Featuring: Sub-Mariner
Release: June 2, 1954
Cover: August 1954
10 cents
Bill Everett
3 pages
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|---|---|---|
| Sub-Mariner #35 | PRELUDE | |
| Tales of Suspense #88 | Reading order | Tales to Astonish #90 |
It’s because I’m part American! I– and only I– of all the Sub-Mariners, can live indefinitely out of water!!!
The next 3 issues feature stories from Namor’s childhood. This is a short and simple story, but shows us the rivalry between Namor and Byrrah goes back to childhood.
Namor, Byrrah, and another child are playing their version of cowboys and indians… Americans and Sub-Mariners. Namor is half-American.
The game goes wrong when Namor finds himself trapped on the surface.
Byrrah should have gone to tell someone immediately, but waited for hours, due to his dislike of Namor. Sub-Mariners can only survive a few hours on the surface.
It is 20 hours before Namor’s mother, the Princess Fen, finds him. And he’s fine!
He’d taken a nap with the seals, which I think is cute.
Because he is half-human, he can survive on the surface just fine, it turns out. While that makes sense, how would Namor learn that? The hard way, I guess.
I’m reminded of a great Superman saga by the late Darwyn Cooke, called Superman: Kryptonite. Cooke explores Superman’s early days and asks the same question. It turns out Superman is invulnerable to most things… but how does he learn that? And keep learning that? In the story, Superman had already figured out that things like knives and bullets don’t hurt him, but he’d never tried to swim through lava before. Is he confident he’ll survive that? Only one way to find out.
The next two issues will also explore Namor’s childhood and rivalry with Byrrah.
Rating: ★★★☆☆, 52/100
I read this story in Timely’s Greatest: The Golden Age Sub-Mariner by Bill Everett – The Post-War Years Omnibus.
Characters:
- Namor
- Princess Fen
- Byrrah
Story notes:
- Beginning of a series on the childhood of Namor.
- Narrated from Namor’s personal diary.
- Namor doesn’t believe Americans to be bloodthirsty, as his dad was an American.
- When the kids play American Invaders, Namor doesn’t mind being American.
- Byrrah wants to play the American, so he can captain the ship.
- Byrrah is the Emperor’s stepson and a couple years younger than Namor.
- Namor gets annoyed at his friends playing American and attacking him with large chunks of ice representing the ice bombs the Americans used against their people.
- Namor finds himself trapped on the ice, but Sub-Mariners can only live outside of water for a few hours.
- Namor steals a fish from a penguin for sustenance.
- Namor takes a nap with barking seals.
- Byrrah takes a while but finally tells Fen that Namor is trapped on the surface.
- Namor survives on the surface for 20 hours and realizes he’s the only Sub-Mariner who can live indefinitely out of water, because he is half-American.
| Previous | Next | |
|---|---|---|
| Sub-Mariner #35 | PRELUDE | |
| Tales of Suspense #88 | Reading order | Tales to Astonish #90 |
