Sub-Mariner #39, "And Here I'll Stand"

THE SUB-MARINER #39; July 1971; Marvel Comics Group; Stan Lee, editor;
featuring "...And Here I'll Stand!", written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Ross
Andru with inks by Jim Mooney.  On the cover, Namor is lifting a military
truck and threatening to hurl it at the U.S. Army soldiers attacking him; "I
WARNED the surface world-- not to ATTACK me!  Now I shall DESTROY you--
destroy you ALL!"  One of the soldiers shouts, "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! 
The Sub-Mariner's gone BERSERK!"  (For several years during the mid-late
60's Marvel avoided using word balloons on its covers.  When they changed
their policy, they often went overboard with the balloons, as
here.)

Review by Bill Henley

For a time in the late 60's/early
70's, Roy Thomas eclipsed Stan Lee as my favorite Marvel writer, and, along with
DR. STRANGE, SUB-MARINER (a character for whom Roy evidently felt a special
attachment) was my favorite Marvel title.  This issue made a special
impression on me at the time.  In previous issues, Namor witnessed the
murder of his beloved Lady Dorma by the villainess Llyra (is Dorma still
dead?  I'm sure she'd be alive again by now if Sub-Mariner were appearing
in his own series regularly) and renounced his Atlantean throne, seeking instead
to make a new life for himself among surface-dwelling humans.  As this
issue opens, Namor climbs ashore in Florida onto an abandoned seaside
installation of some sort (its nature isn't clear from the visuals) and succumbs
to a monumental temper tantrum over Dorma's murder.  "LLYRA!  Stand
you FORTH, murderess!"  When Llyra doesn't make an appearance, Subby takes
out his frustrations by smashing things and ultimately bringing down the whole
abandoned facility with a Samson-like feat of strength-- "an act of unrelieved
VIOLENCE-- which is FORGOTTEN before it is finished, strangled by its own cosmic
FUTILITY! "  Namor returns to his natural habitat; "Once more that brief,
eternal trek into the lapping WAVES-- into the SEA, which drowns both hopes and
fears alike-- the sea, where even TEARS are laced with salty brine..." 
(One of the reasons I liked these Thomas scripts as a teenage fan was the
quasi-poetic turn of phrase in the dialogue and captions.  I have to admit
that when I reread these stories now, most of this purple prose doesn't wear so
well.) 

Some time later, Namor arrives at the city of New York on a
moonlit night.  After some musings about how the city is little changed and
yet much changed from when he first saw it (and tried to wreck it) back in 1939,
Namor decides that he needs some place where he can "dwell apart" while he tries
to convince the surface-dwellers to accept him.  He thinks he has found it
in an abandoned prison island in the city harbor.  "Once it was a PRISON,
where land-crawling humanity locked away its failures, its MISFITS... (now) none
has any USE for it... none but the SUB-MARINER!"  He may have abdicated his
undersea throne, but Subby still seems to view himself as entitled to live in an
imposing, palace-like setting.  He sets out to transform the crumbling
prison into a more appropriate venue for himself, starting with reshaping a
statue of a lion into the likeness of a leaping fish.  Namor spends the
night carrying out a massive remodeling job with his bare hands.  And as
the sun rises, a couple of previously bored cops in a police helicopter are
startled by the sight of Prison Island made over with a Sea World-type decor--
and by "the crazy in SWIMMIN' TRUNKS, standin' on top of the wall!" 
Recognizing him as the Sub-Mariner-- who, undeniably, had attacked and invaded
the Big Apple on several previous occasions-- the cops alert the authorities,
and radio disk jockeys arouse the populace at large.  And, before long, a
Harbor Police speedboat arrives at the island.  "All right, Namor-- let's
hash this out before any of the TV CREWS get here!  You got an INVASION
FORCE hid in there, or what?"  Once again resorting to  verbiage as
purple as his royal lineage, Namor explains his intentions: "Bear this word back
to a city which will rise FEARFUL this morn... Namor has come ALONE to this
rock-strewn isle, where none but HE would wish to set foot.  There is no
song of WAR in Namor's heart... but only a prayer for PEACE."

As the TV
crews, reporters and an assortment of curious civilians arrive on the
scene,  Subby attempts to explain his unthreatening intentions.  After
making a play for sympathy by telling of the death of his intended bride
(shocking news for Diane Arliss, a human friend of Namor's from previous Thomas
stories), Namor tells the crowd that he wants to "claim the human half of his
heritage" from his father, Capt. Leonard McKenzie.  All he wants from
humanity for now is the ownership of the "tiny island" as a "place to think",
and in return he will offer "knowlege... the secrets of the sea-bottoms!" 
But one onlooker is unwilling to let a "half-breed freak" lower the property
values on New York's East Side, and he grabs a pistol and pops off at
Namor.  Sub-Mariner is unhurt by the pistol pellets, but he's cheesed off,
and he attempts to grab and disarm the man.  The guy rushes to his boat
where he has a bigger gun stashed, but Namor seizes him and appears on the verge
of killing him when Diane Arliss's voice is heard urging him to relent. 
All this is being eagerly filmed by a crew of sensation-seeking TV reporters--
until Subby forfeits the sympathies of the media by hurling the miscreant human
straight at them, wrecking their camera. 

The police warn Namor
that if he attacks any unarmed civilians, they will have no choice but to try to
"take him in."  Diane Arliss now turns her pleas for calm and restraint to
the cops; "Don't make him angrier than he already IS... you don't know him... I
DO!"  The head cop on the scene contacts the city's mayor, who agrees to
"pursue a policy of WATCHFUL WAITING... Don't antagonize the Atlantean
further... HE COULD TEAR THE CITY APART!"   As the police and
spectators withdraw, Diane expresses sympathy for the loss of Dorma, but warns
Namor, "You're going about this all WRONG!"  (I'd have to agree with
that.  Wouldn't it have made more sense for Subby to contact the Fantastic
Four, or some of the other superheroes with whom he had established at least a
truce, and ask them to negotiate for him?)  For the moment, Namor is left
alone to do more of his remodeling work and replenish his strength with "such
creatures as still can LIVE in man-ruined waters" (watch out for mercury
poisoning, Subby).  Diane Arliss, now working as a reporter, searches a
newspaper "morgue" for a clipping she vaguely recalls seeing, which might have a
bearing on Namor's course of action.  And a lot of New York citizens aren't
satisfied with a peaceful outcome... and a special mayoral liaison, called to
duty when the mayor is called out of town, is more amenable to their calls for
more aggressive action against Namor.  As National Guard tanks line the
shoreline opposite "Namor's Island", Navy frogmen approach the island from
underwater. 

And so, the truce is abruptly broken as the National
Guard officer in charge warns Namor to abandon Prison Island within three
minutes, or the troops will open fire.  This time Diane Arliss's pleas for
peace are ineffectual.  Namor thinks he still has one ace in the hole; "Do
they think they deal with one as brainless as the lumbering Hulk?  They
know they CANNOT drive me from this isle without totally DESTROYING it... and
all that they have BUILT upon it!"  Nonetheless, the rows of eight-inch
guns open fire!  Namor attacks and destroys the guns one by one, though he
apparently avoids inflicting casualties on the attacking troops.  But even
as the guns are silenced, another sound is heard-- that of the explosive charges
set on the island by the squads of underwater demolition men.   "You
DESTROYED the island-- without a TRACE-- rather than let ME dwell upon it! 
But WHY, man?  What have you GAINED!"  "VICTORY, Namor.  That's
all we were TOLD to gain."  Instead of renewing the conflict, Namor
withdraws into the waters, and the troops also withdraw.  "And perhaps it
is of some significance that not ONE of the troops ever looks BACK on what he
has wrought."  (As with Roy's purple prose, I'm less impressed with the
intended message about the futility of war and military action now than I was as
a teenager. I can see the humans' actions as a valid matter of principle on
their part.  Maybe the Guard commander should have asked Namor whether,
when he was ruling Atlantis, he would have taken kindly to surfacemen
establishing an undersea base on the outskirts of Atlantis without asking
permission.) 

As Namor sits "sunk in dire defeat" on a small
remnant of the wrecked isle, he is approached by Diane Arliss and Walter Newell
(the high-tech oceanologist sometimes known as the armored Stingray) in a
rowboat.  As solace for the loss of his intended home, Diane offers Namor
the old newspaper she has found.  At first Namor is angered, asking if the
paper contains "tidings of a war I helped win" (presumably referring to World
War II, after Subby decided he hated Nazis and Japanese worse than other
surfacemen) and starts to rip it up.  But then he spots the photo and news
story Diane intended him to see.  Muttering quick apologies and thanks to
Diane for providing him with a new goal and purpose,  Namor plunges into
the sea to renew his strength and then flies off to begin a new quest.  A
puzzled Dr. Newell asks Diane what was in the old paper that was of such
importance to Namor.  "There is a CHANCE-- perhaps the remotest, most
insane POSSIBILITY-- that Namor's HUMAN FATHER is ALIVE!"

Like Namor,
when I first read this comic I was excited to see where this new quest might
lead the sea prince.  Unfortunately, at this point, despite his affection
for the character, Roy Thomas apparently became too busy to keep writing
SUB-MARINER, and Gerry Conway took over with the next issue.  Conway's
dialogue and captios were about as convoluted as Roy's, but his storytelling was
less compelling, and I quickly lost interest in the title, though as a
completist I kept buying it. (The quest for Namor's father came to what I
thought was an anti-climactic end, though I won't go into detail in this
review.)   I didn't really get interested again until Namor's creator
Bill Everett returned with issue #50. and even then I regretted that Roy T. and
Everett-- who were good friends-- didn't work on the title together. 
Though in retrospect I'm not sure how well a Thomas/Everett collaboration would
have worked, especially since Everett's notions of how Subby should speak were
quite different from Roy's. 

Sub-Mariner #16; "The Sea That Time Forgot!"

THE SUB-MARINER #16; August 1969; Marvel Comics Group; Stan Lee, editor;
featuring "The Sea That Time Forgot!", written by Roy Thomas, pencilled by Marie
Severin, and inks credited to "Joe Gaudioso" (a pen name  for Mike
Esposito).  On the atmospheric cover signed by Marie Severin and Frank
Giacoia, Namor is struggling to escape a mass of clinging seaweed, as an
Egyptian-looking figure in a small boat watches.  In the background are old
wrecked ships, and behind them a large symbolic shadowy figure of the villainous
Tiger Shark.

Review by Bill Henley

No, I'm not planning to review
the whole run of the Roy Thomas SUB-MARINER, but I thought I'd cover this issue
before I put these comics away.  I had actually intended to review this
issue some time back as a follow-up to a couple of reviews I did covering Batman
and Green Arrow stories in which the heroes discovered a "Sargasso Sea" (or in
the GA story a "Sargasso on land") where ancient men survived-- but I couldn't
lay my hands on the issue at the time. I'm not sure where the fantasy concept of
the Sargasso Sea being a home for immortal castaways first originated, but this
story was the most effective use of the idea I recall seeing.  
The splash page has a blurb, "Perhaps the Most MEMORABLE Sunken Saga of ALL!!"
and indeed, it was a memorable story for me, and it still holds up for me upon
re-reading (which, alas, cannot be said of all Roy's stories of that
period).  The splash otherwise consists of a symbolic image of Namor in his
royal Atlantean crown and regalia, with head vignettes of supporting characters
Dorma, Dr. Walter Newell, and Tiger Shark.

Sitting in his throne room,
Prince Namor (still actively ruling Atlantis at the time of this story) hears a
report from Thakos, the last survivor of a well-manned and heavily armed
Atlantean warship sent on a patrol mission.  While hunting for Namor's
deadly enemy Tiger Shark (a surfaceman who had been transformed into a deadly
undersea combatant in issues #5-6), the patrol crew found itself in a
little-known part of the ocean marked by swarms of glowing eels and dangerous
storms.  They spotted their quarry, Tiger Shark, seemingly trapped in a
tangled net of seaweed, but the ship was forced to change course and take to the
air in order to avoid being trapped itself.  As the ship took to the air,
the crew sighted "a graveyard of a vast armada" of ancient ships, half hidden by
the mists.  But then "a fatal blast from nowhere struck (the) vessel,
destroying it!" and leaving only Thakos as a survivor.  Thakos feels "in
the doldrums of disgrace" that he has lived while his fellow crewmen have
perished.  Namor reassures him that he has done his duty, but warns him not
to speak to anyone of what he has seen.  Namor confers privately with his
chief scientist Vashti, who is concerned that the "People of the Mist",
inhabiting the sector of ocean known to surfacemen as the Sargasso, may have
broken an "age-old treaty" with the Atlanteans.  If so, the realm may face
"WAR-- with a breed of men whom DEATH itself has renounced!"  And yet, if
Tiger Shark now dwells among the mist people, it is Namor's duty to go to the
Sargasso and confront him!

And indeed, the scene changes to Tiger Shark
himself as he finally frees himself from the mass of living seaweed which has
held him.  Needing a rest, he climbs aboard an ancient frigate he finds
floating amongst the weeds, enveloped in mists so thick that even Tiger Shark,
now a pure water-breather, can survive there.  He is welcomed onboard by a
remarkable group of men-- an African warrior, a Viking, a couple of pirates. a
knight in armor, a sea-dog swordsman, and a German submarine officer from World
War II.  The men are hostile to the newcomer-- "On your KNEES, dog, or by
WOTAN, I'll hew thee limb from limb!"  "Aye, and I with you, me bucko-- for
I like not the cut of his jib!"  But they are quelled momentarily by the
central figure among them, an ancient Egyptian!  "ENOUGH!  Am I not
the eldest here?  It is for NEKHBET to say if the intruder lives or
dies!"  As Tiger Shark shouts his defiance, one of the pirates leaps to the
attack, but is hurled aside by the Shark's superhuman strength.  Nekhbet
calls for Shark to "stay your hand" and the Shark agrees on condition of an
explanation what is going on here.  Nekhbet complies: "I was the FIRST of
those who came to this place... forgotten YEARS ago..." commander of an Egyption
galley blown off course and out to sea while sailing around Africa.  The
rest of his crew perished of thirst and hunger or sy suicide before Nekhbet came
to rest in the Sargasso, where the mysterious mists kept him alive
indefinitely.  "Since that day, the OTHERS whom you see have also come to
rest here... so many of them ENGLISH PIRATES that we have adopted their native
tongue!  But from whatever clime, NONE has ever escaped... or DARED
escape!"   Unimpressed, Tiger Shark declares his intention to "CLEAR
OUT of here-- NOW!"  Nekhbet declares that this is forbidden, but the Nazi
sub captain asks Shark to take him along in his escape, telling the Shark that
they can "become "masters of the WORLD together" thanks to a secret weapon
hidden aboard the Nazi's sunken sub.  "Sounds like you've got a DEAL,
pal!", says the Shark.  And the other lost seamen from earlier times all
volunteer to join the escape; "We'll serve you WELL to be free of here!" 
Only Nekhbet hangs back "Even the mysteries of IMMORTALITY cannot allay the
scourge of HUMAN GREED!" 

Meanwhile, "not many leagues distant,"
Namor arrives and parks his sub-sea vessel, hoping that the "mist-men" will not
attack "one lone figure".  But he is not alone after all, as a stowaway,
Lady Dorma, emerges from his ship.  Why did she defy Namor's command and
accompany him?  "This is no time to speak of matters of the HEART!", says
Dorma; but she has spotted a "dim flashing light younder" which needs
investigation.  Namor finds that the light is from an air-breathers'
bathyscaphe, wedged on a reef.  "Is there NO PLACE free of them-- even in
the wine-dark DEPTHS?"  But despite his annoyance, Namor cannot let the
humans die, and he uses his sub-sea strength to pull the vessel loose and bring
it to the surface.  There, he finds that the bathyscaphe came from a much
larger human vessel-- an oceanographic research ship commanded by Namor's
acquaintance, scientist Dr. Walter Newell.  Namor orders Newell to take his
ship and leave the dangerous area, but Newell says he cannot comply, for it is
his duty to investigate a dangerous discovery.  He shows Namor a collection
of dead and dying sea life, and then a ship's log from a World War II German
submarine whose mission was to unleash "a deadly, long-lived virus" upon the
United States.  The sub never reached American shores, but now it is
leaking death into the sea-- and it was only one of two subs sent on the same
mission!  The other one must be found!  Namor declares that he knows
where the other sub may have drifted, and in his usual headstrong manner, leaps
into the sea to handle the matter himself.  Newell calls Namor back, but
Dorma admonishes him; "Do not WASTE your words, Doctor... save them for
PRAYER!"

Meanwhile, Tiger Shark is seeking the same lost sub, and after
struggling through more seaweed, he finds it!  "If what that left-over Nazi
told me about it is true-- I'll have my revenge on the whole world for turning
me into a great, gilled FREAK!"   Concerned that Namor may not be able
to accomplish his mission alone, Newell takes one of his undersea vessels to
follow Subby, accompanied by Dorma, and also calls for backup from the U.S.
Navy.  And back in the region of mists, Nekhbet tries one more time to
dissuade his fellow castaways from escaping.  But they aren't inclined to
pay attention; "TIGER SHARK will lead us out of the mists-- into a world filled
with our INFERIORS!"  "SI!  For are we not IMMORTAL?  Are we not
destined to RULE the world without?"  Having seized leadership from the
ancient Egyptian, Tiger Shark seizes Nekhbet intending to kill him, but is
halted by the arrival of Namor on the scene.  "It is not for you to take a
human life-- YOU, who have become more than FISH, but less than MAN!" 
Nekhbet urges Namor not to destroy the "shadowy abode" of the mist-men and
promises that "those who dwell here will NEVER invade the outer world!" 
Tiger Shark boasts that he now speaks for the mist-dwellers, but Namor responds,
"If the eternal ones listen to such as YOU-- they DESERVE no voice, EVER
AGAIN!"  As Tiger Shark and Namor battle, the Nazi captain makes his way to
the sub which the Shark has brought to the site.  Namor promises that he
will defeat the Shark before the Nazi can unleash his weapon, but the Shark
pulls Namor with him into the mire of seaweed so that the Nazi and the other
mist-men can complete their deadly errand!  And meanwhile, there is a new
and dangerous distraction for Namor, for Newell's ship and Namor's beloved Dorma
have arrived on the scene.

Tiger Shark's new allies are not very
trustworthy, as the Nazi captain and a British sailor who has joined forces with
his old enemy, plot to take Newell's ship and use it to escape the mists while
Namor and the Shark struggle.  Namor declares, "There is no honor among
assassins!" and Tiger Shark realizes, "Namor's right!  I could never have
trusted the Nazi!"  The Shark remedies his mistake by attacking the Nazi
captain from behind-- "HE won't get up again!"-- and seizing Dorma as a
hostage.  Dorma urges Namor not to submit for her sake, but the Sub-Mariner
gives his word that, in return for Dorma's life, "you may leave this place in
PEACE!"  And so, with Newell's "hyper-powered vessel" cutting through the
seaweed barrier, the "most fit of the ancient vessels" follow, with all of the
mist-men on board-- except one.  Standing on his own ancient vessel,
Nekhbet of Egypt remains behind sa the mists close around him.  "My fellow
mist-men have CHOSEN their own destinies...while I shall end my sojourn here as
I BEGAN it.... alone!"    (When I recalled this story, not having
re-read it for many years, I thought this striking scene was the final panel,
but I see this isn't the case.)

Tiger Shark glories as the ancient ships
emerge into the light of day; "HAH!  I don't even need to use germ warfare
against the land-crawlers!  How can THEY hope to stop the phantom fleet of
TIGER SHARK?  HOW DO YOU FIGHT AN ARMADA OF-- IMMORTALS!"  And the
mist-men are equally delighted-- at first; "By Wotan!  Behold the gleaming
SUN!"  "It shines as bright as the day I first set sail from Spain!" 
"Maybe you'll return there soon, man... as its king!"  Tiger Shark reneges
on his deal with Namor, refusing to allow Dorma to return to the life-giving
sea. The Shark sneers to Namor, "You stand alone-- against my entire
ARMY!"  But Namor's reply is, "Your army is but a grim JEST,
man-that-was!  LOOK at them now!"  Shark does, and to his dismay-- and
Dorma's horror-- once out of the influence of the Sargasso mists, the ancient
seamen are suffering instant old age and withering to dust!  Their ships
are also reverting to "rotting timbers" and sinking!  The dying mist-men
cry their despair, and "then, from lips that should have turned to DUST
centuries before... NOTHING MORE is heard..."

One of the ancient crews
still survives, however-- though the surviving Nazi sub crew have turned into
weak and elderly men after "staying young these past fifty years!"  (Fifty
years?  Since this story was published in 1969, it would have been less
than 25 years since they entered the mists.)  But Tiger Shark warns them
that, "if you want to get any OLDER," they will obey his orders and relesae the
deadly germ-warfare torpedo aboard their sub!  Namor leaps to stop them,
but Tiger Shark grapples with him, and sa the two sub-sea superbeings battle,
the Nazi crew fire the torpedo.  Now it is up to Walter Newell to stop a
catastrophe that may destroy the surface world and Atlantis alike.  Newell
steers an abandoned freighter whose cargo is several tons of dynamite (it's not
altogether clear just where this freighter came from, perhaps it was one of the
ships from the mist that wasn't old enough to disintegrate) into the path of the
torpedo, knowing that only a big explosion can destroy the germ-warfare
virus.  He accomplishes his mission!  But a naval aircraft that has
reached the scene spots Namor, assumes the Sub-Mariner is up to troublemaking
again, and fires a pair of missiles which stun Namor, allowing Tiger Shark to
escape, and apparently seal the fate of Dr. Newell, "slain by the very ones he
sought to save!"  (Actually, I think Newell turned up alive in some later
stories.)  "And yet, his REAL murderer was-- TIGER SHARK!  When next
we meet-- one of us must DIE!  THUS SWEARS THE TRUE SUB-MARINER!" (I don't
offhand recall if Tiger Shark ever did have a final, fatal confrontation with
Subby.) 

Marie Severin wasn't my favorite artist of Marvel's Silver
Age, but she maintained an effectively atmospheric look for this story, and
likewise Roy T.'s high-flown pseudo-archaic dialogue and captions, often awkward
in stories of contemporary superheroics, worked pretty well in this tale
focusing on a band of time-lost immortals.