Sub-Mariner (Namor McKenzie)

San Diego Comic Con just ended, and it presented a lot of new material: brace yourself, as there’s plenty of new characters to see together. Let’s start with the epic Black Panther: Wakanda Forever trailer, that introduces the most relevant addition in this ending Phase Four: Namor the Sub-Mariner. Portrayed by Tenoch Huerta, Namor has been reimagined as the ruler of a Mayan or Aztech version of Atlantis, and he’ll move war to the surface for some reason (some leaks point at a mining expedition to the bottom of the ocean). In the comics, Namor is one of the oldest Marvel Comics characters, who’s been both a villain and a hero, as he only serves his country and his people, and treats surface-dwellers as allies or enemies depending on the situation. Let’s take a (synthetic) look at his eighty-years old story.

Namor was born in 1915, when the human captain of the icebreaker Oracle, Leonard McKenzie, met a siren, Princess Fen from Atlantis, and fell in love with her. Fen was spying on the intruders on account of her father, Emperor Thakorr, but she refused to leave the ship, as she married McKenzie and got pregnant of his child. Worried for her, Thakorr sent his soldiers, who attacked the Oracle believing the princess to be held prisoner: they apparently killed the entire crew, and took pregnant Fen back to the royal palace. Here, she gave birth to an Atlantean the likes of which nobody had ever seen: he was a Homo mermanus, as he could breath underwater, but he had the fair skin of Homo sapiens, and he was also in part a Homo superior, a mutant, with winged feet and a strength unparalleled among his peers. Namor was raised as a royal prince, he was taught to rule and to fight, and most of all to protect the hidden Atlantis from the surface-dwellers. Young Namor spent most of the time with his cousins, namely Namora and Byrrah, but he also had forbidden relationships with surface-dwellers, as his first love was Sandy Pierce, a human girl who lived on an oil rig. Beemer, another cousin, was jealous of Namor, and manipulated things so that Pierce was considered an enemy due to her father’s rig’s leaks that endangered Atlantis, in a series of actions that forced the entire city to move to the South Pacific Ocean, separating Namor and his beloved forever. In the meanwhile, Namor had grown into Atlantis’ most powerful warrior, and when some divers were caught near the kingdom, he was sent to the surface to answer in blood to what was perceived as a provocation. Namor went on a rampage in New York City, fighting one of its mightiest protectors, the Human Torch, but in 1939 he also befriended a cop, Betty Dean, who managed to quell his fury. The woman asked him to use his strength to help the Allies in World War II, but Namor was uninterested in surface-dwellers’ fights… until, the following year, he realized that the divers his people had caught were Nazis: not even the Ocean was safe. To protect Atlantis, Namor joined the Invaders, and became known to the surface-dwellers as the Sub-Mariner.

Namor fought alongside heroes like Captain America, Bucky, the Human Torch and Toro, learnt to know the surface world and became friend and ally with some of its rulers, including the Black Panther from Wakanda. Staying a long time away from the sea, however, had unforeseen consequences on his mental health, and he started suffering from a bipolar disorder that led him to violently attack his allies from time to time. Somehow, the prince managed to keep control, and when the war was won, he came back to Atlantis… only to be informed by Krang and Byrrah that the Emperor had banished him for his ties to the surface world, and that he wasn’t welcome anymore. Namor tried to adapt to the life on the surface, and following his honor code he became a crime fighter, until the banishment was left in 1949, as he and his cousin Namora captured a murderer called Stoop who had almost killed Thakorr. In the 1950s, a new enemy, Paul Destine, attacked Atlantis with the Serpent Crown, killed Thakorr and Fen, and erased Namor’s memory, sending him to the surface oblivious to who he was. Namor found himself in a small coast town, home to one of his friends from the war, Randall Peterson. He stayed there, with erased memories that kept haunting him, until Charles Xavier found him: he revealed to him he was a mutant, and asked him to help him find others like them. Namor gladly helped Xavier, but his removed PTSD caused him to undergo some violent outbursts: when Xaver tried to heal his mind, he made things worse, and a raging Namor flew away, more troubled than before. In the following years, Namor lived like a homeless man, not remembering his past, in a world that had forgotten him… until a boy, Johnny Storm, noticed him using his superhuman strength. Curious, Storm cleaned and shaved him, and upon recognizing the legendary WWII hero, he led him to the Hudson River… and threw him in the water. Against all odds, this simple expedient worked, and Namor regained his lost memories, brought to him by the sea. When he tried to come back to Atlantis, however, he found only ruins left by nuclear testings: he had come back home too late, but if he had been unable to protect his people, he would have most surely avenged them…

Prince of Atlantis and Emperor of the Deep, King Namor is a noble, wise and fair ruler, but also an arrogant and proud monarch who never hides his contempt from the (many) ones he deems inferior to him. As the Sub-Mariner, he’s a unique mutant human-Atlantean hybrid, who can easily breathe and live both underwater and on the surface; he possesses incredible strength (enough to allow him to go toe to toe with powerful adversaries such as The Thing, Hulk, Thor or Hercules) and superhuman durability, speed, stamina and agility, he can accelerate his own healing when in contact with sea water, he can communicate with all sea life telepathically, he can fly and he can live much longer than any normal human or Atlantean, remaining in his youth despite being over a hundred years old; the Trident of Neptune allows him to manipulate weather to a certain extent and to shoot powerful blasts of eldritch energy, while the Horn of Proteus allows him to summon and control all kinds of sea monsters. With only the best interests of Atlantis in mind, often caught by uncontrollable fits of rage, Namor the Sub-Mariner is either one of humanity’s most precious allies or one of its deadliest enemies, and when the cry “Imperius Rex!” echoes in the air, nobody ever knows if salvation or destruction is coming.