OK, so my hatred of Hackers has no bound. 3 reviews backed up, and all of them need rewriting.
So, anyway, here's the latest edition of Unexplored Marvel, where we look at Namor, The Sub-Mariner, from 1971, a corner of the MU I didn't really feel like re-exploring, but there you go.
First off, an apology in advance for the relative shortness of the review. The Hackers did a number on the original, but there's also another reason for the shortness. I'll get to that later. So prepare for padding.
The nuts and bolts. The Year: 1971. The Character: Namor. The Issues: #33-44. The Creators: Roy Thomas & Gerry Conway (writers) and Sal Buscema, Ross Andru and sundry others (artists). Issues #34 & 35 were reprinted recently in Essentail Defenders 1, so I'm going to look at the issues following those for you.
To begin with, I've always thought there was something essentially weird about Atlantis in the Marvel U. Basically, a people who live in a city that is constantly destroyed and rebuilt, and yet the architecture hasn't moved far from a classical Greek style. And everyone walks in Atlantis, when surely it would be faster to just swim around. Yet they're always upright. I want to see some Atlanteans floating around, not ambling. And, oh yeah, they build these fabulous war-mongering aquatic vehicles, and yet they build staircases into their buildings. Atlantean architects must all be wanna-be air breathers, or "humes" as I believe the common lingo is.
Anyway, the vagaries of inconsistent Atlantean engineering aside, what did 1971 hold for Namor? Well, perhaps what could have been a career defining moment for the prince of the sea. Thomas's arc shows us yet another invasion of Atlantis, this time masterminded by the Lemurian Queen Llyra, with Attuma playing a surprising cameo as one of her lackeys. Of course, this being the Marvel U, the invasion coincides with Namor's wedding to long time love, the blue-tiful (bad pun there) Lady Dorma. Dorma won Namor's heart by basically following him around whenever he felt like hitting someone and putting herself in danger. Hear that ladies? If you want to capture a prince, hang around villains often enough to get slapped around a bit…the good guys will come running.
Anyway, of course the wedding doesn't go smoothly, setting Namor off on what had the potential to be a grand new adventure, complete with large status quo change. I won't tell you what actually happens at the wedding, suffice to say that it's a tragic story, one that humanises Namor better than any other story I've read. It could have been the happening that pushed Namor up to A-List.
Then Conway drops the ball. Badly. Obscure villains and wordy, wordy pages abound. Seriously, just look at that page to the right. It hurts the brain reading it. Guh. THis is why I'm not going any further reviewing the year for Namor…I'm drawing the line at re-reading it all and wading through so much crap.
Sub-Mariner was a good book. If you like Namor, go back and read the series. But do yourself a favour, stop at issue #39, Thomas' last. Leave the rest unexplored.