The Human Torch and Sub-Mariner meet!!!
Featuring: Sub-Mariner
Release: April 24, 1940
Cover: June 1940
10 cents
Story and art: Bill Everett (uncredited)
10 pages
Hard to believe something as significant as Human Torch meeting Sub-Mariner didn’t even get top billing on the cover. I guess Angel battling some monster was more exciting.
Usually, Bill Everett’s signature appears on the first page of each Sub-Mariner story, but I’m not finding it here.
It really all begins here. Eight months after the respective debuts of Human Torch and Sub-Mariner, the characters meet in conflict. The Marvel Comics series becomes more than independent stories in an anthology. The seeds of a universe sprout. So it is that 23 years later, Sub-Mariner can battle the Fantastic Four with a new Human Torch, while that same Fantastic Four battle Hulk and Spider-Man in other stories. So it is that 80 years later, a movie studio can throw dozens of superheroes up on the big screen in a epic big-budget battle.
The highlight of the story, the reason we’re here, is short. The final 2 pages of a 10-page story tell of the meeting between Human Torch and Namor. The Torch quickly gains the upper hand and Namor retreats.
The story will continue, though. You just need to turn the page.
While it features both characters, this is the Sub-Mariner story of the issue. It is written and drawn by Bill Everett, just in coordination with Carl Burgos. Carl Burgos will draw the next chapter, as part of the regular Human Torch feature.
Prior to the meeting, Namor’s rampage continued. Last issue, we saw him smashing the Empire State Building. Now he lets off a bomb to flood the Hudson, frees animals from the Bronx Zoo, and is destroying the George Washington Bridge when the Torch confronts him.
He frees some lions to go on a rampage, but they turn on him, so he kills one of the lions. I didn’t like that at all. More upsetting than to me than the unseen people who have almost certainly died in his rampage.
But then we see his softer side. The elephant rampage he unleashed is heading toward a baby abandoned by his nurse. Namor saves the child and brings it to a hospital. It’s a hard act to reconcile. There may have been babies on the El train he brought down or in the tunnel he flooded. He’s a murderer many times over at this point. Beyond redemption. But he is capable of compassion, at least when looking a victim in the face.
Rating: ★★★½, 60/100
Characters:
- Prince Namor/Sub-Mariner
- Jim Hammond/Human Torch
Story notes:
- The comic notes that the Human Torch story follows the Sub-Mariner. The Human Torch story had been the first story in every other issue. Though this story seems like it’s at least partially a Human Torch story.
- Namor plants a bomb to flood the Hudson tunnel
- Namor downs a police plane
- Namor frees lions from the Bronx Zoo
- The lions attack Namor and he kills one.
- Namor releases poisonous snakes
- Namor releases a herd of elephants; narrator keeps describing lead elephant as a “killer”
- A nurse abandons a baby to die, but Namor rescues it
- Namor wrecks George Washington Bridge
- Fight with Torch on bridge brief; Namor retreats
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