The Human Torch Battles the Sub-Mariner as the World Faces Destruction!
Featuring: Human Torch Release: October 8, 1941 Cover: Fall 1941 10 cents 60 pages (!)
The comic gives no credits. I’ll point you to the GCD, which notes work from Carl Burgos, Bill Everett, Jack D’Arcy, Hank Chapman, Mike Roy, Harry Sahle and George Kapitan. That’s… a lot of names. I will make no attempt to untangle who did what.
Counting to 5
Let’s get the confusing part out of the way. We are looking at Human Torch #5, with a cover date of Fall 1941.
The previous issue of Human Torch was… Human Torch #5, with a cover date of Summer 1941. Why? I have no idea. I think somebody counted wrong.
Featuring: Fantastic Four Release: July 2, 1963 Cover: 1963 25 cents <– whoa! Written by: Stan Lee Drawn by: Jack Kirby Inking: Dick Ayers 37 pages
We just read no less than 5 Sub-Mariner stories from the ’40s and ’50s to have some context for this giant-sized Fantastic Four/Sub-Mariner epic we are about to read. At 37 pages, this is the longest story we have yet read. And at 25 cents, this and the Strange Tales annual are the most expensive comics we’ve come across by a factor of 2.
When Sub-Mariner returned in Fantastic Four #4, he learned that his kingdom had been destroyed and his people were missing. He’s been searching for them ever since. Until now.
Is it the longest ever? Or might Stan be exaggerating?
Quite the opening couple pages. The bold imagination on display is Kirby at his best. But we haven’t seen that much of his true potential yet in these stories. He’s just been getting warmed up.
The Fantastic Four decide to take a vacation along with Alicia. Reed’s suggestion is to take a cruise to where some sea monsters have been sighted.
Featuring: Sub-Mariner Release: March 20, 1949 Cover: June 1949 10 cents By: Bill Everett 12 pages
I can’t find any credits in the comic, but it seems to pretty clearly be by Bill Everett, and the internet seems to agree.
This is the end of the Sub-Mariner’s story. After a decade, he’s getting cancelled along with all the other superheroes. Romance, humor, crime, western, horror… that’s all the company that will become Marvel is publishing come April 1949.
For his final issue, they look backward. This story tells of the origin of Namor. The next story in the issue covers the same events as Namor’s first story in Marvel Comics #1.
The story begins with a ship which has lost its Captain. Commander Leonard McKenzie is injured and lost. His ship has to abandon him. He is saved by his new wife, a woman they rescued who turns out to be more than she appears. She is Fen, Princess of the Sub-Mariners.
The Sub-Mariners wish him put to death for the crimes of humanity, but she is in charge in the absence of the Emperor and insists he live.
I read this comic in Marvel Masterpieces Golden Age Marvel Comics vol. 1. My copy of the book is filled with printing errors: pages missing or repeated; and, the copy seems off. The colors and inks seem pretty blurred, compared to scans I’m finding online. The coloring wasn’t great in those days to begin with, so it’s hard to tell without seeing the comic what it actually looks like, as reproductions vary widely. It’s particularly tricky as Everett wanted to make the undersea scenes murky.
This story is the beginning of a serial and doesn’t reach a satisfying conclusion in and of itself. It concerns Namor of the race of Sub-Mariners, recently come of age. He learns from his mother Fen of the ravages done to their people by the experiments of the surface dwellers, (who the comic refers to as the “white men”) and leads a crusade against the surface. His first step is to destroy a lighthouse. We’ll have to tune in next issue to see more.
The surface world will never recover from the destruction of the lighthouse; they may as well surrender now.
It begins in a familiar fashion, from the viewpoints of ordinary sailors, leaving the Sub-Mariner as a mystery in the background. Namor will become the point-of-view character soon, but first we learn who he is in snatches, as the humans do. An undersea diver notices oddities, like evidence that somebody had recently been there, even though they are the only ship in the area. It’s a mystery to investigate, a deadly one as it will turn out. It’s a technique we’ve seen frequently in superhero films (plus many a movie before them). Famously, when Batman first dons the suit in Batman Begins, the movie shifts its point-of-view to that of criminals. They only know something strange is happening, that they see out of the corner of their eye and hear above them– and that their numbers are thinning. This comic gives us a similar scene with divers.
