Namor

• 1. The Uncirculated Debut

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  Namor, also known as the Sub-Mariner, made his debut in a comic that almost nobody ever saw. It was called Motion Picture Funnies Weekly, a planned giveaway meant for theater owners. Only eight known copies survive from the batch made to send out, and they turned up in 1974 in the estate of the late publisher.

  The character inside those pages went on to be a prince, an avenger, an amnesiac drifter, a corporate chief and a king driven from his throne. He is a Marvel Comics hero who has spent much of his life striking at the surface world.

  How did a character with an uncirculated first appearance help launch a publishing house? Why do his allies keep turning into enemies, and his enemies into allies? And why, decades into his fame, could a studio not simply hand him his own film?

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• 2. Fire And Water

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  Fire and water was the pairing Bill Everett had in mind. According to the account that circulates, he was told that Carl Burgos had created the Human Torch, a hero who can manipulate flames. Everett wanted a counterpart, and his own fondness for anything nautical pointed him toward the sea.

  He also credited a poem. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, published in 1798, was the inspiration he named. The name itself came from a game of writing noble-sounding names backwards. Roman looked best reversed, and so it became Namor.

  Everett summed up his creation as an "ultra-man of the deep who lives on land and in the sea, flies in the air, and has the strength of a thousand surface men".

  When the giveaway plan collapsed, Everett reused the character for Marvel Comics #1, cover-dated October 1939. That book was the first from Timely Comics, the 1930s and 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics, and Timely was a client of the packager Funnies, Inc. The unpublished story had ended with a box reading "Continued Next Week." The box reappeared in print, minus its lettering, as the story grew from eight pages to twelve.

  Historians call that era the Golden Age of Comic Books. In it, Namor ranked among Timely's top three characters, beside Captain America and the original Human Torch.

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• 3. Wartime Menace

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  Comics historian Les Daniels described the earliest Namor as a freak in the service of chaos. In his first appearances he was an enemy of the United States. He acted like a villain, yet his cause had some justice, and fans were not put off by the destruction he caused, which took in everything from ships to skyscrapers. He has since been described as the first comic book antihero.

  In 1940, Everett's antihero fought Carl Burgos' android hero, the Human Torch, after threatening to sink Manhattan beneath a tidal wave. That clash appeared in Marvel Mystery Comics #8, cover-dated June 1940, and was the first fight between superheroes at Marvel. Namor could force water out of his body to douse flames, but it proved useless against the Torch.

  Betty Dean, a New York City policewoman introduced in Marvel Mystery Comics #3 in January 1940, became his steady companion. She pleaded with him to help the Allies against Hitler and the Axis powers. He refused at first and attacked New York on several occasions because of provocations. In September 1940 he finally joined the Allied cause.

  After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the war in 1941, Namor formed the Invaders. The team included Captain America, Bucky, the original Human Torch and Toro.

  His own comic, Sub-Mariner, ran for issues #1-32 between Fall 1941 and June 1949. It appeared quarterly, then three times a year, and finally every two months, with the detective-superhero the Angel in a backup feature. In this period the title was selling millions of copies.

  In 1944, the Invaders traveled to Wakanda and met T'Chaka, the king and Black Panther of that nation. Namor later found both friction and companionship with the young monarch T'Challa, and he was dismayed to hear of T'Challa opening his country to the wider world.

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• 4. Return From The Bowery

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  In Fantastic Four #4, cover-dated May 1962, Johnny Storm, the new Human Torch, found Namor living as an amnesiac homeless man in the Bowery section of Manhattan. Namor had been gone a long time.

  Along with many other Timely characters, he disappeared a few years after the war, as interest in superhero comics faded. He briefly fought crime with the post-war All-Winners Squad, and he returned in the mid-1950s at Atlas Comics, the 1950s version of Marvel. That revival began in Young Men #24 and continued in Sub-Mariner issues #33-42, from April 1954 to October 1955. During it, Namor lost his ankle wings and with them the power of flight. They were restored in Sub-Mariner Comics #38, dated February 1955, where Everett wrote a flashback story, "Wings on His Feet," about the wings appearing when Namor was 14. The revival was cancelled a second time.

  Once Storm helped him recover his memory, Namor learned that his people's city had been destroyed by nuclear testing. He vowed revenge on humanity, and after several attacks were thwarted, he found his people and launched an unsuccessful invasion of New York City in Fantastic Four Annual #1 in 1963. That annual named the lost kingdom as Atlantis. His encounters with the team also began a long romantic triangle involving Namor, Sue Storm and Reed Richards. He became obsessed with Sue, who found him dangerously attractive.

  He allied with Doctor Doom and Magneto, but his royal pride and independent streak kept those deals short-lived. Readers loved the revival, yet Marvel could not give him his own title because of publication and distribution restrictions that stayed in place until 1968. Instead he guest-starred, including in Daredevil #7 from April 1965, a rare superhero story drawn by Wally Wood. He also starred in a feature in Tales to Astonish, beginning with issue #70 in August 1965.

  The Silver Age Namor was more solemn and arrogant than the impetuous 1940s original. He spoke in neo-Shakespearean dialogue and often shouted his battle cry, "Imperius Rex!" His own series, Sub-Mariner, launched in 1968. Roy Thomas and John Buscema introduced the villain Tiger Shark in issue #5, and Thomas and Everett added the hero Stingray in issue #19. Avengers #71 then retconned his 1940s adventures, placing him among the Invaders.

  In its last years the series was written and drawn by Everett shortly before his death. Its final issue, #72, appeared in September 1974 and was an unofficial crossover with the last issue of DC Comics' Aquaman series. A later partnership with Doctor Doom, in Super-Villain Team-Up, ended after issue #13 in August 1977 because of mediocre sales and a shifting creative team.

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• 5. Lineage And Loss

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  Beneath the Antarctic ice pack, in the capital of the Atlantean empire, Namor was born. His mother, Fen, was the daughter of Emperor Thakorr. His father was Leonard McKenzie, an American sea captain aboard the icebreaker Oracle. The two fell in love and married aboard ship while she was secretly spying on the human intruders.

  When Fen failed to return, Atlantean warriors attacked the Oracle and apparently killed McKenzie. Namor was born pink-skinned among blue-skinned Atlanteans and became prince and warrior against the surface-dwellers. As a child he lived through an Atlantean move to the Pacific Northwest, where he befriended Sandy Pierce, the daughter of the businessman Henry Pierce. Oil leaking from the ground later forced Atlantis to relocate to the South Pacific. Sandy chose to join them but disappeared.

  In Sub-Mariner #45-46, dated November and December 1971, Namor finally met his father, long thought dead. He lost him again when McKenzie gave his life in battle against Tiger Shark. Earlier, in issue #37 from May 1971, the princess Llyra of Lemuria had kidnapped Lady Dorma and replaced her at her wedding to Namor, hoping to seize his kingdom. Dorma died as a result of Llyra's schemes.

  His later marriage to Marrina, an aquatic alien and member of the Canadian team Alpha Flight, was brief. She was presumed killed but was in fact in a coma. In a 2007 miniseries he discovered a long-lost son named Kamar, who tried to seize the throne and was killed by the villain Nitro.

  Namor also became a businessman. He collected sunken treasure to finance his secret purchase of a corporation, renamed Oracle Inc., and turned it to conservation. The oceanographers Caleb and Carrie Alexander theorized that his rage came from his half-human blood and gave him a monitor warning when he needed air or water. The 1990 series Namor, the Sub-Mariner ran 62 issues through May 1995, with John Byrne writing and penciling early on. It showed Namor as chief executive of an anti-pollution company and brought back Iron Fist, presumed dead, from the dimension of K'un-L'un.

  His deepest wound came from the war. Professor Charles Xavier tried to heal Namor's trauma by creating a therapist persona modeled on Thomas Machan, a war buddy Namor had failed to save. Namor suffered a mental break instead, and Xavier's intervention solidified the bipolar disorder he would suffer for decades. Years later the apparition returned disguised as a blue-skinned Atlantean advisor, and only then did it become clear that Machan existed in Namor's mind alone.

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• 6. Powers And Limits

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  A water-filled ocean liner is the example the stories give of Namor's strength: he tossed one effortlessly, despite the resistance of the water. That strength depends on contact with water, though he need not be submerged. It slowly diminishes the longer he is dry, yet a long stay on land does not kill him as it would a typical Atlantean, and he keeps full power while he stays wet. He has held his own against the Hulk. He is nearly 100 years old but looks like a man in his prime.

  The source of his breathing has been told two ways. In Namor, the Sub-Mariner #5, he thinks that "this New York river water burns my gills and scalds my lungs." Other sources say his lungs contain membranes that diffuse oxygen. In Sub-Mariner issues #18-22, from 1969 and 1970, beings from outer space surgically closed his gills for a time, leaving him unable to breathe underwater.

  He has a telepathic bond with marine life and can persuade sea creatures to act for him. He can also send mental orders to Atlanteans. His hybrid blood brings a weakness, since oxygen imbalances are theorized to trigger manic-depressive mood swings. Regular immersion in water prevents them.

  In Fantastic Four #9, dated December 1962, he declared, "I have the powers of all the creatures who live beneath the sea!" He charged the air with electricity like an electric eel, and a cave fish's radar sense let him detect the invisible Sue Storm. In Strange Tales #107 he inflated his body like a puffer fish. An editorial note in Marvel Tales #9, in July 1967, later said he had lost his power to imitate fish.

  Marvel has often called him its first mutant. That is accurate for first appearances in print, but in the fictional timeline many mutants predate him, including Apocalypse, Sabretooth and Wolverine. In X-Men #6, from July 1964, Professor Xavier and Magneto each suspected Namor was a mutant and tried to recruit him. Writers of the 1960s and 1970s then called him a hybrid of human and Atlantean, since neither side explains his ability to fly. When his series returned in 1990, its logo carried the subtitle "Marvel's first and mightiest mutant!" The first issue of the five-part Illuminati miniseries, after the Skrulls experimented on him, confirmed he was both hybrid and mutant.

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• 7. Rivals And Teams

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  Attuma, leader of the Atlantean barbarians, conquered Atlantis several times and became Namor's nemesis. Byrrah, a childhood friend and rival of royal blood, believed Namor unfit for the throne and challenged his rule for years. Eventually the two made peace, and Byrrah stands beside Namor like a brother. Warlord Krang, once the kingdom's military leader, tried to usurp Namor's power and kept returning.

  Meranno, another childhood rival, joined the Third Reich as U-Man and led the Nazis to Atlantis. Their attack left the emperor in a coma and Namor in his place. During the war he became Namor's frequent sparring partner.

  The scientist Lemuel Dorcas created some of Namor's worst threats. Tiger Shark was an Olympic swimmer transformed into a hybrid of Namor's DNA and a tiger shark, and Orka and Piranha were also Dorcas creations. Doctor Doom is sometimes an ally and sometimes an enemy. The two use each other and then turn on each other, a pattern since their first meeting. The Puppet Master once took over the Hulk and forced him to fight Namor when the two were considering friendship.

  The teams are as varied as the foes. Namor joined the Defenders, a "non-team" with Doctor Strange, the Hulk and the Silver Surfer, first in Marvel Feature #1-3, from December 1971 to June 1972. He also served with the Avengers. In the one-shot New Avengers: Illuminati, in May 2006, he was revealed as a member for several years of a secret policy group with Mister Fantastic, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Professor X and Black Bolt.

  During the Dark Reign storyline he joined Norman Osborn's Cabal. In 2011 he joined the X-Men and became one of the Phoenix Five, sharing the Phoenix Force with Cyclops, Emma Frost, Colossus and Magik. He was the first of them to fall. Believing the Illuminati held back by morality, he later assembled a new Cabal. Its members were punished when the new Squadron Supreme decapitated him, an act undone through time travel.

  Later he refused Professor Xavier's offer of sanctuary in the mutant nation of Krakoa. His reason was that neither Xavier nor the mutant nation truly believed themselves superior to those they had left. He also formed the Defenders of the Deep, forcing Tiger Shark to swear allegiance. Finally the Phoenix Force held a tournament to choose its next host, and Echo was chosen.

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• 8. Hollywood Waters

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  In April 1997, Philip Kaufman was negotiating to direct a film titled Namor: Sub-Mariner for Marvel Studios. He said it would tackle environmental issues, with Namor harboring bad feelings toward land dwellers over ecological concerns. By July 1999, Sam Hamm was in talks to write the script. Universal Pictures entered negotiations for the rights in June 2001, with Avi Arad and Kevin Misher set to produce.

  Universal hired David Self to write the script in July 2002, aiming for a 2004 release. Chris Columbus signed on as director and producer by December 2004. In November 2005 he said he was unlikely to make it. In September 2006, Universal and Marvel Studios hired Jonathan Mostow to write and direct The Sub-Mariner. He said in August 2009 that the film was still in active development.

  Rights became the story. In August 2013, Kevin Feige, by then President of Marvel Studios, said Universal still held the rights and that this kept Namor out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In April 2014 he called the situation a "little complicated." In November 2022, Marvel Studios executive Nate Moore confirmed that Marvel could not make a standalone Namor film because Universal held the distribution rights, as with the Hulk.

  Namor did reach the screen in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, in 2022, played by Tenoch Huerta Mejia. This version, called K'uk'ulkan, is the king of Talokan, an ancient water-dwelling civilization connected to the Mayas, and is a mutant. In 1571, his mother Fen ingested a Vibranium-laced herb to gain immunity from smallpox while pregnant. That gave her and the people of Yucatan blue skin and gills, forcing them underwater. Namor also gained longevity, pointed ears, winged ankles and the ability to breathe air and water at once.

  Television attempts fared worse. A series starring Richard Egan was planned in the 1950s and never produced, and a 1970s pilot was announced and never filmed. John Vernon voiced him in a segment of The Marvel Super Heroes. In video games he is a playable character in Marvel Rivals and a card in Marvel Snap.

  Huerta is set to reprise the role in Avengers: Doomsday, listed for 2026.

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