X-Men Red (2018) #4: "The Hate Machine, Part 4 - Small Problem"

Since the earlier review of a Vision and Scarlet Witch issue turned out to be quite brief, I thought I would knock another one off with this X-Men Red offering.

Namor appeared in the first issue of the series but did not show up again until this one, and barely so. But the first panel below at least explains his purpose in this book. 

They mean that literally. Certain people are being infected with some nanotech that causes them to be susceptible to mind control directed towards killing mutants. The clothes to which the ladies (the Laura Kinney Wolverine on the left and someone annoying named Gabby who goes by Honey Badger on the right) refer include a dampener that negates the tech's effects.

The X-(Wo)Man named Storm had been earlier affected by it and attacked the always lovely Jean Grey. They certainly don't want Namor turning on them.

So again, that's the extent of Namor's inclusion. His appearances in this book, at least first few issues, tend to be quite brief but they do have some significance. 

X-Men Red (2018) #1, "The Hate Machine Part 1: Heal the World"

Marvel is celebrating the release of the Dark Phoenix film, though perhaps not its early results, and while Namor's history with Jean Grey may not be as noteworthy as the one he shares with some other members, he was a part of of her version of the X-Men just last year.

Once again, his appearance is brief, but at least makes sense. Jean has consulted with some of the most brilliant minds on earth and hatched out a plan to make the world a better place for mutants. Her first stop? Why, Atlantis, of course.

Maybe you'd get more if you were wearing pants when they arrived.

Atlantis seems like an odd choice until she elaborates a bit.

Jean arranges to speak before the U.N. (just like that) and states her case that mutants need to be recognized as a group even though they are not a nation as such (and attempts at having a nation specifically for mutants have just made them easier to target). This is where Jean's friends come in.

Once the meeting is at an end, the various members of the team are complimenting Jean on her progress when one of the ambassadors who questioned her drops by for a chat. It is quickly clear though that the ambassador is under some sort of mind-control and even more so when her head quite literally explodes.

Jean is suspected of having caused the ambassador's rather spectacularly gruesome death but Namor steps in to defend her from trigger-happy UN cops.

Nightcrawler whisks the team away to regroup, Namor included. The villain is revealed to be one Cassandra Nova, a name which...means nothing to me at all.

A decent enough premise though I'd be surprised if it hadn't been attempted before. I don't expect Namor's face time to increase much and while he had a good reason to be there initially, I wonder if he'll have a good reason to stay. We'll see how he's worked in.

Avengers vs. X-Men #8, "Round 8"

When it comes to Namor's appearances in team books, whether as a guest-star or as an actual member of said team, I sometimes struggle to choose where to direct my attention between the Avengers, Defenders, X-Men, Invaders and Fantastic Four. As a result, the next three posts (perhaps more) will be about times that those teams have met either as allies or foes.

We begin with Avengers vs. X-Men #8. From what I can gather, Namor appears in the earlier issues of the mini series but being that he gets cover treatment here, we're going to start at the end. It seems that he does not appear in issues 9 through 12.

Marvel's attempts at bringing us up to date sometimes only add to the confusion but they do a nice job here.

So Stark messed everything up again. Got it.

I'd heard that there were some...uhm...strained feeling about Namor/Atlantis and Wakanda so I'm actually eager to read this now even though nearly everything of Marvel I've read that was published in this century has been complete ass. So let's go!

Sure enough, Namor and his "fish army" (Iron Man's words) are devastating Wakanda. The Avengers retaliate, getting their shots in on Namor one by one.

But once a Phoenix-powered Namor decides to stop dicking around, he quickly regains the upper hand.

There isn't much more to it than that. Namor wrecks stuff, takes some ineffective hits and delivers some blows. Much of this book is a giant fight, as one should expect.

How does he ultimately get taken down? Well...We're not really told but the Scarlet Witch is the one who pulls it off.

That seems plausible enough. Her ability to, in effect, cause unlikely events to take place could cause the Phoenix Force (or whatever the hell it is called) to exit Namor's body as it did as a result of the confrontation above. Fair enough.

A couple of things are unclear but perhaps that is simply from lack of having read the earlier issues.

For one, I believe it is known that the Phoenix corrupts its host. So why is everyone so eager to shit on Namor over this attack? Captain America (granted, an arrogant asshole, IMO) mutters "Damn you, Namor" at some point and later tells him he should be ashamed of himself.

Perhaps the Phoenix force is like having too much booze? It "releases" you to do things you normally wouldn't?

And nice behaviour by The Thing over on the right. Granted the two of them have a history and Namor essentially devastated a city (perhaps a country) but again, he was not of sound mind at the time. As Captain America and Spider-Man look on, who are the heroes in this story again?

And what IS Namor's motivation here, exactly? He tells the Black Panther at some point "You must know I would not stand for this". For...what? He also says that they (The Avengers) have brought this on themselves. It certainly sounds like Namor's actions were an act of retaliation.

Following its exit from Namor's body, The Phoenix Force was spread (presumably equally) among the remaining four people who shared it with him.

The Avengers, realizing that it took all of them to beat just 20% of the force, decide to bail to K'un-Lun (home of Iron Fist) rather than to attempt to battle all of them.

I would argue that it technically only took one of them, the Scarlet Witch, but that would diminish the gruesome, massive compound fracture that Red Hulk suffered and that was completely ignored throughout the rest of the book. He's just standing there in a group shot at the end like having an arm nearly severed was just another day at the office.

Acknowledging that I'm jumping in well into the story so that a lack of clarity might be caused by that alone, this was a pretty entertaining book. I've read enough Marvel books published in the 2000s that are little more than characters having extended meaningful glances (can you even call that reading?) that the large scale action of this one was a refreshing surprise.

Uncanny X-Men (2011) #12

When choosing which issues to pick up and review during the recent sale on X-Men digital books, the one below was pretty much a no-brainer.

This is only my second foray into the Avengers vs X-Men story. The first was issue #1 of the VAC: VS mini series, reviewed here.

Looking back, while I recognized at the time that the AVS:VS book acknowledged its own pointlessness, X-Men 12 underscored it in spectacular fashion. AVS: Vs #1 was published one month before the above issue in which the same two characters were going to throw down anyway. Again, it may be that greater exposure to the story as a whole makes VS more worthwhile but that isn't the sense I get right at this point.

But enough about that. What about this book?

Well, Namor gets plenty of face time, which is good. It's not particularly good quality time though.

The X-Men are looking for a character named Hope that I know next to nothing about. They are split into teams which leads to this exchange.

Okay...Not only is artist Greg Land notorious for tracing his art from pornography, it appears that writer Kieron Gillen is determined to play along because this sort of thing keeps coming up (double entendre not intended) throughout the issue.

Around the same time this little group arrives at Tabula Rasa, whatever the hell that is, so does an Avengers teams of Luke Cage, She-Hulk and The Thing.

Evidently, the Avengers didn't feel the need to diversify this group's power base. It's all physical strength and, well, that's about it.

Namor uses one of his lesser-known "abilities" to try to track down this Hope character.

Yeah, that's just gross, I don't care how many boobs she has.

Anyway, they do encounter the Avengers and waste no time attacking them. Namor pounds Cage into the ground and tosses him into the nearest body of water which, unlike the one above, is sort of brick-coloured.

Land must have traced that from some porn actor who has no fingers.

Namor uses Cage's unconscious form to knock She-Hulk unconscious and just like that, we're on to our main event.

The scrap, however, is unimpressive, short-lived and interrupted by some kind of alien thing that resides in this joint.

Seriously, Gillen, what the hell is wrong with you? As lazy as Land can be though, The Thing's expression there is kind of funny.

Hope having been located, everyone just heads home. So we followed the team that did NOT find Hope.

Really then, this book is just as pointless as AVX:VS. It just gives the illusion of having a story attached to it.

Uncanny X-Men (1963) #6, "Sub-Mariner Joins The Evil Mutants"

Our X-Men theme got off to a bummer start so let's see if going back in time to issue #6 of the original X-Men book can get us on track.

His shorts are red so we're off to an auspicious start...

It is interesting to note that this book is part of a tradition of guest-appearances by Namor in the early issues of other Marvel series. The most famous famous is of course Fantastic Four #4, but he appeared in Avengers #3 as well and even the 7th issue of Daredevil. Marvel took no time to learn about cross-promoting.

In this issue, the X-Men are having dinner when Professor Xavier is inspired by that day's newspaper. Jean Grey speculates as to whether there are other mutants around to which the wise mutant father figure responds...

And at that very moment, "as fate would have it"...

Thus...

That's...New to me. Has he done that since?

When Magneto arrives at Atlantis, Namor is in a rage about Reed Richards repeatedly cock-blocking him in regards to Sue. So Magneto instead tries to manipulate some nobody to do his bidding.

That dude plants a thought into Namor's head that Magneto as a "fellow mutant" (nod nod, wink wink) might be best suited to assist Namor in the prince's battle against Mankind. Intrigued, since it had never occurred to Namor that he might be considered a mutant, the avenging son seeks out Magneto at the latter's hidden island.

Why would Namor need an undersea racer?

Once on the island, Namor is not too impressed by what he sees. Magneto tries to use the Scarlet Witch as a lure, which seems to be working to some degree. But when the X-Men also arrive at the island and attack, Magneto has harsh words for the Witch and Namor will have none of it.

With Namor turned against them, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants retreats but leave the Scarlet Witch and her brother, Quicksilver, behind. Those two are no friends of the X-Men either so Namor still finds himself at odds against the mutant team. Professor X attempts to restore order, successfully, but Namor has had enough of their drama.

Magneto takes one more shot at Namor from a distant location but to no avail. And so Namor returns to the ocean, once again annoyed by the surface-dwellers.

Man, I left an awful lot on the table with this one. I found I had to ignore some material from this issue to avoid having the blog post be too long.

It was a good problem to have after reading a Brian Michael Bendis book last time I updated the blog. If Bendis were re-writing this book today, it would be a 12-issue mini series.

Uncanny X-Men (1963) #527

Dud.

This issue is part two of a story called The Five Lights. While searching for Namor appearances, I found out I had the first part of Five Lights already yet had no memory of purchasing it. It wasn't until I came across a character based out of Vancouver, BC, Canada that I remembered that I'd bought it for my blog about Canadian super-heroes.

So what the hell? I went ahead and bought the second part. The cover seemed promising. The cover date is October, 2010.

Despite the rather dashing cover appearance, the Avenging Son only appears on two pages, flirting with Emma Frost and making an argument that Scott Summers, Cyclops, is a tool. He's not wrong, but as guest-appearances go, it's a little disappointing.

Oh, he throws some sunshine towards his chef, too, simultaneously taking a shot at we landlubbers. Monarchs need to be able to multi-task.

He eats sushi with Emma Frost which, at first, seemed odd. I suppose surface dwellers eat hot dogs and wiener tots so maybe Atlanteans eating sushi isn't so weird but it initially raised an eyebrow.  I bet I come across something in some other book which contradicts this.

But the fact I'm questioning the act of eating sushi just underscores what a pointless purchase this was. If you were to collect Namor's major appearance only, this is very much one to skip. Not even one Imperius Rex, y'all!