in the 1990s series to issue #4.

The book opens with a pair in a submarine attaching a "surprise package" to a much larger underwater vessel. File that away for now.

We move from that to a discussion between Namorita and that Carrie chick that Namor's been flirting with. Carrie has decided that since Namor's romantic history is rather...frightening...she doesn't want to be a part of it. Frankly, it's hard to argue with her reasoning. Nita flies off to tell her cousin, who seems like he couldn't care any less.

He is too preoccupied with attending certain festivities, as are the creepy-ass Marss twins, who happen to discuss the subject because they are still spying on Namor with drones.

Namor doesn't seem like the type to host too many parties but on his way to it with Namorita as his +1, he explains his reasoning.

...He doesn't want to blow it on account of being anti-social and secretive. All right, fair enough.

Namorita finds the party dull as hell until the Marss twins show up. She goes to chat up Desmond. Meanwhile, a disguised Namor also has eyes a guest.

Tony "Iron Man" Stark is in the audience as well, which makes sense as a business big shot. Nice touch. Byrne has always been good at those fun cameos.

But as the "guest of honour" submarine super tanker arrives (that is what Sue Richards is reacting to above), so does the "surprise package" that was attached to it during the book's first couple of pages. And so...

Namor sheds his disguise to investigate the explosion before the submarine releases oil into the water. Things look okay at first, but...

And we end with Namor getting bogged down in the oil, unable to swim or breathe.

Kind of a fun issue. Byrne managed to keep the story moving forward and keep your interest even if it was light on suspense and action until the very end. The lack of a super-villain made for a nice break and the prospect of Namor teaming with several old friends (who have also at times been foes) makes one look forward to the story's continuation.

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.

Sub-Mariner (1968) #50

The mention of Llyra in the previous post about Spider-Man served up a handy suggestion for a good hopping-on point to the Sub-Mariner series. Let's give a look at the extra special 50th issue of Namor's series. Don't take it from me, though. It says so right on the cover!

We join Namor as he's asking himself the very questions stated on the cover. Reading this out of order, we have no idea what caused his memory loss but that just helps us relate to his condition. His "curtain over clouded memories", if you will.

Namor asks if he's a man like the others while wearing green scale shorts. Maybe he hasn't seen his own pointy ears yet or the wings on his ankles.

But he does take that lady's advice to go jump in the ocean, figuring that either he'll find peace in the ocean or die and be relieved that way. Can't...argue with that logic.

And while he's finding out which one will turn out to be true he also happens upon a breathing corpse. Or something.

Well, obviously you care a little...

He rescues her and this is what he gets for his trouble.

Spak! Save someone from drowning and next thing you know, you get uppercutted and called a perv. Don't do it for the glory, y'all!

Turns out that's Namorita, his second cousin, so yes, that's kind of gross, but at the time no one knew that.

There is a lot flowery language in this book and while it starts out kind of dramatically comical, it gets old fairly fast.

Holy cripes, man...Bring it down a notch...

At this point, he's felt drawn south and when he reaches that spot, he immediately gets attacked by a bunch of crab dudes led by this guy...

I remember this Atlantean Colonel Mustard from some Avengers books. A crossover with Alpha Flight or something. I'll need to dig them up.

Anyway, Byyrah and his crab dudes actually have Namorita hostage and are attempting to use her to make Namor obey them. Namor swears to tear them apart with his bare hands when the REAL leader reveals herself.

Double swerve! There's Llyra, as advertised. And apparently, they read Congreve in Atlantis.

Namor justifiably tosses her in an oil pit in short order and takes off with Namorita to have a chat.

This Shakesperean tale was both written and drawn by Bill Everett which is pretty cool since he invented the character. He created Namorita, for that matter, and this book is notable for featuring her first appearance. It would perhaps not be to everyone's liking, but it is certainly a must for fans of either character and/or their creator.