The next two years in the life of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner are unusually busy, as he appears in an ongoing solo series as well as a team book, The Defenders, during this time. Accordingly, it is a period of extreme upheaval in Namor’s personal life, when the tragedies seem to always outnumber the triumphs. He also undergoes a bit of a personality shift after fully recovering from the amnesia that had plagued him since he made his big comeback. Once again cognizant of his 1940s heroism among the surface-dwellers, Namor becomes a bit more of a noble figure, and his vendetta against his father’s people wanes. At the same time, we learn a great deal about the history and culture of his mother’s people, the aquatic Atlanteans, as well as their distant cousins who dwell beneath the Pacific Ocean, the Lemurians. Throughout, the Sub-Mariner is called upon to deal with ancient threats like the Serpent Crown, high-tech pirates, alien invaders, and even the occasional costumed supervillain.
The Sub-Mariner’s solo adventures were scripted primarily by Roy Thomas at this point, working with various artists including John Buscema, Sal Buscema, and Marie Severin. The series then continued in a Roy Thomas vein under new writer Gerry Conway for a relatively brief run before giving way to the Sub-Mariner’s creator, Bill Everett, who returned as writer/artist. Everett took the book in an entirely new direction while harkening back to his earlier runs in the 1940s and ’50s. Due to Everett’s failing health, however, other creators were increasingly brought in to assist him. Both Thomas and Everett were involved in the creation of the Defenders, with Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema taking over once the “non-team” got its own ongoing series. Namor’s regular participation in the Defenders would prove to be short lived, and once his solo title was canceled, it would be rare for him to see as much action as he does here.
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale.) Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
We now continue… The True History of the Sub-Mariner!
January 1964 – Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner entertains his subjects in a large amphitheater in the heart of Atlantis by engaging in mock combat with some of his most skilled warriors, who prove to be no match for their sovereign’s superhuman strength and speed. The spectacle is brought to a close when the realm’s grand vizier, Lord Vashti, reports that a U.S. Navy submarine is heading their way and is wantonly destroying coral reefs with its torpedoes. Namor sets out to put a stop to it and, after disabling the sub, tracks its point of origin to a naval base on the island of Puerto Rico. There, Namor threatens to wreck their submarine pens, only to be opposed by the Avengers—the Wasp and Giant-Man, now known as Goliath, and two new recruits, Hawkeye and a bearded muscleman calling himself Hercules. A deeply religious man, Namor is offended that this obnoxious braggart has assumed the name of Neptune’s nephew and decides to kick his ass. While they fight, Hercules blathers on about preventing the Sub-Mariner from getting his hands on something called the Cosmic Cube, apparently some kind of powerful weapon. Intrigued, Namor tricks the dim-witted Hercules into revealing more about it, then allows himself to be knocked back into the ocean. It doesn’t take Namor long to find the Cosmic Cube, due to the eerie emanations it gives off, and he immediately returns to the island to continue his fight with Hercules. He uses the cube’s reality-warping powers to create a sea monster to keep the other Avengers busy and to keep himself well hydrated and thus at the peak of his strength. He then proceeds to hand Hercules a humiliating defeat. However, Namor soon starts to feel that he’s acted dishonorably by using the Cosmic Cube to give himself an unfair advantage over his foe, rendering his victory meaningless. When he realizes he’s lost the cube, Namor decides to abandon the fight and returns to the ocean depths, certain he’ll be able to deal with this faux Hercules the next time they meet.
February 1964 – Namor and his fiancée, Lady Dorma, are out and about when they spot a submarine dumping a 55-gallon drum of radioactive waste. Considering it an act of war, Namor is ready to destroy the sub, but Dorma counsels him against acting rashly. Instead, Namor carries the leaky drum to a deep trench, a forbidden zone called the Cavern of Darkness, and drops it into the sludgy abyss. When they return to Atlantis to consult with the Council of Elders, Dorma frets that war with the surface world could destroy the magnificent metropolis they’ve spent the last year building, but Namor retorts that he can’t let threats to his kingdom go unanswered. Even so, he’s willing to try a diplomatic solution and dispatches a squadron of elite warriors to deliver a belligerent message to the United Nations. Unfortunately, a lone member of the delegation returns a short time later and reports that they were massacred by a single superhuman stranger. Believing one of the surface world’s superheroes is leading an attack on his realm, Namor flies into a rage and heads out to battle this murderous invader. When he finds the mysterious creature lurking beneath a U.S. Navy submarine, Namor slams into it, assuming it to be a robot. During their fight, Namor succumbs to acute radiation poisoning and realizes his foe is highly toxic. Nevertheless, he maneuvers the silent creature into colliding with the submarine’s hull with the force of a battering ram, whereupon it is rendered inert. As the damaged sub retreats, taking the creature with it, Namor slowly sinks back down toward the ocean floor. He narrowly avoids being eaten by the legendary kraken and makes his way back to Atlantis for medical treatment. It takes Namor the rest of the month to fully recover from his ordeal, during which he plots his revenge.
March 1964 – Not wanting to be talked out of declaring war on the surface world, Namor foregoes summoning the Council of Elders and forms a Council of Warlords instead, composed entirely of the graybeards in charge of his armed forces. Naturally, they wholeheartedly endorse Namor’s bellicose intentions. Dorma tries to warn them of the folly of provoking the surface-dwellers, whose nations have the power to annihilate Atlantis, but she succeeds only in making Namor angry. Later, Namor receives a message from a Caribbean despot calling himself Dragorr, who proposes an alliance against their mutual enemies. Namor feels insulted that this fool would presume he would join forces with any surface-dweller, let alone some tin-pot dictator, and vows to teach him a lesson. He becomes enraged when Dorma insists he’s being irrational and rebukes her harshly, though he soon comes to regret his outburst. He swims out to the Caribbean Sea, only to be immediately captured when he reaches Dragorr’s island. Using some high-tech directed-energy weapons, the intimidating Dragorr forces the Sub-Mariner to attack the rebel army assembled in the hills outside the capital city, which they’ve been shelling with purloined heavy artillery. Although he routs the rebels, Namor insists he will not serve Dragorr’s whims and so finds himself imprisoned in the presidential palace. Luckily, Dorma soon comes to the rescue, and together they expose Dragorr as merely a robot operated by a dwarf known as “El Gnomo.” Refusing to be taken alive, El Gnomo jumps out a window, only to be caught in a net by the rebel forces outside, who recognize him as the former dictator’s scientific advisor. Dorma chides Namor for his grumpy response to the rebel leader’s assurances that they will soon hold free and fair elections. The couple then swims back toward Atlantis in sullen silence as Namor broods about his vendetta against the world.
On the way home, Namor and Dorma come across a small city being constructed inside a huge transparent dome on the ocean floor. Namor is outraged that the surface-dwellers think he would ever permit such an incursion into his realm, but Dorma again tries to play the peacemaker. After a violent confrontation with a defiant work crew, Namor meets with the project director, Dr. Walter Newell, in his saucer-shaped submersible. Newell claims that such undersea settlements are rapidly becoming necessary due to overpopulation, but Namor rejects all his colonialist arguments and gives him 24 hours to pack up and leave. As Namor and Dorma are heading out, the settlement comes under attack by a heavily armored submarine that cracks the dome like an eggshell. Within seconds, the dome is breached by torrents of ocean water that destroy the buildings within. Though he can see that people inside the dome are drowning, Namor refuses to intervene, ignoring Dorma’s entreaties. However, he changes his mind when the submarine opens fire on the few “lifeboat” submersibles that flee from the devastation, believing that to be beyond the pale. Storming into the submarine, Namor confronts the captain, who turns out to be a costumed villain called the Plunderer. Armed with a powerful “vibra-gun,” the Plunderer manages to drive the Sub-Mariner off. Outside, Namor sees that Newell has rescued Dorma from the Plunderer’s henchmen and watches helplessly as the submarine crashes through the dome to plunder the crumbling structures within while the bodies of its victims drift about. Taking the unconscious Dorma from Newell, Namor warns the surface man to stay out of his domain. Then, realizing the ruthless Plunderer is a threat to all who inhabit the sea, Namor vows to hunt him down once Dorma is safely back in Atlantis.
Using his worldwide network of drone spy cameras, Namor discovers the Plunderer’s hideout on Skull Island in the Savage Land, which he remembers exploring once as a boy. He summons the Council of Elders, the Council of Warlords, and the high priests of Neptune to his throne room to discuss his options. Dorma pleads with Namor not to recklessly attack the surface world because of Newell’s failed settlement, and Vashti advises that the people’s primary concern is the threat posed by the Plunderer. Namor agrees to deal with the Plunderer first and sets off for the Southern Ocean, ordering Dorma to stay home this time. When he reaches Antarctica, Namor pauses to have a look around the desolate landscape, which is inhabited only by penguins, and remembers spending time there as a youth. He’s frustrated that he’s still suffering from partial amnesia and so much of his life is lost in a fog. More vague memories are stirred when he swims down to the ruins of Thakorr’s Atlantis, where he grew up. He visits the grave of his mother, Princess Fen, for the second time and struggles with his grief as he recalls the happy days they spent together. He ruminates about the mysterious catastrophe that obliterated the city, scattered his people across the ocean, and left him an amnesiac derelict for over a decade. All he knows for sure is that it was caused by the surface-dwellers, which is why he’s so determined to wage war against them. He then swims through the underground channel that leads to the dinosaur-infested Savage Land and heads for Skull Island.
When Namor reaches the island, the Plunderer opens fire on him with his “vibra-cannon,” though it does no more than stun him momentarily. He confronts the villain on the beach, overcomes his feeble attempts to defend himself, and knocks him out with a punch in the face. However, as the Plunderer had claimed that Dorma, too, was hit by the blast from the vibra-cannon, Namor returns to the water to check. Sure enough, he finds the dazed Dorma and castigates her for disobeying his orders and following him to the Savage Land. Refusing to listen to her excuses, he orders her to return to Atlantis immediately. As Dorma glumly swims off, Namor heads back to the beach, only to find the Plunderer’s henchmen have revived him. A close-range shot from the villain’s handheld vibra-gun renders Namor unconscious, and when he comes to, he finds he’s been taken prisoner. The Plunderer gloats about the destructive capabilities of his weapon, which is powered by a substance he calls “Plunderstone.” Luckily, Namor is inadvertently freed by a raiding party of Swamp Men, who clearly object to the Plunderer encroaching on their territory. During the ensuing chaos, though, Namor is knocked out again when a large stone slab falls on his head. When he revives, he finds the Plunderer and his henchmen gone and their stronghold in flames. Namor carries an unconscious Swamp Man out of the wrecked fortress before it explodes and delivers him to his tribe. The man is evidently the natives’ leader, and they celebrate his safe return, though Namor can’t understand their guttural language. After about an hour, Namor decides to head home to Atlantis to raise an army to take on the Plunderer and his gang. He pays another brief visit to his mother’s grave, then tames an ornery orca and rides it back north.
April 1964 – Arriving at his destination, Namor is horrified to see his kingdom under attack by the Plunderer’s submarine. Before he can intercept the vessel, it is badly damaged by a powerful depth charge dropped from above. Confused, Namor wonders if the surface-dwellers have come to Atlantis’s defense. The Plunderer abandons ship in a small submersible, leaving his crew to die. Namor goes after him, but they are separated by more depth charge explosions, which are also demolishing the city’s towers. In a rubble-strewn street, Namor finds a boy who’s been separated from his parents amidst the chaos. The boy informs him that Dorma has turned the Council of Elders against him and he’s been banished from the realm for allying himself with a surface-world pirate. Shocked, Namor realizes Dorma must have misinterpreted whatever she saw in the Savage Land. Determined to prove he’s no traitor, Namor gets the boy to an underground bunker and goes after the Plunderer. Unfortunately, just as Namor catches up to the villain’s submersible, numerous depth charges explode all around them. Namor thinks he sees the submersible destroyed before he blacks out.
Regaining consciousness, Namor sees the new Atlantean armada speeding away from the city, doubtless to attack the surface world in response to the destruction caused by the depth charges. Not wanting them to go to war without him, Namor sets off after the armada, only to nearly collide with a massive warship armed with an experimental weapon called the hurricane inducer. Fearing the untested weapon will malfunction and destroy the armada, Namor decides he’d better board the ship and prevent it from being activated. Since he’s been branded a traitor, he realizes he’ll have to take a stealthy approach. He manages to slip inside the ship and find the hurricane inducer, only to discover it’s already been activated and can’t be shut down. When trying to smash the machine merely starts a chain reaction of explosions, Namor urges the crew to evacuate, but they blame him for the crisis and call him a saboteur. The crew abandons ship, whereupon Namor pilots the craft behind a subsea mountain to shield the rest of the armada from the final, cataclysmic explosion of the hurricane inducer. Having lost its ultimate weapon, the armada retreats to Atlantis. Knowing he’s only given his people more reason to think him a traitor, Namor decides the only way to redeem himself is by carrying the fight to the surface-dwellers on his own.
Aware of the Hulk’s ongoing feud with the United States military, Namor decides to give the green behemoth another chance to join forces. He sets off for North America, coming ashore on a remote beach outside of Miami, Florida. To Namor’s surprise, the Hulk drops out of the sky a few minutes later and attacks him. Their brawl carries them into the heart of Miami, where they cause tremendous property damage. As the battle wears on, though, the Hulk becomes increasingly hesitant and distracted, as if his heart were not really in the fight. Namor takes advantage of this and drags his foe into the surf, generating a vortex that keeps the brute disoriented while he receives a savage beating. A huge tidal wave finally washes the semi-conscious Hulk back to shore. When Namor reaches the beach, though, the Hulk is nowhere to be found—there’s only a vagrant in a pair of tattered pants sleeping on the sand. Not sure whether the Hulk drowned or fled, Namor swims back out to sea.
Plagued by a recurring dream about an ugly man wearing a strange helmet, Namor wonders if one of his lost memories is starting to resurface. He decides to return to the ruins of Thakorr’s Atlantis since he started having the dream after visiting his mother’s grave. After an altercation with a U.S. Air Force fighter jet, Namor makes his way back down to Antarctica. Once there, he feels an inexplicable impulse to fly further inland but finds nothing other than craggy, snow-covered peaks. Lashing out in frustration, he inadvertently uncovers the entrance to a tunnel, the interior of which is illuminated by a natural phosphorescence. Intrigued by bizarre carvings on the walls, which he thinks might predate the human race, he follows the tunnel down to the broken ramparts of an ancient city, encrusted with hoarfrost and rime. Fighting his way past an icy automaton acting as a sentry, Namor comes face to face with the man from his dream, who introduces himself as Destiny and boasts that his “Helmet of Power” makes him invincible.
Paralyzing Namor with his psychic abilities, Destiny reveals that, 45 years ago, he left his job as a mentalist in a traveling carnival to join an expedition to Antarctica aboard the icebreaker Oracle, commanded by Captain Leonard McKenzie. Namor is startled to learn that this man knew his father. A simple demonstration of Destiny’s uncanny mind-reading ability was enough to convince McKenzie to authorize an excursion into the mountains in search of the lost city of the Ancients, a legendary race of telepaths said to dwell at the bottom of the world. Together, he and McKenzie discovered that very cavern and the remnants of the Ancients’ technologically advanced civilization. They argued over how best to exploit this discovery until they were separated by a cave-in. Hopelessly trapped by the resulting avalanche, Destiny feared he was doomed until he discovered the Helmet of Power, drawn to it by its eerie emanations. Bored with the story, Namor overcomes his paralysis and pounces on Destiny, who proves to be a formidable fighter. Their battle causes the roof of the cavern to collapse, sending tons of ice crashing down on Namor’s head and leaving him buried alive. When he comes to sometime later, Namor finds himself alone, with a clear image of the father he never knew lingering in his mind. To his surprise, all his lost memories come flooding back, and he recalls his early rampages through New York City, meeting the intrepid policewoman Betty Dean, battling the Axis Powers as a member of the Invaders throughout World War II, serving subsequently in the postwar All-Winners Squad, fighting crime alongside his cousin Namora, and overcoming the constant treachery of his kinsman Byrrah.
Turning his mind to the mysterious cataclysm that struck Thakorr’s Atlantis in 1950, Namor finds he now remembers much more of what happened after he and six warriors set off to investigate. His companions were killed by a shockwave as they approached Antarctica about an hour later, but Namor survived and pressed on, soon confronting Destiny in that same cavern. The villain revealed that he’d recently emerged from suspended animation and, detecting the Atlanteans telepathically, decided to attack them merely to test the Helmet of Power’s capabilities. Namor was outraged and assaulted Destiny but was no match for his foe’s psychic powers. After cruelly projecting into Namor’s mind images of the destruction of Atlantis and the deaths of Princess Fen and Emperor Thakorr, Destiny induced a state of total amnesia before sending Namor to New York to live in a perpetual mental fog, on the off chance he might one day have use for the might of the Sub-Mariner. The anguish of these revelations gives Namor a sudden burst of strength. He breaks free from the icy debris and rampages through the cavern, destroying whatever’s left of the Ancients’ mechanical devices so Destiny can never use them again. His efforts result in a series of tremendous explosions that collapse the tunnel to the surface, with Namor barely making it out in time. As a huge avalanche seals away the refuge of the Ancients once and for all, Namor gives thanks to Neptune for preserving his life and vows to hunt down Destiny and make him pay for his crimes.
Not knowing where to look for his foe, Namor recalls the scientific genius of Mister Fantastic and thinks it might be worth it to swallow his pride and ask the Fantastic Four for help, given that they’ve maintained something of an unspoken truce for well over a year now. Namor has grudgingly accepted the fact that the Invisible Girl chose to marry Mister Fantastic rather than him, but he still has tender feelings toward her. Crossing the North Atlantic several days later, Namor encounters an odd-looking submarine that instigates a fight between him and a scaly, green fish-man calling himself Triton. Namor is offended that this weirdo is using the name of Neptune’s son, considering it sacrilegious, and lashes out at him in a rage. As they battle, it becomes clear that Triton is a friend to the Fantastic Four, but his stubborn refusal to act as a go-between merely infuriates Namor further. Ultimately, Triton proves to be no match for the Sub-Mariner, but their conflict is cut short when they’re both taken prisoner by the lone occupant of the submarine, the costumed supervillain known as Plantman. En route to attack London, England, Plantman tortures Namor and Triton in hopes of making them his lackeys. Namor is impressed that Triton’s defiance matches his own, and they work together to break out of the submarine, though they’re bound together by the wrist with a seething energy shackle. Despite this handicap, the pair saves the city from the giant monsters Plantman unleashes, although they leave a path of demolished buildings in their wake. The energy shackle then fizzles out, setting the two men free. Namor assures Triton he has no wish to renew their former hostilities, noting that he acquitted himself admirably during their struggle. Having taken the Sub-Mariner’s measure, Triton promises to contact the Fantastic Four and facilitate a meeting where they can hash out their differences. They part as friends, and finding that Plantman has gotten away, Namor resumes his trek to New York City.
Passing near Attuma’s realm of Skarka, Namor is ambushed by a trio of barbarians. Though he initially fights them off, he’s shocked to learn that Attuma enslaved the Atlanteans after they evacuated their damaged city. Thus distracted, Namor is knocked out, bound in heavy shackles, and dragged into the fortress from which Attuma rules his territory. In the throne room, Attuma is annoyed that his men allowed Namor to live, given how dangerous he is. The court jester, Saru-San, giggles and makes wisecracks as Attuma’s retinue of warriors mutter amongst themselves. Namor breaks free and attacks Attuma, but the despot merely reveals that the Atlanteans have all been put to work in a brutal mining operation. When Attuma claims that both Dorma and Vashti were executed immediately upon capture, Namor nearly collapses in despair. He challenges Attuma to a duel in which the loser will become the slave of the winner, and despite his misgivings, Attuma is forced to agree to placate his retinue. He calls for a special suit of battle armor and puts it on before the duel begins, which Namor soon discovers not only makes Attuma impervious to physical attacks but also delivers powerful shocks that numb Namor’s muscles, giving the barbarian a seemingly insurmountable advantage. After thoroughly humbling Namor, Attuma prepares to deliver a killing blow, believing he could never trust the exiled prince even if he were a slave. Namor makes one last, desperate effort and finds that Attuma’s battlesuit has unexpectedly powered down, leaving him vulnerable. Pressing his advantage, Namor tears the armor off his foe and gives him a savage beating. Seeing their leader utterly defeated, Attuma’s retinue withdraws, none of them willing to challenge the Sub-Mariner. Namor frees his people from bondage, but believing he’s lost Dorma forever, he soon heads off for New York, convinced that only his quest for vengeance can fill the hole in his heart.
May 1964 – Now recalling all the time he spent with the surface-dwellers in the 1940s, Namor starts to reconsider his bellicose intentions as he approaches North America. The thought of living in Atlantis without Dorma is too depressing to contemplate, and he ponders making peace with the surface world and joining forces against Destiny, who alone is responsible for destroying his grandfather’s kingdom. Entering New York Harbor, Namor is intercepted by a U.S. Navy destroyer which warns him that a space rocket containing toxic bacteria samples has crashed nearby, threatening to contaminate the waters. Deciding to lend a hand, Namor then comes into conflict with a costumed man calling himself Captain Marvel, who seems to want the disaster to happen. Confused as to whether Captain Marvel is a superhero or a supervillain, Namor fights him off, locates the downed rocket at the bottom of the bay, and triggers its self-destruct mechanism. The bacteria samples are destroyed in the resulting explosion, but Namor is knocked unconscious by the shockwave.
Sometime later, Namor comes to and finds himself on an island, where he is captured and imprisoned in the state-of-the-art laboratory complex of the mad scientist Dr. Lemuel Dorcas. There he meets an attractive young woman named Diane Arliss, who explains that Dorcas is attempting to cure her brother, Olympic gold medalist Todd Arliss, of the injuries that ended his swimming career. Dorcas makes the Sub-Mariner an unwilling participant in his biochemical experiment, which transforms Todd Arliss into a rampaging powerhouse called Tiger Shark. Viciously turning on Dorcas, Tiger Shark flees into the ocean, and in answer to Diane’s pleading, Namor pursues him. To his great surprise, Namor finds the now-aquatic Tiger Shark menacing Dorma, who’s arrived in an Atlantean scout ship. Weakened by Dorcas’s experiment, Namor fares badly against Tiger Shark and is quickly bludgeoned into unconsciousness. When he revives, Namor is pinned under the wreckage of Dorma’s scout ship. In freeing himself, he accidentally injures Diane, who’s come down in scuba gear to look for her brother. He takes her up to Dorcas’s lab and intimidates the scientist into looking after her. Namor then sets out for Atlantis, reasoning that Tiger Shark would force Dorma to lead him there.
Not too far east of Skarka, Namor stops to question a crew of Atlantean construction workers, who report that, after being liberated from Attuma’s realm, the Atlanteans established a temporary tent city about midway between Skarka and Atlantis. However, Tiger Shark has seized the throne after defeating their foremost warlord, Seth, in single combat. The villain then ordered the crew to start building a permanent settlement there, even though it’s directly below a major international shipping route. Vowing to defeat Tiger Shark, Namor confronts his deranged foe in the tent city, where he’s relieved to see that Vashti, too, is still alive. Tiger Shark attacks Namor with Neptune’s Trident, but the disgraced prince disarms him and turns the sacred weapon against the usurper. A large crowd forms around the pair during their brutal battle, and after a time Namor gains the upper hand. Despite the Council of Elders’ bloodthirsty cries for Tiger Shark’s death, Namor decides to spare his life, believing it’s incumbent upon monarchs to be merciful. Vashti then congratulates Namor on his victory—and for passing the council’s test. By ignoring their condemnation of Tiger Shark and choosing mercy, the grand vizier announces, Namor has proven himself worthy of reclaiming the throne. To the cheers of the crowd, Vashti declares Namor’s exile to be rescinded.
Tiger Shark is sealed into a makeshift prison made of stone blocks, from which he rants incessantly like a madman. The humiliated Warlord Seth seems to have lost all his self-confidence, and Namor is worried that Seth’s effectiveness as a military leader has been destroyed. Dorma reconciles with Namor, regretting that she misconstrued his association with the Plunderer and spoke out against him. She also explains how she was responsible for Attuma’s battlesuit losing power during his duel with Namor—one of Attuma’s rivals had freed her from the dungeon and helped her sabotage the suit’s power source. She was knocked out in the resulting explosion, though, and didn’t recover until after Namor’s departure. Namor is impressed with Dorma’s resourcefulness and feels much closer to her now that he remembers all their youthful adventures together.
June–July 1964 – Though happy to be reunited with Dorma, Namor is frustrated that his search for Destiny must be put on hold while he sees to re-establishing a permanent settlement for his people. He leads them back to Atlantis, where work begins on rebuilding all the damaged structures and clearing away the debris. Tiger Shark is transferred to a cell in their fortress-like prison complex, where the realm’s chief scientist, Ikthon, begins studying him in hopes of reversing his transformation so he can be returned to his sister. Namor soon starts having a recurring dream about Destiny running for president of the United States and shudders at the thought of his mortal enemy seizing control of his father’s homeland and its nuclear arsenal.
August 1964 – With not much progress having been made in curing Tiger Shark, Namor decides he’d better let Diane know that her brother is still alive and in Atlantean custody. As he’s preparing to leave for New York City, where it’s been determined that Diane lives, Dorma insists on accompanying him, refusing to take no for an answer. Several hours later, when their royal flagship arrives at the city’s waterfront, Namor is shocked to see a campaign billboard for presidential candidate Paul Destine—with Destiny’s ugly face on it. He realizes another dream about Destiny has come true, suggesting some kind of psychic link between them. Determined to put an end to such nonsense, Namor flies Dorma to Diane’s apartment on the Upper East Side, having a couple of tense encounters with the NYPD along the way. Diane is greatly relieved to learn of her brother’s whereabouts, but when Namor asks her about Paul Destine, her eyes glaze over and she mindlessly spouts his campaign rhetoric. Namor realizes she’s been hypnotized by Destiny’s psychic powers and becomes concerned when he learns the candidate is about to make a nationally televised speech. Not wanting Destiny to hypnotize the entire country into voting for him, Namor races over to the TV studio and interrupts the broadcast. Annoyed, Destiny attacks him and, after brawling for a few minutes, dons his Helmet of Power. As before, Namor has little defense against the telepathic onslaught, but he refuses to surrender. The fight carries them up to the roof, where Destiny suddenly loses his mind and, apparently hallucinating, steps off the edge and falls to his death. Namor is a bit stunned that his quest for vengeance has ended so abruptly, with the man who caused so much death and destruction paying the ultimate price for his crimes.
Namor and Diane rush Dorma back to the apartment when the pill she took to enable her to temporarily breathe air suddenly wears off. There, they give Dorma a new pill and have a chance to chat while she’s recovering. Diane steers the conversation toward Namor’s love life, and he admits he once had romantic feelings for a surface woman named Betty Dean, who convinced him to join the worldwide effort to defeat Nazi Germany and its conquest-hungry allies. However, he knew the Atlanteans would never permit their prince to marry a surface-dweller, so he finally parted company with Betty in 1949. Diane is sorry to hear that, but then their conversation is interrupted by a news bulletin on the radio concerning Paul Destine’s death. Namor is alarmed to learn that the police have recovered the Helmet of Power, which is to be examined by a team of scientists in Washington, D.C. Realizing it’s too dangerous to be allowed to fall into the wrong hands, Namor flies out the window, intending to seize the helmet and take it with him back to Atlantis. His efforts are frustrated by the Thing, who’s been enlisted to deliver the helmet to the capital, and their battle causes tremendous property damage until Namor nearly electrocutes his foe in a power station. He’s about to finish off the dazed Thing when Betty Dean turns up, calling herself “Mrs. Prentiss,” and tells him to stop. Namor is shocked to see her again after so many years, but she refuses to converse with him, retreating into the shadows instead. Lost in a reverie, Namor takes the Helmet of Power, picks up Dorma, and returns to the royal flagship in the harbor. On their way back to Atlantis, Dorma nearly puts on the mysterious helmet, but Namor slaps it out of her hands. She’s startled and a bit confused, as though she wasn’t really aware of what she was doing. He warns her against messing around with the sinister artifact.
After leaving the Helmet of Power in the custody of Ikthon and his scientists, Namor agrees to collect samples of a certain herb from the dreaded Abyss of Doom, which Ikthon believes may hold the key to reversing Tiger Shark’s transformation. He decides to take Warlord Seth with him, hoping the dangerous mission will help rebuild Seth’s self-confidence. When the pair arrives at the forbidding cavern several hours later, they are immediately set upon by a gigantic creature with electrified tentacles. Seth is knocked out while fighting off the monster, and Namor is exposed to a neurotoxin that induces a state of total amnesia. Confused, he breaks off from the wounded animal, which retreats into the depths. Leaving Seth behind, Namor swims off into the open ocean and spends the rest of the month living a simple, carefree existence and cavorting with the marine life, having no idea who he is or where he comes from.
September 1964 – When the effects of the neurotoxin finally wear off, Namor’s memory returns and he immediately swims back to Atlantis. Upon arrival, he is shocked to discover that his subjects have turned on him and now worship some pagan god called Naga rather than Neptune. An altar has been erected for human sacrifices in a public square, to which Namor is shackled as Vashti and Ikthon, both looking uncharacteristically evil, lead a procession of Naga cultists to the site. When Dorma appears, Namor is horrified to learn that she is the high priestess of the cult and is intent on murdering him. At first, he thinks she’s wearing the Helmet of Power, but when she gets closer he realizes it’s more of a “serpent crown” with the same general shape. Before she can stab him, Namor breaks free, fights off the angry mob, and snatches the crown from Dorma’s head, though it proves to be indestructible. He castigates his cringing subjects for descending into barbarous paganism. Tiger Shark turns up and gloats that he easily broke out of prison after all the Atlanteans went insane. Realizing the entire population is against him, Namor decides his only recourse is to retreat, so he swims away as fast as possible. Finding a secluded spot a good distance from the city, he stops to inspect the crown, which is fashioned in the shape of a seven-headed serpent coiled around itself, and determines that the Helmet of Power was merely some kind of outer shell. He feels compelled to try it on, and when he does so, his mind is beset with visions of a sinister, reptilian face. He then hallucinates a council meeting where his Homo mermanus ancestors decided to split their population between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which happened many millennia ago. Summoning up all his willpower, Namor pries the crown off his head, only to be challenged by a large, scaly powerhouse calling himself Karthon the Quester.
Namor initially mistakes Karthon as one of Attuma’s barbarians, but during the ensuing fight, Karthon reveals that he’s a native of Lemuria who’s been searching the globe for the Serpent Crown for decades. Naga, he explains, is not a pagan god but has for centuries been the tyrannical ruler of Lemuria, his life unnaturally extended by the occult power of the Serpent Crown. Long ago, the crown was stolen by members of an underground resistance movement who then fled to Antarctica. To protect themselves from the crown’s baleful influence, they encased it in a protective substance. Eventually, though, their decadent civilization collapsed and some disaster left their city buried beneath the frozen wastes. Namor realizes Karthon must be talking about the so-called Ancients that Destiny was obsessed with. Their battle is interrupted by the high-tech pirate Captain Barracuda, who takes them prisoner aboard his submarine. They are forced to accompany Barracuda as he steals an atomic warhead from a downed U.S. Air Force bomber, installs it in a torpedo, and launches it at a naval station on the Florida coast. Namor breaks free of his bonds and frees Karthon as well, but to his chagrin, Karthon immediately grabs the Serpent Crown and disappears into the ocean depths. Ignoring Barracuda’s taunts, Namor deals with the torpedo first, causing it to detonate harmlessly in the ocean, but is then delayed by a Navy destroyer that opens fire on him. After rampaging through the ship, Namor abandons the fight and goes after Karthon, catching up to him in the Panama Canal. Unfortunately, though he wrests the crown from the Lemurian, Namor is quickly knocked out by an exploding artillery shell.
When he comes to, Namor is again suffering from total amnesia and is easily convinced that he’s Karthon’s slave. Thus, he submissively follows Karthon to the capital city of the Lemurian Empire, halfway across the Pacific Ocean. Brandishing the Serpent Crown as they enter the city, Karthon is hailed as a conquering hero and is immediately escorted into the throne room of the royal palace. Left to wait in an antechamber, Namor’s memory comes back to him and, annoyed at having been treated as a servant, he demands an audience with Emperor Naga. He is startled to see that Naga is a decrepit, half-mad snake-man laboring under the delusion that the Serpent Crown has restored him to his youthful vigor. Namor refuses to play along, so Naga orders Karthon to kill him. Surprisingly, Karthon refuses the order, insisting it would be dishonorable. Naga merely blasts Karthon with eldritch energies and calls in other Questers to do the job for him, but they are no match for Namor. Frustrated, Naga torments Namor with illusions, trying to break his spirit, but this, too, fails. Finally, Namor is sentenced to die in the gladiatorial arena. Karthon objects, saying it’s too ignoble a fate for a prince of Atlantis. Naga punishes his impudence by slaying all the other Questers, but Karthon only becomes more defiant. In the arena, Namor overcomes a massive, mutated octopus and challenges Naga to personal combat. Remembering his glory days as Lemuria’s mightiest warrior, the emperor accepts. Despite Naga’s present infirmity, the Serpent Crown makes him nearly invincible. Namor withstands all his mystical attacks until he is forced into a sort of vortex in the ground that carries him down toward the center of the earth. Some distance beneath the seabed, Namor feels Naga’s malign influence dissipating, so he swims back up the shaft to find that Karthon has stabbed the emperor in the back, killing him. He stops Karthon from putting on the Serpent Crown, whereupon Karthon places it back on Naga’s head. Everyone is then forced to evacuate the arena as the shaft erupts with magma, followed by volcanic explosions that obliterate the city. The Serpent Crown is lost in the catastrophe. Regrouping at a safe distance, the grateful Lemurians name Karthon as their new leader, and he graciously accepts. Namor wishes him well and sets off on the long journey back to Atlantis.
Along the way, Namor stops to investigate the mass killing of thousands of sea creatures, which leads him to a pair of volcanic islands. Without warning, he is ambushed by the Human Torch and assumes it’s in retaliation for his battle with the Thing last month. As they fight, though, Namor is shocked to discover that his foe is not the Fantastic Four’s Johnny Storm at all but is apparently the original Human Torch of the 1940s. Given their former friendship, Namor demands an explanation, but the Torch merely activates a radio transceiver in his golden collar and informs his master, the Mad Thinker, that the Sub-Mariner has been captured. The Mad Thinker orders the Torch to kill his captive, but as the clash continues, he struggles to comply. Suddenly, the Torch’s body is wracked with pain and he clutches at his collar. Namor realizes it’s a punishment collar that ensures his obedience, so he drags his old friend into the surf until the saltwater shorts out the collar’s electronics. The Torch then relates how he woke up in the Mad Thinker’s laboratory several months ago with total amnesia. The villain told him only as much as he needed to know to assist him with dangerous experiments involving the volcanos in the area. Eventually, he learned that the Mad Thinker and his accomplices—Egghead and the Puppet Master—have been scheming to take over the world. Together, the former teammates storm the Mad Thinker’s stronghold on a nearby island and confront him. However, the Mad Thinker hits the Torch with a beam of energy that causes his flame to flare up out of control. Namor knocks out the villain with a punch in the face and drops the Torch into the ocean before he goes supernova. When the resulting cloud of steam clears, Namor is surprised to find that his ally is not the android Human Torch, either—he’s really Toro, the Torch’s mutant sidekick. His memory restored, Toro explains that he retired from crime-fighting after the Torch disappeared in 1955 and soon settled down with his wife, Ann. Last year, when the Torch was reported killed during an encounter with the Fantastic Four, Toro went to the funeral, only to be kidnapped and brainwashed by the Mad Thinker. Outraged, Toro goes after the Mad Thinker when he tries to flee the island in a small aircraft, and Namor follows. Before Namor can do anything, though, Toro flies into the aircraft’s rocket thruster and forces it to crash into the laboratory complex, triggering an eruption of the volcano. Horrified, Namor watches helplessly as the small island is completely destroyed by lava.
Heading to New York City, Namor manages to track down Toro’s widow, Ann Raymond, and informs her of her husband’s heroic death. He credits Toro with avenging the murder of the original Human Torch at the hands of the Mad Thinker last year. Ann confirms that Toro—or Tom, as she calls him—never came home from the Torch’s funeral. She drove up to the tiny town the next day, but no one remembered any such event, even though Toro had described it to her over the telephone—and the cemetery mentioned in the newspaper proved to be long abandoned. Baffled, she came home and has been trying to deal with her husband’s disappearance ever since. They speculate that the funeral itself was merely a trap to ensnare Toro, with the local residents having been under the Puppet Master’s control at the time. Namor offers Ann what words of comfort he can and then departs.
Back in Atlantis, Namor finds the Serpent Crown’s influence has faded and things have largely returned to normal. However, Vashti informs him that Dorma has been inconsolable given that, under the crown’s malign influence, she had all the high priests of Neptune put to death. Clearly still not thinking straight, Dorma left Atlantis to search for Namor after Diane Arliss contacted them and threatened to destroy the city unless they turned Tiger Shark over to her. Naturally, they explained that Tiger Shark escaped during the recent chaos, but Diane refused to listen to reason. Their conference is interrupted when Diane contacts them again, revealing that she’s taken Dorma hostage. She proposes a prisoner exchange at Empire State University in New York City, which infuriates Namor. Vowing to make Diane and her accomplices pay for such treachery, Namor sets off at once for the United States. When he arrives at the school, he finds Dorma being held in a water tank guarded by an android monster called Dragon Man. Not surprisingly, Diane’s co-conspirators include Dr. Dorcas and Dragon Man’s creator, Professor Gregson Gilbert. Namor frees Dorma but gets into a protracted battle with the fire-breathing Dragon Man, causing a panic on campus. Learning from Diane that the brutish creature is vulnerable to extreme temperature changes, Namor finally defeats Dragon Man by forcing him into a refrigerated train car. He then demands that Diane denounce Dr. Dorcas, suspecting that he put her up to kidnapping Dorma in the first place. She does so and tearfully begs Namor to find her brother. Satisfied, Namor and Dorma head home to Atlantis. While en route, Dorma reveals that Warlord Seth never returned from the Abyss of Doom, and Namor fears he perished there.
After receiving a report from Warlord Thakos, the sole survivor of an expedition to hunt down Tiger Shark, Namor heads to the Sargasso Sea, worried that a longstanding truce with the undead “People of the Mist” who dwell there has been broken. When he arrives, he’s annoyed to discover that Dorma has again disregarded his orders and stowed away aboard his flagship. She directs him to some flashing lights in the distance, which turn out to be a stranded bathysphere. Returning the damaged vessel to its mothership, Namor finds Dr. Walter Newell on board and demands he leave the area at once. Newell refuses, saying his team has discovered that a pair of Nazi U-boats carrying a germ-warfare agent were lost during World War II. One wreck has been found, which requires immediate remediation efforts to prevent an environmental disaster, but the second sub is still missing. Suspecting it became trapped in the Sargasso Sea, Namor swims into the foggy domain of the People of the Mist, leaving Dorma behind with Newell. Making his way through the seaweed-choked waters, Namor soon comes upon an 18th-century frigate where Tiger Shark is colluding with the lost sailors to use the second U-boat to pillage the world. He attacks Tiger Shark but is forced to desist when Dorma and Newell, who followed him in a submersible, are taken hostage by the U-boat crew. Under Tiger Shark’s orders, the People of the Mist then commandeer Newell’s submersible and lead the U-boat out of the Sargasso Sea, followed by the frigate and a few other ships. No sooner have they emerged into the sunlight, though, than the ancient mariners and their ships crumble to dust. Seeing his scheme unravelling, Tiger Shark orders the U-boat crew—who’ve only aged about 20 years—to launch the torpedo with the germ-warfare agent at a half-century-old British freighter where Dorma and Newell have taken refuge. Tiger Shark prevents Namor from stopping the torpedo, though he does manage to deflect it. Nevertheless, the freighter moves directly into the torpedo’s path and explodes on impact, generating a huge fireball. Tiger Shark gets away in the confusion, and when Namor rendezvouses with Dorma, she explains that Newell found several tons of dynamite aboard the freighter and used it to neutralize the germ-warfare agent, apparently sacrificing his life in the process. As they swim down to their flagship, Namor vows to make Tiger Shark pay for his crimes.
In his royal palace, Namor is conferring with Vashti when Fara, one of Dorma’s ladies-in-waiting, reports that Dorma is conspiring against Namor with a surface man she secretly brought to Atlantis. Enraged, Namor immediately swims over to Dorma’s mansion on the outskirts of the city and confronts her. However, the surface man turns out to be the Hulk, who smashes through the wall and attacks Namor. Their battle completely demolishes Dorma’s home, leaving her buried in rubble. Frantically, Namor clears away the debris and finds that Fara shielded Dorma with her own body, saving her mistress’s life at the cost of her own. Grateful that Dorma has survived, Namor resumes his battle with the Hulk, driving the green behemoth away from Atlantis. Eventually, their fighting carries them to the waters off Costa Rica, where Namor finally gains the upper hand over the nearly exhausted Hulk. Namor flies him up into the air and hurls him inland, sending him crashing down into the jungle. When he lands to finish off the Hulk, though, Namor finds only a slender, half-naked man unconscious on the ground. Puzzled, he returns to Atlantis, where Dorma explains that she found a surface man floating in the middle of the ocean, gave him a pill to enable him to temporarily breathe underwater, and brought him home for medical treatment. She doesn’t know what happened to him or where the Hulk came from, but Namor starts to suspect they were one and the same.
Namor and Dorma soon become frustrated with Kormok, the new High Priest of Neptune. Formerly a fringe religious figure, Kormok is the sole survivor of the purge instigated by the Serpent Crown and has made himself the central figure of a religious revival with his vague prophecies. Convinced that Kormok is a self-serving fraud who does not truly speak for Neptune, Namor lashes out in a rage and demolishes a stone totem pole that the high priest recently had installed in the throne room. Vashti urges Namor not to concern himself with Kormok’s petty intrigues, but Namor worries that the wily priest ultimately desires to seize the throne. Immediately afterward, Kormok declares that the time has come for the Ritual of Renewal, which commemorates the forging of Neptune’s Trident in ancient times, when the god’s sojourn among his worshipers ended. The ritual requires Namor to take the sacred trident to a ceremonial brazier in Thakorr’s Atlantis and reconsecrate it. Dorma fears it’s a trap, but Namor knows he can’t refuse without being branded a heretic. A few hours later, after an elaborate public ceremony, Namor departs with the trident aboard his royal flagship, bound for the Southern Ocean.
October 1964 – Approaching Antarctica, Namor’s crew detects the shockwave from a powerful explosion, and he decides to investigate personally. Detecting a strangely warm water current, he follows it into the Savage Land, where he sees pterosaurs circling over a smoky area. Taking a closer look, he finds Magneto unconscious in the rubble of a collapsed building. Fighting off the pterosaurs, he takes the mutant master of magnetism back to his ship and orders the crew to return to Atlantis, where Magneto can receive the proper medical attention. Namor then continues on to Thakorr’s Atlantis under his own power. When he arrives, he’s ambushed by an aquatic extraterrestrial calling himself Dynorr the Stalker. Revealing that he’s in cahoots with Kormok, Dynorr tries to abduct Namor, but Namor is able to fight him off. He then swims into the abandoned city and visits his mother’s grave again, only to have Dynorr continue his assault. Outraged, Namor knocks Dynorr through the marble columns of a colonnade, causing the entire structure to collapse on top of him. Assuming his foe is dead, Namor finds the ceremonial brazier—a hydrothermal vent with a stone altar built around it—and quickly performs the ritual with the sacred trident. Suddenly, he is drawn up into Dynorr’s spaceship within a watery vortex and rendered unconscious with nerve-numbing rays.
When he regains consciousness, Namor finds himself in a laboratory on the spaceship, surrounded by various scans of his respiratory system. Dynorr is there, having survived the battle, and explains that they’ve captured him so they can experiment on him in hopes of finding a way to turn themselves into amphibians, due to their world’s rapidly drying climate. They learned about Namor from Triton, who is also their prisoner, and then allied themselves with the ambitious Kormok to get Namor on his own, away from Atlantis. The aliens’ primary mission, though, is to steal all of Earth’s water to replenish the oceans on their own planet in the Alpha Centauri system. Once Dynorr has returned to the bridge, Namor and Triton break out of the lab, fight their way through the ship’s security guards, retrieve Neptune’s Trident, breach the hull, and sabotage the water-stealing device. Outside the ship, Namor soon passes out from lack of oxygen and comes to later with a splitting headache. He and Triton have been recaptured, but their sabotage results in a mutiny in which Dynorr is shot dead. Deciding to head back to Alpha Centauri, the acting captain agrees to return Namor and Triton to Earth before they cause any more damage. However, as the watery vortex carries them down, Namor discovers the aliens have surgically closed his gills.
Deposited on the beach at New York’s Coney Island amusement park, the half-drowned Namor asks Triton to take Neptune’s Trident back to Atlantis. After his friend has departed on his errand, Namor is harassed by the police and finds that the Alpha Centaurians have also paralyzed his ankle wings, robbing him of the power of flight. He manages to get away from the cops only to be easily captured by Walter Newell, wearing a new, high-tech battlesuit and calling himself Stingray. Namor is then taken into the city and imprisoned in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, where he is interrogated by representatives of the American government. Diane Arliss is there, too, and she pleads with Namor to cooperate, but he lapses into a stony silence. That night, after a humiliating press conference, Namor finally breaks free and escapes into the sewer system. Stingray tries to recapture him, but their battle carries them out into the East River, where they inadvertently damage the Brooklyn Bridge and are forced to work together to prevent it from collapsing. Once they succeed, the dispirited Stingray abandons the fight.
Pursued by the military, Namor takes refuge inside the Latverian embassy, where he is welcomed by Doctor Doom, who, as it turns out, survived their last encounter. Doom dismisses his previous treachery as “ancient history” and proposes they renew their alliance. Namor steadfastly refuses, causing Doom to become increasingly irate as his arguments fall on deaf ears. Finally, Doom threatens to turn Namor over to the soldiers amassing in the street outside and orders his henchmen to give their haughty guest a beating. Namor fights off the dictator’s armed goons but fares less well against the embassy’s automated defenses. Doom demands that Namor turn over control of the Atlantean military to him, but the prince remains defiant. He feigns defeat to gain a brief respite, then starts a fire that spreads quickly through the wood-paneled foyer. A moment later, a stream of water smashes through a window from a fire truck out in the street, revitalizing Namor and enabling him to escape from the building. Evading the soldiers, he bemoans his fugitive status but finds the paralysis affecting his ankle wings starting to wear off. He decides to make his way to Diane’s apartment on the Upper East Side, since he’s been there before.
Namor surprises Diane when he comes in through her bedroom window, and she apologizes for not doing more to help him earlier. He thinks he might have judged her too harshly when she offers to put him in touch with the Fantastic Four. Unfortunately, Namor gets confused by the team’s answering machine and crushes Diane’s phone in frustration. He decides to move on, so she lends him some of her brother’s clothes. No sooner has he entered the corridor outside her apartment than he’s ambushed by police using tear gas, and he naturally assumes Diane has betrayed him. Namor crashes through a window and gets away, only to discover that the Atlantean fleet has entered the harbor and is threatening war if he’s not returned to them immediately. Hoping to preserve the peace, he flies south to Battery Park and destroys a tank before it can open fire on the royal flagship. Unfortunately, the flagship is then blasted to smithereens by a Navy destroyer. Fearing Dorma has been killed, Namor attacks the destroyer but is distracted by the unmistakable blare of the Horn of Proteus, which summons three sea monsters from the depths to ravage the city’s waterfront. Still trying to avert an all-out war, Namor drives the monsters back into the harbor, but they start going after the Atlantean warships instead. Swooping low over the water, Namor rescues Dorma from the wreckage of the flagship and carries her to one of the warships, ordering its crew to take her home immediately. As he turns his attention back to the monsters, the Horn of Proteus sounds again, causing the monsters to disappear beneath the waves. Alighting on another warship, Namor is informed that the Horn of Proteus was rediscovered by Warlord Seth, who had not died in the Abyss of Doom after all. Blaming himself for Namor’s apparent demise, though, Seth did not return immediately to Atlantis and had only just reappeared. Some scouts then report that an undersea avalanche has buried Seth, the Horn of Proteus, and the monsters beneath a veritable mountain of debris. Namor is saddened by this news and watches the fires burning on the waterfront as the fleet heads back out to sea.
En route to Atlantis, Namor learns that Triton succeeded in delivering Neptune’s Trident to the Council of Elders, whereupon he informed them of Kormok’s involvement with the Alpha Centaurians. Though the council had installed Kormok on the throne in an apocalyptic panic, he was swiftly declared a traitor and executed. Since then, Dorma has been acting as regent, since she’s next in the royal line of succession. Namor is relieved that the threat posed by Kormok has been dealt with. When they arrive, Namor dons a breathing apparatus and is escorted to the Hall of Science, where Ikthon performs emergency surgery to repair his gills. The surgery is successful, but in the recovery room, Namor receives a vision of a surface-dwelling sorcerer who tells him of an ancient race of demons called the Undying Ones, who terrorized the earth until their mysterious disappearance roughly a millennium ago. Unfortunately, they left behind a magical idol shaped like their tyrannical, two-headed leader, known only as the Nameless One, to serve as a gateway between dimensions. Knowing the idol must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands, Namor immediately makes his way to Boston, Massachusetts, following some inexplicable intuition.
At the home of a Dr. Kenneth Ward, Namor meets a woman calling herself Joella, fights off one of the demons, and discovers a clue that leads him to a nearby cemetery, where he unearths the idol. The sorcerer finally appears and introduces himself as Doctor Strange, but Namor is annoyed at having been treated like a pawn in some twisted game. Strange exposes Joella as one of the demons, and she immolates herself in hellfire rather than face the Nameless One’s wrath. Returning to the house, Strange explains that Ward, an old friend of his, has already been killed by the demons, for he discovered the idol in the Himalayas and brought it back to Boston. Joella’s cat then reveals itself to be another demon and attacks them, seizing the idol and using it to open an interdimensional portal. Immediately, the Nameless One leaps through the portal into Ward’s house, prompting the horrified Namor to start pummeling it. He’s able to force the demon back through the portal, but his momentum carries him through as well, and he finds himself adrift in a terrifying realm filled with demons. Fortunately, Strange carries the idol into the demons’ realm and rescues Namor, sacrificing his life to send the prince back to Earth and close the portal. Knowing the world owes the sorcerer a debt that can never be repaid, Namor dives back into Boston Harbor and heads for home.
Along the way, Namor gets into a fight with a brawny Atlantean rebel calling himself Orka, who controls a large herd of orcas that can swim unusually deep in the ocean. Proving to have superhuman strength, Orka leaves Namor buried in rubble and departs, but the prince is able to track him to his lair, a large research installation on the ocean floor, and discovers he’s in league with Dr. Dorcas and the exiled warlord Krang. Dorcas has mutated Orka in much the same way that he previously transformed Todd Arliss into Tiger Shark. The villains reveal they’re holding Dorma, Vashti, and three palace guards hostage in a shark tank, but when Krang announces his intention to use the herd of mutated orcas to conquer Atlantis and then force Dorma to marry him, Namor loses his temper and attacks him. Orka intervenes and again overpowers Namor, who is knocked out for a few minutes by a jolt of electricity from one of Dorcas’s machines. When he comes to, Namor finds he’s been outfitted with a slave collar and shackles that can deliver debilitating shocks. He’s relieved to learn that the hostages, at least, have managed to escape. While Orka is out trying to recapture Dorma, Krang launches his invasion of Atlantis, taking Namor along so he can witness the ignominious end of his reign. During the ensuing battle, Namor breaks free of his chains and reunites with Dorma, only to learn that she’s agreed to marry Tiger Shark, which was the price he demanded for rescuing her and Vashti from Orka. Even now, she reports, Tiger Shark is leading the city’s efforts to repel Krang. Namor is heartsick at this development, feeling that Dorma is honor-bound to keep her word. He swims off to lose himself in battle and ends up fighting with Tiger Shark, but Tiger Shark is then drawn into a brawl with Orka as Krang and Dorcas make their escape. The super-powered villains’ reckless violence soon causes a building to collapse on top of them, and when they do not emerge from the rubble, Namor assumes they’ve been killed. As the remaining orcas wander off, Namor returns to the palace and tells Dorma she’s been released from her pledge, to her great relief. Surveying the widespread death and destruction, the prince realizes that, without allies, Atlantis will always be vulnerable to such invasion attempts.
As reconstruction efforts get underway, Namor checks in on Magneto, who is gradually recovering from his injuries within a pressurized chamber. Magneto is grateful to the Sub-Mariner for saving his life and speaks at length about mutant solidarity. Namor is not interested in such rhetoric, though, and turns his attention to other matters. Though Vashti is bedridden due to injuries sustained during his kidnapping ordeal, Namor decides to take Dorma on an inspection tour of all the outposts along the frontiers of their territory, intent on strengthening the security of his realm. Several days later, at the final outpost on their itinerary, Namor and Dorma are horrified to find everyone dead from exposure to toxic chemicals dumped by the U.S. Navy. Returning to Atlantis, Namor meets with the Council of Elders to discuss an appropriate response. He insists he no longer seeks to start a war with the surface world but feels compelled to assure the fractious council that he has no divided loyalties, despite his mixed heritage. He identifies primarily with his Homo mermanus ancestors, he says, and their long history of struggle. He reminds them that it was his great-grandfather, Emperor Immanu, who united the warring tribes of the Atlantic Ocean nearly 200 years ago, thus founding their modern nation, and his grandfather, Emperor Thakorr, who later led them to greater peace and prosperity in a new city near Antarctica. Satisfied, the council consents to his plan to have the Atlantean military establish a perimeter around their territory, from which all surface-world vessels will be repelled. Namor knows this will cause tremendous disruption to international shipping, and the economic impacts will quickly get the attention of the United Nations and force them to take him seriously. The blockade is quickly established, and ships that refuse to comply have their rudders dismantled before being towed to the nearest port, regardless of their point of origin or destination.
November 1964 – As the days pass, the Atlanteans take whatever actions are necessary to protect their borders. While most transatlantic traffic is rerouted to avoid their patrols, some ships are threatened, boarded, or even sunk to show the surface world they mean business. When a Soviet submarine appears with clearly hostile intentions, Namor deals with it personally, leaving it beached on a nearby island. He warns the crew that he will not be so lenient next time. Some hours later, Namor and Dorma travel to New York City to address the United Nations General Assembly, meeting little resistance as they make their way into the building. Secretary-General U Thant agrees to allow the Sub-Mariner to speak his piece, whereupon Namor castigates the delegates for the environmental devastation their nations have unleashed on the planet and demands that Atlantis be recognized as a sovereign state. Branding him a terrorist, the delegates call for him to be ejected from the chamber. Issuing more threats, Namor takes Dorma and leaves, finding a unit of National Guard soldiers on the pier where the royal flagship is docked. Before he can engage with them, Diane turns up. Though naturally suspicious of her, Namor informs her that Tiger Shark is dead and tries to comfort her when she starts crying. He then flies Dorma over the soldiers’ heads and into the flagship. As it gets underway, Namor orders a missile strike on the pier, but when he sees that Diane is in danger, he intercepts the missile and destroys it. Dorma is clearly jealous of Diane, but Namor ignores her and wonders if his loyalties aren’t more divided than he let on.
Patrolling the frontier just beyond Atlantis’s southern border, Namor discovers a pipeline spewing toxic sludge into the ocean. He causes an avalanche that seals the mouth of the pipe, then follows it back to a sprawling industrial complex that has completely overrun Meridian Island. He starts wrecking the place, only to be opposed by Iron Man, who seems intent on defending the polluters. After a brutal battle, Iron Man manages to trap Namor atop a steel tower, pinning him there by bending iron girders around him. In a rage, Namor struggles to free himself but, feeling dehydrated, lacks the necessary strength. Within minutes, Namor is nearly overcome by a poisonous miasma that emanates from a dome-shaped building not far away. The miasma is quickly spreading all over the island, causing workers who lack gas masks to collapse. Namor, too, is on the verge of choking to death when Iron Man rescues him and drops him into the ocean. To save the island’s inhabitants, the two foes work together to generate a huge tidal wave that destroys the dome-shaped building and washes away the miasma. Namor notes grimly that Meridian Island, once abundant with life, is now completely dead. Iron Man informs him that the plant manager, who was primarily responsible for the catastrophe, was the only person to die. Hoping the surface-dwellers have learned their lesson, Namor returns to the sea.
Learning an acquaintance from World War II, the long-lost superhero Red Raven, has been found inside a transparent capsule floating in the Atlantic Ocean, Namor heads back to New York City to investigate. Well aware of the submerged island of the Bird-People, who’ve lain in suspended animation since 1944, Namor hopes to revive them and form an alliance against the surface-dwellers. He makes his way to Diane’s apartment, since she was reported to be helping Walter Newell study the comatose Red Raven. There, Diane agrees to help, convinced that a stronger Atlantis will make a war between the land and sea less likely. She leads Namor to the museum where Red Raven is being studied, and Namor uses a device provided by Ikthon to revive him. Red Raven is rather disoriented at first and doesn’t seem to remember the Sub-Mariner. He recalls only a longstanding enmity between the Bird-People and the Atlanteans, and having apparently forgotten his wartime service in the Liberty Legion, he decides the surface-dwellers must be wiped out so the Bird-People can take over the planet. When Namor refuses to join forces, Red Raven attacks him, but their fight is interrupted by half a dozen cops, who’ve been called in by the museum’s security guards. In the ensuing chaos, Red Raven kidnaps Diane and flies back to the sunken island. Irritated, Namor shrugs off the cops and pursues his former compatriot. He’s forced to break off when Red Raven drops Diane into the ocean, but after leaving her on the back of a friendly dolphin, Namor catches up to his quarry within the Bird-People’s citadel. When Red Raven tries to revive his people, though, they prove to be long dead, the cryonic chambers having merely preserved their bodies. Blaming himself, he goes berserk and triggers a chain reaction of explosions that obliterate the citadel. Namor is unable to save Red Raven, but he makes sure Diane is safely aboard a Navy ship before going home to Atlantis. It’s clear to Namor that Diane is extremely infatuated with him, but he’s not sure of the best way to handle the situation.
Namor is outraged when he’s framed for the sinking of an ocean liner, which was attacked by a gigantic sea monster and had its cargo of radium stolen. After his military advisors study the situation for a few days, Namor decides to investigate the matter himself, so as not to draw any troops away from their defensive perimeter. He insists that Dorma remain behind as he sets off for New York City to enlist Diane’s help in booking passage on another ship that seems a likely target for the sea monster. As he had hoped, the ship is soon attacked by huge tentacles that rise from the ocean depths. While fighting off the tentacles, Namor sees that the monster has ensnared Dorma’s personal cruiser. He’s furious with her for again disobeying a direct order and following him into danger. No sooner has he discovered the creature is really a disguised vessel than he is knocked out by an exploding shell. When he comes to, he finds himself inside the vessel, being held prisoner by a rather theatrical modern-day pirate calling himself Commander Kraken. Admitting that he stole the radium to power his robotic sea monster, Kraken reveals that he’s also holding both Dorma and Diane hostage inside the cruiser, which the tentacles are threatening to crush. Infuriated, Namor breaks free, fights his way through the pirate’s ineffectual henchmen, and leaves the vessel. He frees the cruiser and then leads the artificial monster right into the clutches of the true kraken, remembering the location of its lair from his brief encounter with it back in February. Satisfied that the villains have paid for their crimes, Namor rendezvouses with Dorma’s cruiser. He orders her to return to Atlantis at once while he takes Diane home to New York. Though clearly burning with jealousy, Dorma complies. To punish his willful fiancée, Namor decides to stay with Diane for a couple of days.
In Manhattan, Diane takes Namor for a long walk down First Avenue, but he’s disgusted by how polluted the city is. When they pass the United Nations Building, he complains bitterly about how his bid for membership was rejected. Wanting to show Namor that not all surface-dwellers are irredeemably bad, Diane takes him to a protest march at a park on the East River which is scheduled to be replaced by a new factory complex. Namor is not impressed by the crowd of irate teenagers, but he intervenes when three burly men start roughing up the protestors. As the humiliated men make a hasty retreat, one of the organizers of the protest, Jerry Westman, commends the Sub-Mariner for his heroism. Namor replies that he doesn’t see anything heroic about beating up men weaker than himself. Jerry’s father, Sam Westman, then turns up and yells at his son for associating with juvenile delinquents. As it happens, the elder Westman owns the construction company that will be bulldozing the park with a gigantic, state-of-the-art excavator which he calls “Brutivac.” Jerry urges Namor to destroy Brutivac, but he refuses to do so, preferring instead to get lunch with Diane. That evening, Namor and Diane return to the park for an ecological rally that Jerry invited them to. Namor is surprised to learn that his fiery speech at the United Nations has been well received by these young environmentalists, and he delivers some impromptu remarks to encourage their efforts. However, Sam Westman interrupts him, accusing him of radicalizing his son and trying to destroy his business. He starts up Brutivac and attacks Namor with it. The excavator proves to be a real threat since Namor’s been out of the water all day and his strength is at a low ebb. But when Jerry is nearly run over while trying to protect Namor, his father panics and shuts the excavator down. The crowd is ready to give the elder Westman a beating, but Namor admonishes them for their willingness to resort to violence. Reconciling, Jerry and his father depart in a limousine.
Despite Jerry’s absence, the ecological rally continues. Namor and Diane hang around, but they get into a deep conversation about her feelings for him. Namor tries to let her down gently, pointing out that he’s already pledged to another—Dorma—and furthermore doesn’t feel it would be appropriate to pursue a relationship with a surface woman given the enmity that exists between their two races. Diane insists that she can’t help the way she feels, but Namor tells her not to speak of such things again. Despite her evident heartbreak, Diane tries to put a brave face on it. After the rally, Jerry returns, and he and a few of the other protestors accompany Namor and Diane to a pier on the waterfront. Namor bids them all a fond farewell, then dives into the harbor and heads for home. A little while later, he’s surprised to come across a huge barrier reef that he’s certain wasn’t there before. The next thing he knows, Namor is on an island in the Mediterranean Sea with an unassuming wooden staff on his lap. Feeling vaguely creeped out, he breaks the staff in two, throws it on the ground, and returns to the sea, having no idea what just happened to him.
While heading west across the Atlantic Ocean, Namor stumbles upon a plot to hold the world to ransom with a device on the ocean floor called a “molecular polluter.” He tries to put a stop to it, only for the head crook, a gangster named Markham, to hit him with a hand grenade. The explosion knocks Namor out, and when he comes to, he finds himself stumbling up onto a beach in Miami, Florida with his brains a bit scrambled. He spots a teenager with a guitar, but after a strange flash of light, he’s attacked by a silver-haired superhero in an unfamiliar costume. They fight savagely until Namor suddenly passes out. He wakes up a little later in a nearby beach house. The teenager is there but refuses to identify himself. Namor bolts for the sea, only to be laid low by a panic attack. Helping Namor back to the beach house, the teenager shows him news reports of him attacking a yacht in the Mid-Atlantic, which Namor doesn’t remember doing. They then head over to the nightclub where the teenager is scheduled to perform, and as he takes the stage with his guitar, Namor learns his name is Rick Jones. During Rick’s set, several young people in the audience notice Namor, and he learns from them that he’s become something of a folk hero among environmentalists. However, the club’s psychedelic lightshow causes Namor to have another panic attack. He smashes his way out of the building and takes to the sky, but he collides with the silver-haired superhero, who identifies himself as Captain Marvel. A blow to the head restores Namor’s memory of his encounter with Markham, and after he describes the threat, Captain Marvel agrees to help him deal with it. They fly out to Markham’s yacht and haul the molecular polluter up to the edge of space, where it explodes harmlessly. Though they’re stunned by the shockwave, Namor quickly recovers and catches Captain Marvel, only for him to suddenly transform into Rick Jones. Namor is irritated when Rick refuses to provide any explanation. He departs in a huff, leaving the ungrateful teenager on a beach. Back in Atlantis, Namor makes up with Dorma, assuring her that Diane means nothing to him. He’s informed that Magneto has mostly recovered and has been puttering around in the Hall of Science, much to Ikthon’s annoyance.
December 1964 – Namor summons Magneto to the throne room and tells him it’s time for him to go home. Magneto again proposes they join forces against the surface world, where mutants like them are persecuted. Having had no luck finding allies for Atlantis, Namor is more receptive to the idea this time. A couple hours later, a powerful shockwave strikes Atlantis from the west, causing extensive damage to the city. Magneto is able to trace the shockwave back to its point of origin: the Baxter Building headquarters of the Fantastic Four. The shockwave is soon followed by a missile, which Namor intercepts and destroys. Realizing the Fantastic Four’s long-anticipated next attack has finally come, Namor mobilizes his military for a counterstrike. Magneto offers to fight alongside him, and Namor reluctantly agrees. As they approach New York City, the Atlantean fleet is met by the Fantasti-Car, aboard which is Mister Fantastic, the Thing, and the Human Torch. Despite Namor’s determination not to strike first, a missile is launched from the royal flagship without his authorization. Frustrated, he flies out to intercept it, only to be caught in the blast when the Fantastic Four make it detonate prematurely. After a brief struggle, Namor and his three old foes discover that Magneto has manipulated them into this conflict, making each side believe the other initiated it. To make matters worse, Magneto has seized command of the flagship and taken both Dorma and the Invisible Girl hostage. In response, Namor and Mister Fantastic agree to work together.
Namor accompanies the Fantasti-Car back to New York, where they see the Atlantean fleet shelling the waterfront at Magneto’s command. The master of magnetism has artificially enhanced his mutant powers, leaving the city defenseless. Mister Fantastic convinces Namor to return to the flagship and pretend to be Magneto’s ally, so he’ll be close enough to strike at the villain when the Fantastic Four are ready to make their move. Although he finds such subterfuge distasteful, Namor complies. When he reaches the flagship, though, Magneto immediately orders him to take command of one of the battle cruisers and lead the ground invasion of the city. Reining in his temper, Namor does so, and Manhattan is soon once again under Atlantean military occupation. During the operation, Namor has a chance to confer with the Human Torch and warns him that his patience is wearing thin. He then flies over to Central Park, where Magneto is preparing to declare himself “overlord of Earth.” He’s outraged to see that Magneto has imprisoned Dorma and the Invisible Girl in transparent cylinders on either side of an ornate throne. After a little while, the Fantasti-Car arrives on the scene, bringing Mister Fantastic, the Thing, the Human Torch, and their newest teammate, Crystal. With a gesture, Crystal causes a thunderstorm to appear overhead, distracting Magneto long enough for Mister Fantastic to activate the weapon he brought along, which traps the villain within a cone of energy that turns his own power against him. Namor immediately frees Dorma while the Human Torch does the same for the Invisible Girl and then commends his troops for conducting themselves with honor in a difficult situation. He orders a full retreat but is not receptive to Mister Fantastic’s gratitude, citing the surface-dwellers’ deep-seated xenophobia. Namor and Dorma then board the flagship and depart, leaving the Fantastic Four to see that the defeated Magneto is taken into custody by the proper authorities.
When Ikthon is kidnapped just before the unveiling of a new weapons system, Namor’s investigation leads him to the wreck of a cruise ship sunk by warriors claiming allegiance to the Sub-Mariner. However, the vessel was well outside Atlantis’s territorial waters and all of Namor’s legions are accounted for. At the site, he finds Triton and Stingray, who are also investigating the sinking. Spotting a warship lurking behind a coral reef and suspecting a trap, Namor picks a fight with his two erstwhile associates, ensuring that all three of them are captured together. They are then transported to a gladiatorial arena in Skarka, where Attuma and his court jester, Saru-San, mock them. Attuma reveals that everyone from the cruise ship has been taken captive—the women and children are being held hostage while the men construct Ikthon’s new weapon, a powerful tunnel-boring machine that can attack cities from below. Namor is startled to see Diane Arliss among the prisoners. Attuma explains that he staged the sinking so as to incite a devastating war between Atlantis and the United States, intending to seize power in the aftermath. Working together, Namor, Triton, and Stingray break out of the arena and attack Attuma’s barbarian horde. When Attuma tries to activate the boring machine, it unexpectedly explodes, causing part of his fortress to collapse. Seeing their leader buried in rubble, his men retreat. Ikthon claims he sabotaged the machine, being willing to sacrifice his own life for the good of the realm, and Namor commends his valor. As they free the prisoners, Namor intentionally gives Diane the cold shoulder. Stingray then takes all the surface-dwellers home in one of Attuma’s warships. Triton bids Namor farewell and departs, whereupon Namor and Ikthon head back to Atlantis.
Ikthon soon detects a French nuclear bomb test in the Pacific Ocean, and Namor decides to propose a mutual-defense pact with the Lemurian Empire, believing his friend Karthon will be receptive to the idea. Thus, he makes his way to the new capital city of Lemuria, established after the destruction of the previous one a few months ago. Upon arrival, though, Namor discovers that Karthon has been deposed by a green-skinned woman named Llyra and is being held prisoner in a shark tank. Llyra warns him that the sharks are under her telepathic control and will kill Karthon at her command. Stymied, Namor demands to know what Llyra’s deal is, and she obligingly reveals that she’s the mutant hybrid offspring of a surface-dwelling mother and a Lemurian father, who ran an oceanarium together in Hawaii many years ago. Her father died saving her mother from a shark, and a few months later, she says, she and her twin sister Laurie were born. Namor rejects Llyra’s proposal that they join forces to conquer the world, so she sics three giant eels on him. Overcome by the eels’ electric shocks and neurotoxic venom, Namor quickly loses consciousness. When he comes to, he finds himself a prisoner in a display tank at the Morris Oceanarium, kept in a weakened state by chemicals in the water. He is visited briefly by Laurie, who looks like Llyra but has the typical coloration of a surface-woman. She is very nervous and clearly fearful of her twin. After Laurie leaves the room, a middle-aged woman passes through but barely acknowledges Namor. His efforts to escape prove futile. A little while later, though, Namor’s strength unexpectedly returns and he breaks out of the tank. He leaves the oceanarium and returns to the sea, only to be confronted by Llyra, who blames her sister for his escape. She uses her telepathic powers to make all the fish in the vicinity attack Namor, but her plan backfires when a sperm whale inadvertently causes a landslide that buries her under tons of rubble. Namor digs her out and, believing her to be dead, takes her back up to the beach. He’s astonished when her features suddenly shift to those of Laurie. The middle-aged woman turns up again and reveals that she’s Llyra’s mother. She explains that there was only ever one baby—Llyra was a shapeshifter with a split personality. Not knowing what to say, Namor leaves the grieving mother and swims back to Lemuria. There, he sees to it that Karthon is restored to his throne. The two leaders then formalize an alliance between their respective empires and enjoy a lavish celebration before Namor goes home.
As he draws near to Atlantis, Namor witnesses the underwater detonation of a nuclear bomb. Fearing for his people, Namor speeds to his kingdom and is relieved to see the damage is relatively minor—the blast actually occurred quite some distance away. Getting closer to the royal palace, he’s annoyed to see his exiled kinsman Byrrah has returned to capitalize on the near-catastrophe. Agitators in the crowd clamor for Byrrah to be their new emperor, though Namor and Dorma concur that he’s clearly stationed loyalists amidst the throng to act as rabble-rousers. When Namor accuses Byrrah of causing the nuclear explosion, his wily kinsman challenges him to produce evidence for his claim within 24 hours or forfeit the throne. Against Vashti’s advice, Namor accepts the challenge, given the anxious mood of the crowd, and sets off without delay. He’s haunted by the thought that, should he fail, Byrrah will undoubtedly try to force Dorma to marry him in order to legitimate his claim to the throne. He decides to seek help from a well-publicized meeting of the Special United Nations Council on Nuclear Armaments on an island off the coast of Brazil. Their scientists are able to trace the launch point of the missile that carried the bomb to a spot in the Caribbean that Namor recognizes as Dr. Dorcas’s undersea research installation. His suspicions confirmed, Namor makes his way there, breaches Dorcas’s defenses, and discovers the mad scientists is in cahoots with Krang. He easily defeats them both and drags them back to Atlantis, where he exposes Byrrah’s duplicity. The conspirators are taken into custody as Byrrah’s followers flee the scene. Namor bids the crowd to remain, though, and publicly asks Dorma to finally marry him. She immediately says yes and kisses her prince while the crowd cheers.
As wedding preparations get underway, Ikthon warns Namor of a weather-control experiment being conducted by the United Nations on a small island in the Caribbean Sea, which he believes could unleash environmental chaos. Knowing the U.N. won’t listen to him, Namor resolves to manipulate the Hulk into destroying the installation and locates the jade giant using his worldwide network of spy cameras. As luck would have it, the Hulk is already in the Caribbean, on the war-torn island nation of San Pablo. Given the Hulk’s unpredictability, Vashti suggests that Namor recruit the enigmatic Silver Surfer, who’s passing overhead at that very moment. Sensing a kindred spirit, Namor concurs and swims up to intercept the Silver Surfer, but the misanthropic extraterrestrial is not initially inclined to hear him out. After a brief scuffle beneath the waves, Namor finally gets his point across, and the Silver Surfer agrees to accompany him to San Pablo. When they arrive, the pair is immediately attacked by the Hulk, who recognizes them as former foes. Their battle is soon interrupted by the island’s heavily armed militia, led by a ranting generalissimo. Namor turns the situation to his advantage by convincing the Hulk they need to team up against their mutual enemies. He then eggs the Hulk on as the brute rampages through the militia’s ranks, tearing their weapons apart with his bare hands. Seeing the militia has been decimated, a group of armed revolutionaries comes storming out of the hills, firing at the fleeing soldiers. This causes the generalissimo to suffer a complete nervous breakdown, and at the Silver Surfer’s insistence, he is taken into custody by the revolutionaries. The Hulk is disappointed that all their foes have run away, but Namor promises him more action on a nearby island.
Reaching the site of the U.N.’s weather-controlling device, the Hulk is eager to destroy it, but Namor wants to try diplomacy first. The Silver Surfer insists they not quarrel among themselves when the fate of the world is at stake. Unfortunately, the trio is met by a bellicose American soldier, Colonel Willis, who’s fresh from a tour of duty in Vietnam. He flatly refuses Namor’s request to have the device inspected by Atlantean scientists before it’s activated. In response, Namor, the Hulk, and the Silver Surfer force Willis and his soldiers to retreat. Namor then summons Ikthon and his team of scientists to come ashore. When the royal flagship surfaces, Namor is annoyed to see that Dorma has insisted on coming along, but he graciously introduces her to his two allies. Suddenly, an Avengers Quinjet lands nearby, bringing Thor, Iron Man, and Goliath to the scene. Namor’s attempt to parley with them is cut short when the Hulk goes rogue and attacks Thor, leading to an all-out brawl. The fighting ends when Ikthon’s tests prove how dangerously unstable the device is and Willis concedes that the project needs to be re-evaluated. Namor is satisfied, but he and the Silver Surfer have to intervene to stop the Hulk from wrecking the installation anyway. Feeling betrayed, the Hulk leaps away and disappears into the distance, at which point the Silver Surfer departs also. Namor then introduces Dorma to the three Avengers before the Atlanteans return to their flagship and head for home. On the way, Namor learns that Dorma was instrumental in their victory, as her negotiations with Colonel Willis gave Ikthon the time he needed to run his tests. He decides he’s looking forward to Dorma helping to rule Atlantis at his side.
January 1965 – Some distance from Atlantis, Namor encounters a gorgeous, green-skinned mermaid, a creature he thought existed only in surface-world legends. He swims after her, despite knowing it would make Dorma insanely jealous, but she leads him into an ambush. The mermaid’s five accomplices are bizarre half human, half sea-creature monstrosities but clearly intelligent. Fighting them off, Namor assumes they must be mutants. After they’ve been subdued, the mermaid admits they’re outcasts who occasionally kidnap the stray Atlantean, either to hold for ransom or to sell to Lemurian slavers. Namor is moved by their plight and offers them his royal protection, insisting that his people are not prejudiced against mutants like the surface-dwellers are. However, he’s proved wrong when three Atlantean scouts, led by the uncouth Lorvex, arrive on the scene and immediately try to kill the mutants. Namor orders the scouts to desist, but Lorvex yells slurs at the mutants as they retreat. Disgusted by his men’s bigotry, Namor returns to the city.
On the day of his wedding, Namor swims to a distant coral reef to meet with Neptune’s son Proteus, who officiated at the weddings of Namor’s grandfather and great-grandfather. Proteus appears to him in the form of a blind, elderly Atlantean man and agrees to perform the same service again. He follows Namor back to Atlantis, bringing with him the Sacred Scroll of Neptune. Despite his apparent age and infirmity, Proteus effortlessly keeps pace with Namor. Along the way, Proteus diverts them to an out-of-the-way place a few miles from the city and reveals it to be the legendary Grotto of the Ancients. Within the cave, Namor is surprised to discover a colossal statue of Neptune holding his sacred trident. Prompted by Proteus, Namor takes the royal matrimonial oath before the image of his god. When they emerge from the cave, they find a wounded Atlantean warrior who reports that Attuma has taken advantage of the festivities to attack the city. Namor swims there at top speed and sees that the barbarian horde has somehow acquired octopus-shaped war machines and other advanced technology. Incensed, he wades into the battle, rallying his disorganized troops. With help from Lemurian Emperor Karthon and his entourage, the Atlanteans rout the invaders, who call a retreat after Namor lays out Attuma with a punch in the face. Welcoming his staunch ally, Namor then turns his attention to the wedding ceremony.
Before a crowd of nobles in the throne room, Namor poses in his royal regalia, holding Neptune’s sacred trident, as Proteus begins the proceedings. Dorma enters, wearing an opulent gown, and joins Namor on the dais. Proteus announces that Namor and Dorma already took binding vows of fealty at the time of their betrothal, and so, having entered their names on the Scroll of Sovereigns, he pronounces them husband and wife. Namor kisses Dorma and instantly realizes she’s an impostor. To his shock and horror, her features shift into those of Llyra, still very much alive. Llyra claims that their marriage is legitimate and she is now the queen of Atlantis. Furthermore, she warns, Dorma’s life depends on the prince accepting Llyra as his lawful wife, as his true love is being held hostage by three henchmen who had infiltrated Karthon’s entourage. Furious, Namor insists he will never submit to blackmail. Both Karthon and Ikthon urge Namor to use brute force to make Llyra reveal Dorma’s whereabouts, but the usurper only laughs and swims away with surprising speed. Namor catches her before she can flee the palace, at which point Proteus declares that Llyra’s scheme has already failed—it was Dorma who previously took the vow of fealty, and it was Dorma’s name he inscribed on the Scroll of Sovereigns, therefore Dorma has become Namor’s wife in absentia. Outraged, Llyra gets away from Namor and escapes by summoning a shiver of sharks to keep him busy. Overcoming the sharks, Namor rages at his departed foe, swearing to hunt her down and kill her if Dorma is not returned safely to Atlantis.
On the brink of despair, Namor vents his frustration on the Council of Elders and then goes to the Hall of Science to consult with Ikthon. He is horrified to catch Ikthon conspiring with Attuma via videophone, discussing how to use Dorma’s unforeseen kidnapping to their mutual advantage. Worse, it becomes clear that Ikthon wasn’t kidnapped by Attuma last month; they were already working together to depose him. Namor seizes Ikthon, only to learn that Attuma is about to invade Atlantis again in a new tunnel-boring machine. Knowing his first duty is to his kingdom, Namor leaves Ikthon under guard and heads out to battle Attuma. When the boring machine erupts through a nearby plaza, Namor tears it apart with his bare hands and dumps the wreck back into the tunnel it made, which collapses on top of it. Returning to the Hall of Science, Namor finds that Ikthon has knocked out his guards and is attempting to flee with the designs for all the sophisticated weapons Attuma and his barbarians were using. He’s about to kill the traitor when Ikthon hastily reveals that he can track Dorma’s brainwaves to determine where she’s being held. Namor relents, and Ikthon’s scanner soon places Dorma at a particular set of coordinates on the Florida coast. Posting more guards outside the lab, Namor speeds off to North America, feeling that the crown has brought him nothing but heartache.
When he arrives, Namor makes short work of the trio of Lemurian kidnappers and overcomes a giant crab. However, he’s then swarmed by tens of thousands of leeches that fasten themselves to his flesh and drink his blood, no matter how fiercely he tries to shake them off. He’s about to pass out when the leeches abruptly lose interest and drift away. Surfacing, Namor finds himself at another Morris Oceanarium, though this one’s been shut down recently. He bursts into the main building and finds Dorma lying on the floor, gasping for breath. A shattered cylindrical tank stands nearby where she was evidently held prisoner, and there’s water all over the floor. Namor takes Dorma into his arms, and she manages to tell him she loves him before dying of asphyxiation. Overcome with grief, Namor staggers outside, carrying her dead body in his arms, and screams her name into the night. Upon bringing the body back to Atlantis, Namor is met by a heartsick Vashti. Ikthon is brought before the prince in chains, but the insolent traitor merely mocks him, pointing out that Dorma would still be alive if not for the “chains” binding Namor to the throne. Ikthon is then dragged back to the dungeon to await sentencing, and Namor is forced to reckon with the fact that, if he had let Atlantis be invaded by Attuma, he could have arrived in time to save the woman he loves.
Consumed with guilt, Namor sinks into a profound depression while Dorma’s body is sealed inside a crystalline sarcophagus to lie in state within a gleaming marble monopteros. Castigating himself for loving her too little and too late, Namor begs Dorma’s forgiveness before deciding to abdicate the throne and leave Atlantis forever. After an appropriate period of official mourning, a lavish state funeral is held for Princess Dorma. Amidst the heartfelt lamentations of the people, a solemn procession carries the crystalline sarcophagus to the ornate royal tomb at the end of the Avenue of Kings, where she is interred. As the massive doors close, Namor takes off his crown and addresses the throng. He admits that the blame for the enduring enmity between Atlantis and the surface world largely falls on him—he committed an act of war 25 years ago by killing the first surface-dwellers he ever encountered and then rained chaos and destruction down on New York City, rallying the surface world against him. And in the last three years, no one has beaten the drums of war more than he himself. The ongoing blockade of their territorial waters has only exacerbated the problem, and all his attempts at diplomacy have failed. Deeply ashamed, he announces his abdication, sending shockwaves through the crowd. He then bids farewell to his kingdom and departs without further delay. He heads back to the Morris Oceanarium in Florida in search of Llyra but finds the place deserted. Imagining Llyra gleefully smashing open Dorma’s water tank and leaving her to die, he goes berserk and demolishes the main building. Stung by the futility of his actions, though, Namor returns to the turbulent sea, wanting nothing more than to be alone.
February 1965 – Wondering if his father’s world will ever accept him, Namor decides to make his home in New York City, where at least he knows a few people. He takes over a long-abandoned prison on Belmont Island in the East River, assuming the surface-dwellers won’t care if he makes use of it. He spends the night redecorating the building to give it more of an Atlantean flavor. In the morning, several police officers arrive by boat and question him, worried that he’s amassing an invasion force within the complex. Namor assures them his intentions are peaceful. Another boat brings a number of journalists to the island, among them Diane Arliss, who writes for the magazine U.S. News & World Report. Namor informs them of his wife’s death and his subsequent abdication, reminding them that he’s the son of an American sailor named Leonard McKenzie. An irate New Yorker tries to drive the Sub-Mariner off with a gun, but Namor easily defeats him. The police arrest the man and order the reporters off the island. As she’s leaving, Diane offers Namor her condolences for Dorma’s death. That night, though, the U.S. Army starts shelling the island, blowing holes in the jail. Namor destroys the tanks on the opposite bank of the river, only to realize the shelling was merely a diversion; an underwater demolition crew sets off a tremendous explosion that obliterates Belmont Island, leaving only a few remnants sticking out of the water. Shortly after dawn, Diane returns in a rowboat with Walter Newell, and she shows Namor an old newspaper article from the 1920s revealing that his father survived the Atlanteans’ attack on his ship and returned to New York, though no one at the time believed his tales of subaquatic people. Thought to be a madman, Leonard McKenzie moved to Boston and dropped out of the public eye. Filled with hope that his father may still be alive after all these years, Namor heads immediately to New England.
Halfway there, though, Namor feels a strange compulsion to return to New York. After nightfall, a large, glowing object materializes in Central Park, and a voice from within calls to him. Unexpectedly, Daredevil turns up and angrily tells the Sub-Mariner to go back where he came from. Namor is annoyed by Daredevil’s persistent yet futile attempts to drive him off, and his fury grows when Spider-Man attacks him as well. Their battle is interrupted when the glowing object opens, revealing a beautiful woman inside. She calls the Sub-Mariner and Spider-Man to enter, and they feel compelled to comply. As the trio moves through a mystic void, the woman identifies herself as Princess Tuvia of the People of the Black Sea. Namor has heard of them in ancient Atlantean legends, a group of psychics banished from Atlantis in the dim past for worshiping strange gods. Tuvia wants Namor and Spider-Man to defeat a powerful tyrant, Turalla, who’s threatening their way of life. Namor feels honor-bound to agree, but Spider-Man is less eager to get involved, put off by Tuvia’s high-handed attitude. Tuvia’s two champions soon face off against the super-strong Turalla in a gladiatorial arena, determined to prevent him from claiming the throne through a traditional rite of combat. Brimming with confidence, Turalla mocks his foes for looking like a circus act. After several minutes of brutal battle, the Sub-Mariner and Spider-Man gain the upper hand, prompting Turalla to cheat by using his psychic powers. The pair is rendered unconscious, but they quickly recover to see Turalla struck dead by a devastating telepathic attack. As the crowd cheers, Tuvia reveals that the lethal psychic energy came from New England and speculates that one of her people may be living there. With that, she waves her magic wand and returns her two champions to New York City. There, Namor shakes Spider-Man’s hand and says he’ll head up to New England to investigate, since he was going up there anyway to search for his father. Spider-Man wishes him luck, and they part as friends.
Namor is waylaid in upstate New York after being struck by a bolt of lightning that lances up from the ground during a thunderstorm. A young woman named Lucille helps him to a dilapidated mansion on a lonely hilltop, where he meets her Aunt Serr, a former atomic scientist irradiated many years ago by an accidental explosion that killed her husband, and Aunt Serr’s son Karl, a mutant with rock-like skin through which he can discharge electrical blasts. Using a laboratory in a sub-basement under the mansion, Aunt Serr has been mutating people from the local community to create “peers” for her monstrous son, and she attempts to subject the Sub-Mariner to the same process. Namor breaks free, though, and fights with Karl. Unfortunately, Aunt Serr mutates Lucille instead, granting her formidable psychic powers that she immediately uses to render Namor unconscious. When he comes to, Namor finds himself left for dead outside in the rain. Dazed, he hikes down into the nearby village, where he discovers Aunt Serr’s other victims, all transformed into horrifying monsters. He inspires them to strike back at their tormentor and leads them in an assault on the mansion. Again, Lucille incapacitates Namor with her telepathic powers. He soon recovers, only to get into another destructive battle with Karl. Unexpectedly, a tremendous explosion in the laboratory wrecks the mansion, and as it starts to collapse, Lucille kills her abusive aunt with a blast of psychic energy. Shocked by his mother’s death, Karl gives up the fight. Lucille then uses telekinesis to push Namor through a window and out into the yard. He hits the ground hard and blacks out. When he wakes up the next morning, Namor finds the mansion has burned to the ground. Checking through the smoldering ruin, he finds the charred corpses of Lucille, Karl, and Aunt Serr. He then discovers the underground lab was obliterated by the explosion, with various burnt body parts of the monstrous townsfolk strewn around—evidently, they succeeded in getting their revenge. Horrified by the senseless carnage, Namor continues on to New England.
Namor spends several days in and around Boston searching for his father, but since he doesn’t really have a plan of action, he soon becomes frustrated. He does manage to destroy a nest of Soviet spies before they can poison the sea with radioactive waste, but he mostly just wanders around, stewing about getting revenge on Llyra and hearing rumors about someone called Tuval, the Mind-Master, who might be the long-lost member of the People of the Black Sea who killed Turalla. One evening, he becomes enthralled by the folk rock being played at an outdoor music festival in a park and realizes the audience members, mostly in their teens and twenties, feel as alienated from their society as he does. Two young women invite him to sit with them, but about an hour later, the festival is disrupted by Tuval, the Mind Master using his power to warp reality. Namor confronts him, but Tuval brags that, so long as he draws psychic energy from his hundreds of followers, he’s invincible. Undaunted, Namor battles the shapeshifting Tuval, who confirms that he did indeed kill Turalla. Unfortunately, he complains, he’s been on Earth so long that he’s forgotten how to physically traverse the dimensional barrier to rejoin the People of the Black Sea. He gets so upset about it that he drops his guard, enabling Namor to knock him out with a punch in the face. Namor then spots a crowd of elderly citizens standing outside the park in a trance and realizes they must be the followers Tuval spoke of. He harasses them until they wake from their trance, at which point all of Tuval’s reality warping is undone. He changes into an old man with a white beard as his befuddled followers disperse. Satisfied that the situation has been resolved, Namor departs to continue the search for his father.
Namor is surprised when Doctor Strange turns up, having escaped from the dimension of the demonic Undying Ones. The sorcerer requests his help stopping an old enemy, Yandroth, the self-styled “Scientist Supreme,” from destroying the world with a doomsday device called the Omegatron. Namor grudgingly agrees and suggests they also recruit the Hulk and the Silver Surfer to their cause. Strange conjures up a mystical image of the Silver Surfer, only to see him slamming into some kind of energy barrier around the planet. The alien crashes back to the ground, and Strange insists they don’t have time to wait for him to recover. He turns his attention to the Hulk and locates him wandering around in the forests of Quebec, Canada. Strange goes into a trance so his astral form can lead the Hulk to them. Namor sits down next to him, feeling increasingly annoyed. When the Hulk appears a little later, Strange emerges from his trance and convinces the green-skinned brute to help them destroy the Omegatron. The unlikely trio then heads to Point Promontory, Maine, where they discover the fortress-like Omegatron disguised as a lighthouse and surrounded by a force field. Strange tells his allies to smash through the doomsday device’s defenses, but Namor complains about being ordered around like some lackey. The sorcerer immediately apologizes, and Namor is somewhat placated. Namor and the Hulk soon breach the imposing structure and find the central chamber housing the massive Omegatron. They’re about to wreck it when Strange flies in and tells them to stop. Assuming him to be a defensive illusion, Namor and the Hulk ignore his warnings and try to drive him off. Suddenly, the Hulk changes into Llyra, and Namor lunges at her, reasoning that this whole set-up has been an elaborate trap. As they fight, Namor finds that Llyra has somehow gained incredible superhuman strength and invulnerability. After a few minutes, though, Llyra reverts to the Hulk, and Namor realizes he was hallucinating. The Hulk, too, was evidently hallucinating, and Namor is furious when Strange admits to being the cause of it. He needed to keep them busy, he says, while he wove a spell slowing down time around the Omegatron to an imperceptible crawl. Otherwise, it would have used the kinetic energy of their blows to trigger a nuclear catastrophe. Regardless, Namor is angry that his personal vendetta against Llyra was exploited in this way. He berates Strange for his handling of the situation, complaining that they nearly destroyed the world while trying to be its defenders. The sorcerer suggests that “the Defenders” would be a great name for a superhero team if they wanted to do this on a regular basis. Hulk vehemently rejects the proposal, citing his bad experience with the Avengers. Namor just ignores Doctor Strange’s stupid idea, dives into the sea, and swims back to Boston.
While watching TV in a seedy hotel room, Namor is outraged to learn the President of the United States has signed an executive order making his capture and prosecution a top priority of the federal government. When he is subsequently harassed by the Boston police, he goes on a destructive rampage through the streets, ending up at the waterfront. He dives into Boston Harbor, intending to stay out of sight until nightfall and then return to his hotel. About half an hour later, though, a gigantic sea monster appears, capsizing several boats. Namor recognizes the creature as the legendary Krago, which he fought once before back in the 1940s. Despite interference from the Human Torch, Namor succeeds in driving Krago off before it can do more than demolish a single warehouse. Later, on his way back to the hotel, Namor sees the royal crest of Lemuria projected onto the storm clouds overhead. He follows the beam of light back to the harbor, where he spots a Lemurian scout ship rising out of the water. Assuming Llyra is aboard, he attacks the ship, only to be distracted again by the bumbling Human Torch. The ship fires on Namor, sending him crashing to a nearby rooftop and leaving him with a splitting headache. Blaming the Human Torch for spoiling his revenge, Namor beats him up. The ship then reappears and lowers Diane Arliss to the rooftop via a vortex beam. Diane is distraught, revealing that she and Walter Newell managed to track down Leonard McKenzie, but Llyra extracted the information from her using a mind-probe and is now holding the old man hostage aboard the ship. Boiling with anger, Namor castigates both Diane and the Human Torch for interfering in his personal affairs. He then agrees to surrender to Llyra and flies up into the ship.
Once aboard, Namor comes face to face with Llyra. He’s surprised to find Tiger Shark there, too, along with a surface-dweller henchman called Lymondo. He’s a bit stunned to see his 70-year-old father, Leonard McKenzie, recognizing him from the images Destiny beamed into his mind last year. McKenzie seems a bit senile and is clearly not well, which further enrages Namor. He attacks Tiger Shark, but during the fight, Llyra gleefully ejects them both from the ship through an airlock. At the bottom of Boston Harbor, Namor notices immediately that something’s wrong with Tiger Shark—he appears to be drowning. An energy beam suddenly blasts them into unconsciousness, and when Namor comes to, he finds himself locked in a holding cell on the ship with his father, who seems a bit more lucid than before. They have a few minutes to get to know each other, but Namor is distracted by nearby sounds of battle as the ship starts taking on water. Worried that his father will drown, Namor breaks out of the cell, beats up Lymondo, and leads McKenzie in search of an escape hatch. They come upon Tiger Shark battling Stingray, who’s no match for the savage villain. Namor intervenes, slamming Tiger Shark into a bulkhead, but he recovers quickly and throws a lead pipe at McKenzie, cracking his skull. Namor grabs his father, who gasps out a few words before he dies. Llyra and Tiger Shark abandon ship and get away, leaving Lymondo to drown. Stingray tries to get Namor to go after their retreating foes, but he’s too consumed with grief. Engulfed in despair, Namor leaves the ship as it settles on the seabed and swims back to the surface. He wanders into the city, collapses in a shadowy alley, and weeps.
Unable to deal with so much anguish, Namor retreats into a fugue state. Bereft of all memory of who he is, he dresses in some tattered clothes and, after a day or so, climbs into a boxcar on a train bound for Chicago. En route, he’s assaulted by a couple of hobos, so he throws them off the moving train. Since they called him Namor, he decides that’s as good a name as any. Arriving at a Chicago trainyard, Namor escapes from a security guard by throwing a boxcar at him. To their mutual surprise, the boxcar is vaporized in mid-air. Namor flees into the city and, after nightfall, meets a kindhearted young woman named Cindy Jones, who helps him into her apartment and fixes him some herbal tea. Their conversation is interrupted by Doctor Doom, although the amnesiac Namor doesn’t recognize him. Revealing it was he who vaporized the boxcar earlier, Doom starts to propose an alliance, only to be savagely attacked by Namor, who’s freaked out by a jumble of fragmented memories. They tumble down the stairs, wreck the apartment of an elderly couple, crash through a window, and land on the sidewalk outside. Cindy intervenes to stop the fight, whereupon Doom apologizes graciously for the misunderstanding and invites them to discuss the matter further at the Latverian embassy. There, Doom speaks with Namor monarch-to-monarch and convinces him to join forces in seizing a super-weapon from a defunct subversive organization called Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.), to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. However, Namor insists that Cindy accompany them, to Doom’s obvious annoyance.
Joined by a crew of Doom’s minions, the unlikely trio takes a private jet south to the A.I.M. installation, stopping in a swamp outside New Orleans, Louisiana. Doom tries to dissuade his stubborn ally from bringing Cindy any further, but Namor refuses to back down, deciding instead to abruptly dissolve their partnership. He flies Cindy into New Orleans’s French Quarter, where she used to live, and she introduces him to two friends of hers, Arlene and John, who turn out to be drug-dealers. John attacks Namor with a pistol, and in the ensuing fracas, Namor is knocked unconscious. When he comes to, Namor finds the police are on the scene, a large window is broken, Cindy is missing, and John’s had his head bashed in. Sobbing hysterically, Arlene blames it all on Namor. He gets violent when the police try to arrest him, but Doctor Doom intervenes and carries Namor away aboard his aero-car. Doom reveals that he’s taken Cindy hostage to force Namor to be more cooperative. They then make their way to the A.I.M. installation, located beneath the Gulf of Mexico, and break in. Unfortunately, they discover the base is not deserted, as Doom had hoped, but is guarded by an army of featureless androids under the command of A.I.M.’s grotesque leader, M.O.D.O.K. After a brief battle with the androids, Namor is taken prisoner so that M.O.D.O.K. can use the super-weapon—the Cosmic Cube—to exchange bodies with him. Not wishing to spend the rest of his life in M.O.D.O.K.’s hideous form, Namor fights his way into the laboratory housing the Cosmic Cube and shuts down its containment chamber, causing the cube’s mysterious energies to run amok. With the installation disintegrating around him, Namor gets away from M.O.D.O.K. and meets up with Doom and Cindy. Doom himself is nearly disintegrated by the cube’s energies before they escape in his private jet. No sooner have they breached the surface of the gulf than the installation is obliterated by a tremendous explosion. Both Namor and Doom assume that M.O.D.O.K. has been killed.
Doctor Doom drops Namor and Cindy off in New Orleans, admitting that he feels indebted to them for saving his life, though he’s disappointed that Namor ultimately destroyed the Cosmic Cube rather than helping him obtain it. After the Latverian dictator has departed, Cindy says goodbye as well, clearly shaken by her harrowing experience. She tells Namor to return to the sea where he belongs and then walks off into the fog. Frustrated to find himself alone in a strange city, Namor wanders down to the waterfront and dives into the Mississippi River. He’s appalled to see what he takes to be the corpse of a teenage girl floating nearby. As he moves closer, though, he spots air bubbles coming from the body and realizes she must be attempting suicide. Not wanting a dead body to pollute the water any more than it already is, he carries the girl up onto a beach and administers mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Surprisingly, the girl abruptly regains consciousness and delivers him a prodigious punch in the jaw. She berates him for sexually assaulting her and runs back into the water. Annoyed, Namor watches her disappear beneath the waves, thinking she must be determined to drown herself. After brooding about it for a little while, Namor decides it’s none of his business and swims off down the river into the gulf. Feeling somehow drawn to the bottom of the world, he heads for the open ocean and slowly makes his way south.
March 1965 – When Namor reaches Antarctica, some instinct leads him to the ruins of Thakorr’s Atlantis, though the place seems only vaguely familiar. He encounters a large, talking crab calling itself Salamar the Sustainer, which is intent on building a mighty empire on the site, with Namor as its figurehead. Frustrated by Namor’s amnesia, Salamar tries to jog his memory by showing him the dead body of his cousin Namora, perfectly preserved in a block of ice. Salamar reveals that Namora has a daughter named Namorita, whom the crab wants Namor to take as his royal consort. Not recognizing Namora, Namor admits that he finds the whole situation baffling. Annoyed, Salamar hoists a half-dead, emaciated man out of an oil pit and identifies the shackled figure as Byrrah, warning Namor that the same fate awaits him if he refuses to cooperate. Outraged by such inhumane treatment of a prisoner, Namor attacks Salamar, only to discover the crab is protected by an electrified force field. Weakened by Salamar’s electrical discharges, Namor soon finds himself hopelessly trapped within a similar force field. After several days, he realizes his only chance is to bluff his way out. He tells Salamar he’ll accede to its demands, but as soon as the force field is dropped, Namor attacks the crab and kills it. He finds various electronic components hidden inside the crab’s shell, including a microphone and speaker, confirming that the crab was little more than a puppet. This leads him to discover the real Byrrah in a nearby building—the pitiful creature in the oil pit was just a decoy. Unsure if Namor is faking his amnesia, Byrrah again asserts that he is the rightful heir to Emperor Thakorr’s throne. Not getting a reaction, he orders his monstrous, crustacean-like guards to bring in Namorita to use as a hostage. Namor is shocked to see that this Namorita is the very same girl he encountered in the Mississippi River.
Namorita’s remarkable resemblance to Namora stirs Namor’s memories of the many happy hours he spent playing with his cousin when they were teenagers. He also recalls meeting Namorita when she was a baby, when her mother nicknamed her “Nita.” His memory fully returns, though, when Llyra enters and he comes face to face with the woman who killed his bride and was an accessory to his father’s murder. Llyra tries to kill Namor with a ray gun, but he evades its deadly blasts. Her errant shots kill off Byrrah’s weird guards before Namor disarms her. Namorita lunges for the dropped gun, accidentally knocking Llyra into the oil pit. Namor refuses to rescue her, though, saying she got what she deserved. Namorita reveals that she’s long suspected that Llyra murdered Namora, and Namor is shocked that there seems to be no end to her crimes. Byrrah then holds Namor and Namorita at gunpoint, unwilling to let go of his dream of building a new empire. Undaunted, Namor attacks him, but in the middle of their fight, Byrrah suddenly dematerializes, much to Namor’s annoyance. The battle abruptly ended, Namor realizes glumly that his revenge on Llyra has brought him no comfort.
As they swim off, Namorita tells Namor how, when she was a baby, she and her mother emigrated to the Pacific Ocean after Atlantis was destroyed. They eventually settled in Lemuria, in a client kingdom ruled by a royal family under the aegis of Emperor Naga. There, Llyra took them in, having ingratiated herself with the royals. As she grew up, Namorita often saw her mother and Llyra fighting over a man, Prince Merro, who was heir to the local throne. Finally, roughly ten years ago, Namora died suddenly from poisoning. Namorita believed Llyra was responsible, though she had no proof. Llyra soon married Prince Merro, who also died mysteriously after ascending the throne, leaving Llyra as the new queen. Namorita was made one of her ladies-in-waiting and lived at the palace. A year ago, Byrrah turned up, having been exiled from the new Atlantis, and formed an alliance with Llyra. The tyrannical queen was clearly intrigued by Byrrah’s stories about Prince Namor as they schemed to depose him, and Namorita knew it was only a matter of time until Llyra betrayed Byrrah as well. They established a base of operations there in the ruins near Antarctica, which Byrrah stocked with weapons and technology obtained from an unknown source. Namorita was forced to come along and trained to perform scouting missions. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, Llyra sent Namorita to North America to search for Namor, threatening to destroy her mother’s body if she didn’t comply. Namorita had some vague intuition that she would find Namor in the Mississippi River delta, and she was actually sleeping when Namor stumbled upon her. She apologizes for mistaking him for a common masher. Namor is quite impressed with his cousin’s courage and fortitude and tells her so.
In the ruins of Thakorr’s throne room, Namor clears away much of the debris and settles into the throne, wondering if he made a mistake in abdicating. He is distracted when an oil spring erupts through the shattered floor, spraying him and Namorita with crude oil. While he’s dealing with that, Byrrah rematerializes, now surrounded by a personal force field that Namor is unable to penetrate. Byrrah gloats that the mysterious allies who’ve been supplying him with advanced technology are in fact extraterrestrials interested in extracting Earth’s oil deposits. In return for his cooperation, they’ve promised to make him the king of all the oceans. Regardless, Namor refuses to knuckle under to Byrrah under any circumstances. Surprisingly, Byrrah then dematerializes again in mid-sentence. Worried, Namorita leads Namor to a sunken ship that contaminated the oil deposits in the area with its radioactive cargo. She often spied on Byrrah when he was exploring the site, she reveals, and takes Namor into a large cavern beneath the wreck. They discover it’s the source of the crustacean-like monsters that Byrrah was exploiting, the radioactive oil having mutated ordinary crabs. Determined to seal off the cavern, Namor salvages some explosives from a sunken Navy supply ship not too far away. Byrrah turns up again, but Namor rips off his force-field belt before it can be activated. Unexpectedly, a trio of lizard-like aliens materializes in the cavern and starts shooting indiscriminately at everything that moves. Byrrah is hit but manages to order his monsters to attack the aliens before he passes out. Within seconds, the crustacean-like creatures overwhelm the three aliens and kill them. Namor, Namorita, and Byrrah evacuate the cavern before destroying it with the explosives, though the resulting cave-in causes further damage to what’s left of Thakorr’s Atlantis. Namorita convinces Namor to let the wounded Byrrah go, certain he’ll be grateful to receive Namor’s mercy. As Byrrah swims away, Namor tells Namorita she’s naïve and suggests they find some shelter and get some sleep.
A few days later, Namor remembers that, back in 1948, Namora told him she’d started keeping a journal that she wanted him to read in the event of her death. Going alone, he heads down into the deepest recesses of a nearby geological feature known as the Boundary Trench and retrieves Namora’s scroll from its hiding place. He is shocked when one of the final entries reveals that Namora colluded with the infamous geneticist Vyrra to clone her and implant the resulting fetus in her womb so she could pass it off as her natural child and thereby save her marriage. That clone was Namorita, although Namora kept the secret from everyone, especially her husband, Talan. Namor well remembers as a child witnessing Vyrra’s banishment from the kingdom for his illegal cloning experiments—a very lenient sentence given the Atlanteans’ dark history of abusing cloning technology. All Atlantean schoolchildren learn of a long-ago massacre of thousands of clone slaves, known as “the Night of the Long Spears” despite the brutal purge taking weeks to complete. Since his banishment, Vyrra himself has become something of a boogeyman used to frighten errant children into good behavior. However, due to his wartime experiences with the android Human Torch, Namor has come to believe that artificially created people are just as worthy of human rights as anyone else, so he resolves never to reveal Namorita’s secret, even to her. He realizes, though, that it would be too dangerous for Namorita to live in Atlantis, for if her secret were to come out, she would be summarily executed. Putting Namora’s scroll back in its hiding place, Namor departs.
Feeling ill-suited to being a parent to a teenaged girl, Namor announces that Namorita is to go live in New York City with his old friend Betty Dean. Namor has decided that this is the best available option under the circumstances, as Betty also took in Namora when she first went to the surface world. However, Namorita has a temper tantrum and refuses to go, reminding Namor that she’s hardly been to the surface and knows nothing of its customs or mores. She immediately backs down, though, when Namor threatens to slap her. They soon set off for New York to search for Betty. Namor recalls that Betty said her last name was Prentiss now when he encountered her last year, so he finds a phone booth and consults the Yellow Pages, which leads to an exhausting door-to-door inquiry. After several hours, they finally find Betty’s apartment, but her rustic landlady tells them to get lost. Losing his temper, Namor pushes his way inside, prompting the landlady to hit him with her mop. Namorita intercedes, getting her hot-tempered cousin to back off and then very diplomatically cajoling the landlady into telling them where Betty is. Namor is frustrated to learn that Betty is halfway around the world, vacationing on Krakinowa, a tropical island in the Japanese archipelago. Remembering the island from World War II, Namor leads Namorita up to the roof, where they fly off to Japan. He’s grateful that Namorita has ankle wings like his and can fly under her own power, otherwise he’d have to carry her around like a child.
When they finally reach Krakinowa, Namor and Namorita come upon Betty Dean Prentiss apparently being assaulted on a beach by a Japanese man. Namor swoops down and knocks the man out with a punch in the face. Startled, Betty insists the man was not attacking her—he was injured and delirious, and she was trying to help him. Namorita chides her cousin for acting rashly again, which only annoys him further. Suddenly, a costumed superhuman calling himself Sunfire snatches the unconscious man and carries him off into the sky after dazzling Namor, Namorita, and Betty with a bright flash of light. Sunfire also hits Namor with a burst of superheated plasma, causing him intense pain. Determined to strike back, Namor leaves Namorita with Betty and chases Sunfire into the dense jungle that covers the island. He soon observes Sunfire meeting with his boss in a clearing, a would-be conqueror called Dragon-Lord. The U.S. Navy still maintains a presence on the island, which Sunfire and Dragon-Lord find intolerable, so they’re plotting to hijack a cargo ship transporting powerful defoliants to the American forces in Vietnam and use it in a blackmail scheme. Realizing the defoliants could cause an environmental catastrophe were they to end up in the ocean, Namor follows Sunfire when he flies off to attack the ship. They get into a fight high above the cargo ship, and Namor quickly sees that his foe’s powers are very similar to those of the Human Torch. An obnoxious braggart, Sunfire reveals himself to be a mutant, and given his obvious inexperience in combat, Namor determines he must be quite young. Unfortunately, despite Namor’s best efforts, Sunfire manages to hit the ship with his plasma blasts, blowing a huge hole in the hull and releasing the deadly chemicals into the sea. Furious, Namor castigates Sunfire for causing a disaster that could potentially destroy the world, explaining that the chemical agents could kill all the plankton for thousands of miles, if not worldwide. With their foundational role in the ecosystem destroyed, there would be devastating disruptions to global food webs as well as the planet’s oxygen cycle. This would be catastrophic for Japan, he stresses, as well as the rest of the world. Realizing he’s made a grievous error, Sunfire agrees to help clean up the spill.
After working together to rescue the crew, repair the sinking ship, and seal the contaminated water in a subsea cavern, Namor and Sunfire fly back to the island to confront Dragon-Lord. Bursting into the villain’s underground headquarters, Sunfire stops Dragon-Lord from blowing the place up with his self-destruct system and drags him outside. Once they’re clear, Namor floods the installation. When Dragon-Lord boasts that his ultimate weapon will simply wait in the flooded complex for him or some other visionary to use it to conquer the world, Sunfire shoots a full-intensity plasma blast at the installation, triggering a tremendous explosion that completely obliterates it and all the weapons it contains. His schemes undone, Dragon-Lord is turned over to the authorities at the island’s U.S. naval base. However, Sunfire immediately attacks Namor again, determined to avenge his honor for having been made to look like a fool with the whole cargo ship fiasco. Not interested in continuing their fight, Namor tricks Sunfire into knocking himself out by colliding with a wooden bridge. Namor then catches up with Betty and Namorita aboard an ocean liner docked at the island’s main port. He’s annoyed to find Namorita cavorting in the water with a young man who’s evidently a member of the ship’s crew. Betty says they make a cute couple, and Namor notices she’s wrapped his cousin’s ankle wings with medical tape, presumably to stop her from flying away. After filling them in on everything that happened with Sunfire, Namor says goodbye to Betty and Namorita as the ship prepares to get underway. Namorita asks him to wear one of her golden earrings, claiming it has magical properties that will allow them to communicate over vast distances. She’s frustrated when she realizes Namor’s ears aren’t pierced, but he promises to see to it as soon as he can. From the beach, Namor then watches as the ship heads out to sea, marveling at how much Namorita reminds him of her mother when she was that age. This confirms his belief that she should not live in Atlantis, where people still remember Namora. Finally, he decides to return to the ruins of Thakorr’s Atlantis to figure out what to do with his life. He dives into the ocean and swims south.
April 1965 – Back in Antarctica, Namor, now wearing the earring Namorita gave him, discovers a rash of mysterious shipwrecks and wonders if Byrrah could be responsible. He soon discovers a herd of sea lions stealing the cargo from the shipwrecks and delivering it to a hollow iceberg. Inside the iceberg, he finds the crews of the ships being held captive by a furry giant named Torg, who styles himself as the Abominable Snow-King. Assuming Torg to be a mutant, Namor attacks him but finds him to be a formidable opponent. Help comes from an unexpected quarter as many of the sailors gang up on Torg, despite his towering over them. Impressed by the sailors’ bravery, Namor leads the enraged Torg out of the iceberg, where he is beset by a fleet of U.S. Navy search-and-rescue helicopters. After consulting with one of the helicopter pilots, Namor keeps Torg busy while the fleet rescues the sailors from the iceberg. Namor then leads Torg to the field of oil springs where he battled Byrrah and Llyra last month. Breaking open one of the capped springs, Namor sprays Torg with crude oil. Furious, Torg chases Namor up to the surface, where the freezing-cold air causes the oil to congeal in the giant’s fur. Namor takes advantage of the distraction and kills his foe by dropping a large chunk of ice on his head.
May–June 1965 – Namor surveys the current state of Thakorr’s Atlantis and wonders if it could ever become a livable settlement again. He puts the finishing touches on a modest dwelling he started renovating when Namorita was there and also cleans up more of the debris in the ruins of the royal palace. He makes time to tend to his mother’s grave site and tries not to think about how much he misses Dorma.
July 1965 – In the Southern Ocean, Namor stumbles upon an Atlantean woman named Coral being menaced by sharks. She’s trying to defend herself with a large knife, and Namor worries she’ll inadvertently drive the sharks into a feeding frenzy. After rescuing Coral, Namor learns that she was sent there by Lord Vashti, who was named regent of Atlantis following Namor’s abdication. The realm is in dire need of its prince’s protection, she says, as an alien spacecraft landed not far away and they don’t know whether its occupants are hostile. To make matters worse, the city’s legions have been on the frontier fighting off Attuma’s hordes, leaving the rest of the population undefended. Namor is irritated that Coral insists on addressing him by his royal title and that the Atlanteans seem incapable of getting along without him. Reluctantly, he agrees to escort Coral back to Atlantis and assess the situation but makes it clear he will not enter the city. As they swim north, Coral informs Namor that, not long after he left, Ikthon was executed for treason. Namor feels this to be right and proper, considering Ikthon to have been an accessory to Dorma’s murder. Coral relates much more news of the realm on their long journey, but Namor couldn’t be less interested.
When they arrive, Namor tells Coral to go on into the city, assuring her that he’ll check the perimeter for any lurking threats. As he swims away, Namor’s mind is awash with all the painful memories he’s been suppressing. He then comes across a trio of fearsome-looking, vaguely humanoid aquatic monsters trying to break through the wall surrounding the city. They attack him, gibbering in some unintelligible language. As they fight, Namor wonders how such dim-witted, savage creatures could pilot an interstellar spaceship. No sooner has he killed the three monsters than Coral turns up with a group of aquatic men with red skin. She explains that the aliens have come in peace, but their bestial servants escaped when their ship crash-landed. The leader of the crew, who identifies himself as “First Brother,” reveals that his race is on the brink of extinction and they’ve come seeking refuge in Earth’s seas, which are not unlike their native habitat. If permitted to settle there, he continues, they’ll bring their women to Earth as well, after their ship is repaired. Namor suggests they ask the Atlanteans for help and directs them to speak with Vashti. He refuses to accompany them, though, and swims off. However, he immediately turns back when he hears terrible screams outside the city’s gates. He’s shocked to find that a contingent of bedraggled warriors, returning from the frontier, mistook the aliens for invaders and slaughtered them. They also killed Coral, assuming she was a traitor. Furious, Namor carries Coral’s body away for burial, refusing to listen to the warriors’ excuses. He berates himself for not escorting the aliens into the city, realizing the warriors’ rash act has doomed their race to extinction. After burying Coral, Namor swims off to seek solace in solitude.
August 1965 – Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, Namor sees a space capsule drop into the water and get sucked into a mysterious whirlpool. Realizing there are probably astronauts aboard, Namor chases the capsule down into the vortex and fights off a giant squid that’s menacing it. Carrying the capsule to a nearby aircraft carrier, Namor complains loudly about having to harm a denizen of the depths to rescue the astronauts. The sailors take umbrage at his attitude and gang up on him. Namor’s about to teach them a lesson when a Black teenager named Jim Wilson intervenes, threatening to send his friend, the Hulk, to beat up the Sub-Mariner if he harms the sailors. Impressed with Wilson’s swagger, Namor relents. The space capsule then opens and two astronauts emerge—Calvin Beame and Richmond Wagner. Angry that their mission went so badly from start to finish, they announce their resignation from government service, saying they intend to strike it rich as television celebrities. Namor is not interested in their bitterness or greed and mocks their pettiness as he dives back into the ocean.
September 1965 – Off the coast of Long Island, Namor emerges from the ocean into the worst thunderstorm he’s ever seen. He spots a stunningly beautiful blonde on a rocky outcropping he swears wasn’t there a moment ago, but for some reason, she resists his attempt to save her. He’s shocked when a flaming sword drops out of the sky and embeds itself in the rockface, but in the blink of an eye, it becomes a fragment from a meteorite. The blonde also suddenly transforms into an ordinary woman in a bikini. Baffled by these uncanny events, Namor flies her to shore, where she says she’s a schoolteacher named Vicki Starr. She seems flustered and disoriented, and when she runs off, Namor lets her go. The next evening, Namor receives a telepathic call for help from Namorita through the earring she gave him. He’s a bit surprised to learn the earring really does have magical properties, as she claimed. He soon meets Namorita and Betty on a road that runs alongside the ocean, at the scene of a car accident that happened during last night’s storm involving one of the teachers at the junior college Betty has enrolled Namorita in. Namor is startled when the missing teacher turns out to be Vicki Starr. He agrees to have a look around, but remembering Starr’s confused mental state, he urges Namorita not to get her hopes up.
After finding Starr’s bikini on the seabed, Namor encounters a pesky dolphin that keeps urgently poking him with its snout. He follows the dolphin several miles out to sea, where it beaches itself on a huge island that shouldn’t even be there. When Namor tries to throw the dolphin back into the water, it suddenly metamorphoses into the beautiful blonde, who identifies herself as Venus, the Olympian goddess of love. Namor is awestruck as Venus explains that she’s having a spat with her ex-husband, Mars, the god of war. She’s seeking the Sub-Mariner’s aid since Mars is out of his element under the sea. Namor’s not sure what he can do against the power of a god but agrees to help stop Mars from plunging the world into endless warfare. When Mars turns up, Venus lures him into the ocean, with Namor following at a discrete distance. Catching up to them, he finds Mars has stripped Venus of her magic girdle and tied her to a stake. Undaunted, Namor brawls with Mars, unimpressed with the god’s ability to shapeshift into marine predators he’s been dealing with his entire life. He then generates a huge vortex that keeps Mars off balance long enough for Namor to free Venus and return her girdle to her. Once she’s donned the magic girdle, Venus is able to deal with Mars, as it renders him too lovesick to continue fighting. She offers to release him from the girdle’s spell if he vows to leave Earth alone. Mars agrees to her terms and returns to Olympus. Namor’s mind reels at these supernatural events, a deeply religious experience he feels ill-equipped to deal with.
After Venus has assumed her human aspect as Vicki Starr, Namor flies her back to the junior college, where they meet up with Namorita at the rented house she shares with Betty. Namorita is thrilled to have her teacher back safe and sound. Rather cryptically, Starr tells her she can believe the tale Namor’s about to tell, if she wants to, no matter how outlandish it may sound. Starr then goes home, leaving Namor to relate his quasi-mystical experience to his young cousin. Namorita is skeptical, though. Having been raised in Lemuria, she is agnostic about the existence of the Olympian gods. Later, she gives Namor a tour of the school, where she’s known as “Nita Prentiss.” In the humanities department, Namor notices Professor Starr’s full name on her office door: Victoria Nutley Starr. He dryly notes to his cousin her initials, V.N.S., but she just rolls her eyes. After a pleasant visit, Namor returns to the ocean, satisfied that Namorita is in good hands.
Sometime later, Namor finds himself lurking on the outskirts of Atlantis, still feeling bad about the massacre of the red-skinned alien refugees. He berates himself for not preventing the tragedy, believing he was too wrapped up in his own personal problems. Still not ready to go home, though, he keeps out of sight and soon swims off to resume his solitary wandering.
October 1965 – A few weeks later, Namor is again in the vicinity of Atlantis when he’s attacked by one of the aliens’ monstrous servants. He’s surprised, as he thought they’d all been hunted down and killed after the massacre. Their savage battle leads them into a guard post, where Namor finally knocks the creature unconscious. Several guards have arrived on the scene, drawn by the commotion, and they cheer when they see their former prince has returned. Though he hadn’t planned to reveal his presence, Namor feels duty-bound to warn Vashti that some of the monsters may still be running around loose. He finds the regent speaking with a red-skinned woman who calls herself Tamara of the Sisterhood. Tamara explains that she had stowed away aboard the spacecraft, which was commanded by her lover, the man known as “First Brother.” Still in hiding when the men approached Atlantis, she escaped their grim fate. Eventually captured by the city’s security forces, Tamara convinced Vashti to have the spacecraft repaired so she could return home. Vashti confirms the repair work is nearly complete. Namor commends them for their mutual understanding and suggests the creature, which Tamara calls a Haab, be remanded into her custody to help her prepare for departure. Namor senses the collective guilt weighing on the Atlantean people—and Vashti in particular—and is relieved to see they are sincerely committed to making amends. However, haunted by Dorma’s absence, Namor soon leaves the city again to lose himself in the ocean depths.
Several hours later, Namor sees Atlantis being bombarded from above the surface and swims up to confront the attacker. He’s shocked to discover that it’s Tamara’s spacecraft—evidently, she has decided to seek revenge on Atlantis after all. Namor shrugs off the ship’s defenses and forces his way inside. The Haab pounces on him, but he fights it off. Desperate, Tamara sets the ship on a collision course with Atlantis, hoping its engines will explode on impact and obliterate the city. Namor grabs her wrist, but she breaks his grip and punches him in the face, revealing superhuman strength. Nevertheless, he drags her out of the ship just before it explodes in mid-air, killing the Haab. As they plunge into the ocean, Tamara breaks free again, but Namor overpowers her before she can escape and forces her back to the royal palace. He notes grimly that the city sustained significant damage from her initial barrage. In the throne room, Tamara throws herself on Vashti’s mercy, saying she felt honor-bound to avenge the genocide that was committed against her race when she realized it was already too late to save her people. Vashti chastises her for soiling the memory of the Brethren, who, according to her own words, repudiated warfare and cherished peace. Namor remains silent as Tamara breaks down and sobs in unendurable anguish. After consulting with the Council of Elders, Vashti informs Tamara that they’ve decided to make her a full citizen of Atlantis—if Namor will consent to taking her on as his ward to teach her their ways. Realizing the crafty Vashti has him boxed in, Namor agrees to the proposal.
After showing Tamara around, Namor says he needs some time alone, so she offers to do some exploring by herself and meet up with him later. A few hours later, though, Namor is unable to find any trace of her. Coming upon the uncouth scout Lorvex, Namor questions him about Tamara’s whereabouts. Lorvex admits to having taken her to see the Grotto of the Ancients and claims she assaulted him when he innocently tried to kiss her. Realizing Lorvex more likely tried to rape Tamara, Namor punches him in the face. Emboldened by the fact that Namor has renounced his royal titles, Lorvex pulls a knife on him. Namor easily defeats him and turns him over to a couple of sentries, who mock Lorvex as an arrogant fool. Following an exhaustive search above and below the waves, Namor realizes he’s not even sure if his alien ward is amphibious. A while later, Namor receives another magical communication from Namorita through his earring. She informs him that Tamara was captured by a Russian trawler that then drifted into U.S. territorial waters and was intercepted by the Coast Guard. She’s been taken to the United Nations in New York, where the delegates are arguing about who has jurisdiction over the strange red “mermaid.” Infuriated, Namor flies to the U.N. to rescue her and discovers she’s being held prisoner inside a tanker truck. Unfortunately, the truck is being guarded by Thor, who demands evidence that Tamara is an Atlantean, given that her skin is red rather than blue. Namor loses his temper and fights with Thor, their battle quickly carrying them out into the East River. Despite Namor’s best efforts, the so-called thunder god succeeds in driving him off. Namor returns to Atlantis empty-handed and bitterly tells Vashti he would need an army to liberate Tamara. Vashti points out that such an army would be at his immediate disposal were he to merely reclaim the throne. After much hemming and hawing, Namor decides he’s not ready to do that.
Namor visits Namorita and Betty at the junior college to discuss Tamara’s situation. After sleeping on the rocky coast and enjoying some fresh oysters, he heads back toward Atlantis, only to see a ghostly vision of Doctor Strange appearing before him. Deducing that the sorcerer is in deadly danger, Namor turns around and flies to New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. There, in a darkened alley, he encounters the Hulk, who received a similar spectral visitation. The pair is then met by two of Strange’s associates, Clea and Wong, who inform them that their mutual friend has been kidnapped. Fearing the entire world might be facing some mystical threat, Namor agrees to accompany them to Vermont on a rescue mission. Clea then hypnotizes the Hulk, causing him to change into his non-descript alter-ego, Bruce Banner. Namor is astonished to finally witness the transformation, which explains how the Hulk would often abruptly vanish during their previous encounters. Wong provides both men with fresh clothes to help them blend in as they catch a Greyhound Bus heading north. On the trip, Namor becomes increasingly irritated by Banner, who, due to the tranquilizers Clea has given him, babbles at him incoherently for hours. When they finally arrive in the small town of Rutland, Vermont, Namor and his three comrades find the annual Halloween Parade getting underway. However, Clea immediately leads them out of town to nearby Bald Mountain, sensing that’s where they will find Doctor Strange. The mountaintop is bathed in an eerie red glow, and when they near the summit, they discover an occult ritual being performed by numerous cultists in dark robes. A portal has already been opened to the Dark Dimension, through which Namor can see an indistinct form that Clea identifies as the demonic Dormammu. Strange lies unconscious on a slab directly below the mystic portal. The interlopers disrupt the ceremony, and when the groggy Banner finally manages to turn back into the Hulk, he helps Namor fight off numerous knife-wielding cultists. They’re alarmed to see Strange floating up into the portal, but then a powerful force shakes the mountain to its foundations, causing an avalanche that wipes out the cult. Namor and the Hulk try to shield Clea and Wong from the falling rocks, but at the last second, Strange emerges from the closing portal and sweeps his two companions to safety. Namor and the Hulk are buried in the avalanche but soon dig themselves out, the indignity leaving them rather annoyed with Strange, who assures them that Dormammu has been defeated. Namor flies back to the coast and then swims home to Atlantis.
November 1965 – A week or so later, Namor receives a telepathic request for help from Doctor Strange, asking him to meet at the Kennedy Space Center on the coast of Florida, where a space rocket is due to launch. As it turns out, the two astronauts Namor rescued a few months ago have indeed become TV celebrities alongside a furry creature called Xemnu, and the three of them are apparently up to something having to do with the rocket launch. Since he feels he’s already involved to some degree, Namor grudgingly agrees to be there. When he arrives, Strange directs him telepathically to destroy the space rocket to prevent Xemnu from using it to kidnap several dozen children. Namor is happy to do so, and then brawls with Xemnu, a brawny extraterrestrial covered in white fur. Unfortunately, Xemnu shrugs off Namor’s mightiest blows and knocks him out with a blast of psychic energy. Namor comes to in time to witness the Hulk pummeling Xemnu until he dissolves into a white mist that drifts away on the breeze. Strange rudely suggests the Hulk was too stupid to be affected by Xemnu’s psychic abilities. Namor then notices they’re being surrounded by soldiers, who are moving in with guns drawn. The Hulk creates a shockwave that knocks all the soldiers down, and Namor generates a huge wave that then drenches them. Furious at the ungrateful surface-dwellers, Namor loudly announces that neither he nor the Hulk will respond to any further requests for aid from Doctor Strange. With that, the Sub-Mariner and the Hulk go their separate ways.
During another visit with Namorita and Betty, Namor is rendered unconscious by a mystical attack. He comes to on a hilltop, although he can’t move. He sees the Silver Surfer receiving orders from an ugly little hunchback in a hooded robe. The next thing Namor knows, he’s being hurled from the Surfer’s surfboard high in the sky. He blacks out again and wakes up in a cave, lying on a stone slab illuminated by two torches. He’s surrounded by a force field that’s filled with water, through which he can see Doctor Strange watching him anxiously. Lashing out, Namor bursts through the force field. Grateful for the rescue, he then aids Strange in fighting a musclebound giant called Necrodamus, who resembles the hunchback in the face. Necrodamus is stabbing the Hulk with an enchanted dagger while boasting that he’ll sacrifice them all to his dark gods. When the Hulk collapses and changes into Bruce Banner, Necrodamus turns his attention to the Sub-Mariner. He nearly slits Namor’s throat with his dagger, but Banner helps Strange hold him back long enough for the necessary conjunction of stars to pass. With that, Necrodamus suddenly and painfully reverts to his hunchbacked form, whereupon he teleports away in defeat. Namor is horrified to see the awful visage of the Nameless One vanishing in the smoke from the torches and realizes their foe was a servant of the Undying Ones. Concerned that the Silver Surfer is seemingly in league with Necrodamus, Strange insists they must all work together to find the gleaming alien. Unwilling to take no for an answer, Strange declares the Defenders to be officially formed.
After two weeks of searching the globe, Strange’s astral form is checking in with Namor when they encounter the Silver Surfer along the coast of Antarctica. Wanting revenge, Namor pummels the Surfer, who disavows any knowledge of the recent sneak attack in New York and then angrily departs for his “private valley” to be alone. Sensing a clue in the Surfer’s words, Strange bids Namor to rendezvous with him at his Sanctum Sanctorum in Greenwich Village. When Namor arrives, they consult the diary of the late Kenneth Ward. Strange suspects the valley the Surfer spoke of may be the same Himalayan valley where Ward had discovered the statue of the Nameless One. And so, they enlist the Hulk’s aid once again and journey to the Himalayas to investigate. Upon arriving at the remote snowbound valley, the trio discovers a group of “Abominable Snowmen.” Hulk fights with them until the Silver Surfer appears and calls him off, claiming the ape-men are harmless. However, the creatures suddenly transform themselves into a cadre of Warrior Wizards, led by a warlock called Calizuma. As they launch their attack on the startled quartet, Calizuma claims they’ve been manipulating the Silver Surfer for many months and he was in a trance when he ambushed the Sub-Mariner. Luckily, the Warrior Wizards prove to be no match for the combined might of the Defenders and are soundly defeated. Before leaving the valley, Doctor Strange offers to help the Silver Surfer escape his exile on Earth, explaining that it should be possible to circumvent Galactus’s barrier by traveling through another dimension. Excited at the prospect of freedom, the Surfer agrees to give it a try. Namor volunteers to come along, feeling guilty that he misjudged the Silver Surfer, and the Hulk does as well. Strange then weaves his spell and the four of them disappear in a nimbus of light.
A moment later, they’re horrified to discover they’ve been diverted into the hellish realm of the Undying Ones. They soon come upon a trap, which the Silver Surfer refers to as “poles of ethereal force,” in which languishes an Earthwoman named Barbara whom Doctor Stange apparently left behind when he escaped a year ago. The Silver Surfer lends his power cosmic to Strange’s mystic energies to destroy her prison, then the sorcerer offers her a lame excuse for not attempting a rescue earlier. But as the Defenders flee, they are suddenly caught within a whirling maelstrom. They soon escape from the vortex only to be confronted with a chilling sight: the women they love—Dorma, Clea, Shalla Bal, and Jarella—trapped within the poles of ethereal force. However, Namor, knowing all too well that Dorma is dead, sees through the illusion and realizes Barbara has betrayed them. Sure enough, the Nameless One then appears, revealing that Barbara had, after many months of imprisonment, agreed to merge with her demonic captor. Their “rescue” of her had been merely another illusion. Outraged, the Defenders press their attack. As the Sub-Mariner and the Hulk batter at the Nameless One’s massive frame, Doctor Strange and the Silver Surfer work together to entrap the arch-demon’s foot within the poles of ethereal force. These distractions give Strange the chance to forcibly separate Barbara from her monstrous mate. Unfortunately, the process destroys Barbara’s mind. Taking the shrieking woman along, the Defenders make good their escape and shift back into Earth’s dimension.
Rather than being somewhere beyond Galactus’s barrier, as they expected, the Defenders find themselves instead standing outside Garrett Castle in England. Bitterly disappointed, the Silver Surfer flies off in sorrow. Hulk is furious that Barbara has gone mad and, cradling her in his arms, leaps over the wall into the castle grounds. Suffering a crisis of confidence, Doctor Strange asks the Sub-Mariner what he thinks they should do. Namor asserts that the Hulk could injure Barbara inadvertently, just as Strange did, so they have no choice but to go after him. Namor is also curious as to why there’s been no apparent reaction in the castle to the Hulk’s sudden entrance. They find an open door and go inside, but despite making a thorough search of the deserted castle, the pair is unable to find any trace of them. Finally, in the cellar they discover a large smoldering brazier which suddenly flares up, its mystic flames transporting them to yet another dimension. The Sub-Mariner and Doctor Strange are confronted by a brawny warrior known as the Executioner, a legion of armored knights, and a wizard called Fragon, who reveals that they have entered the realm of Queen Casiolena. Quickly overcome, the heroes are thrown into a dungeon, where they join Bruce Banner and the mindless Barbara. A man’s voice from the cell across the corridor calls to them, identifying himself as Dane Whitman, a.k.a. the Black Knight, who is apparently acquainted with Strange and an associate of the Avengers. The Black Knight introduces his cellmate, a beautiful woman he calls the Enchantress. He then explains how, after escaping from Zeus, the Enchantress recruited him—using an ensorcelling kiss—to free her paramour, the Executioner, from Queen Casiolena’s clutches. Unfortunately, their mission utterly failed and they’ve been imprisoned in the dungeon for weeks. Ignoring the Defenders’ objections, the Enchantress abruptly casts a spell that changes Barbara into a superhuman warrior called the Valkyrie so she can free them. The Valkyrie, who has a distinct personality of her own, then smashes down the cell doors. Doctor Strange assists the Enchantress in defeating Fragon while the Sub-Mariner, the Hulk, the Black Knight, and the Valkyrie rout Casiolena’s forces and take down the Executioner. Casiolena then appears, ready to smite them all with her sorcery, but before the Defenders can react, the Valkyrie and the Enchantress knock her out. When the Black Knight objects to the reconciliation between the Executioner and the Enchantress, the sorceress turns her pawn into a stone statue with a magical kiss. After the villainous couple departs, Strange finds he is unable to reverse the Black Knight’s transformation. Thus, the Defenders take the statue with them as they traverse the dimensional barrier back to Garrett Castle. Strange then casts a spell to seal the castle behind an invisible, impenetrable barrier and decides to take his friend’s petrified form back to the Sanctum Sanctorum to work on a cure. Valkyrie claims the Black Knight’s black sword and his winged horse, Aragorn, and declares herself a member of the Defenders, over the others’ objections. She then accompanies Doctor Strange and the Hulk back to New York while Namor returns to the ocean.
Towards the end of the month, Namor pays a visit to the Sanctum Sanctorum to see if Doctor Strange has made any progress with the Black Knight. He watches as Strange makes another attempt to turn him from stone back to flesh and blood, but as before his spells fail. Namor is intrigued when Strange describes the Enchantress’s magic as “Asgardian.” He’s aware that Valkyries are figures out of Norse mythology and wonders if the two women have any connection to Thor, who claims to be a Norse god. After his recent experience with Mars and Venus, Namor finds he’s a bit more open to the possibility. Namor also learns that Strange has, somewhat grudgingly, allowed the Valkyrie to stay at the Sanctum until she can figure out what to do with her life. This is clearly a problem for Clea, who is obviously jealous of the statuesque Valkyrie. Namor has to admit he finds the brash warrior woman utterly fascinating.
December 1965 – In the Arctic, Namor rescues the sailors aboard a ship sunk by a mysterious missile. He then detects a chemical trail in the water that leads him across the Arctic Ocean, around the coast of Alaska, and down through the Pacific Ocean to the vicinity of Seattle, Washington. At the end of the trail he finds an unearthly looking submarine that surfaces as he draws near. He follows it up only to be viciously attacked by Iron Man, who swoops down and blasts him with repulsor rays. Their fight continues under the waves, though it’s temporarily halted when Iron Man experiences some kind of systems failure and nearly drowns. Recovering quickly, Iron Man attacks again, tearing apart a nearby shipwreck to get at the Sub-Mariner. Abruptly, Iron Man abandons the fight and flees the scene after using his repulsor rays to sink the weird submarine. Namor surfaces but realizes he can’t match Iron Man’s flight speed as he rockets away into the distance. Furious, Namor vows to get revenge on Iron Man the first chance he gets. Leaving the sunken sub to its fate, Namor swims back to the Arctic.
Namor pays a visit to Betty’s Manhattan apartment, where Betty and Namorita have returned now that the fall semester at the junior college on Long Island has ended. Namorita is enthusiastic about her experience there and is looking forward to starting new classes next month. Unexpectedly, Valkyrie turns up looking for Namor, saying that, as part of finding her purpose in life, she wants to make some friends. She’s disappointed that the Defenders haven’t done anything in the few weeks since she joined them. Namor insists “the Defenders” is not really a team as such, and in any case, he’s not particularly interested in associating with surface-dwellers. Before the conversation can continue, Namor finds himself enveloped in a nimbus of light. Feeling like every cell in his body is being turned inside out, he loses consciousness. The next thing he knows, Namor is with the Hulk in the Omegatron complex on Point Promontory in Maine. The building is reconfiguring itself into a gigantic humanoid form in preparation for completing its mission to destroy the world. Namorita is there, too, along with the Valkyrie. Despite acting quickly, Namor and the Hulk both fail to stop the Omegatron from triggering a nuclear holocaust by speaking the name of its creator, Yandroth, but at the last second, the Valkyrie swoops down on her winged horse and slices off the Omegatron’s head with her black sword. She and Namor then disagree about what actually led to the Omegatron’s defeat—she insists that only she could have overcome its combination of physical and magical qualities, since she embodies those complimentary forces as well. Though not completely convinced, Namor regrets previously dismissing her as useless and commends her quick thinking and bravery. Namorita is clearly awed by the Valkyrie’s imposing physique, and as they return to New York, she chooses to ride behind her on the horse’s back despite being perfectly capable of flying on her own.
After parting ways with the Hulk and dropping Namorita off at Betty’s, Namor and the Valkyrie head over to the Sanctum Sanctorum to tell Doctor Strange about their encounter with the Omegatron. Namor is annoyed when the Valkyrie reports that the Omegatron told her it was Strange himself who weakened the time-slowing spell he’d cast back in February when he recently attempted another time-slowing spell. Frustrated, Strange realizes it must have been when he and the Hulk were trying to rescue Namor from Necrodamus. Suddenly, the entire city block is surrounded by an energy barrier and an army of hooded men attack the Sanctum, apparently confident they can penetrate its magical defenses. Strange recognizes their scrawny leader as Cyrus Black, a minor sorcerer he met at the beginning of his career several years ago. With some unexpected help from the Silver Surfer, the Defenders drive off Black and his minions and prevent them from accidentally destroying the Black Knight’s petrified form. The Silver Surfer then apologizes for his behavior the last time they met. However, Namor is irritated when the gleaming alien then chats up the Valkyrie, inviting her on a tour of the planet. She eagerly accepts, and feeling a twinge of jealousy, Namor invites himself along, which doesn’t seem to bother the Surfer in the least. They soon set out together and head down the east coast of the Americas, taking in the sights. Everywhere they go, Namor offers the Valkyrie all manner of trivia, trying to one-up the Silver Surfer by demonstrating how worldly he is. For her part, Valkyrie shows no preference for either of her companions.
About a week later, the trio returns to New York. Namor has had a bellyful of the Silver Surfer’s incessant philosophizing, much of which he finds nauseatingly naïve. He’s relieved to see the Valkyrie is herself rather skeptical of the Surfer’s pontifications. He mocks the Surfer’s pompous manner as they enter the Sanctum Sanctorum, drawing the Valkyrie’s ire. The Surfer is oblivious in any case. They find Doctor Strange peering into his crystal ball. Suddenly, they are attacked by a purple demon that materializes out of nowhere and tosses Strange around like a rag doll. It is easily dispatched by the Surfer, who vaporizes it with a bolt of cosmic energy. A moment later, a three-headed, reptilian monster appears, which is defeated just as easily when Namor punches it. Confused, Strange identifies the creature as being purely mythological. Cyrus Black then materializes in the room, now in an idealized form that towers over his foes, and torments them with irresistible sorcerous might. Despite his arcane skills, Strange seems incapable of fighting back. Namor realizes something’s not right when he battles Black at full strength despite having been out of the water all day. Clearly, Black is somehow manipulating reality to suit his own revenge fantasies. Namor manages to convince Black of this, at which point the spell is broken and the wizard abruptly vanishes. Suddenly, Namor collapses to the floor, completely exhausted. Trying to help, Valkyrie pours the water from a vase of flowers on his head. Though grateful for her concern, Namor is a bit stung by the indignity. Strange agrees with Namor’s theory that Black’s spell only worked so long as he believed what was happening was real, even suggesting that Black may have been dreaming the whole time. He resolves to remain vigilant in case Black should one day strike again. Namor enjoys a fine dinner with his companions, though he’s loath to consider them either teammates or friends. He then heads over to Betty’s apartment, where Namorita tells him everything she’s been learning about the surface-world festival called Christmas. Finally, looking forward to spending some time alone, Namor slowly makes his way home to Atlantis.
Notes:
January 1964 – Namor doesn’t seem to realize he’s fighting the actual Hercules in Avengers #40 and presumably takes him for an ordinary superhero using a mythological basis for his persona. The Wasp deprives Namor of the Cosmic Cube while he’s preoccupied with Hercules, and it tumbles down a fissure into Subterranea. Puerto Rico is fictionalized as “Puerto Nuevo” for some reason.
February 1964 – The Sub-Mariner’s adventures resume in Tales to Astonish #92 and following. The silent creature is not actually a robot but a living being awakened from centuries of slumber in the Cavern of Darkness by the leaking radioactive waste. Its origin and subsequent fate remain unknown.
March 1964 – “Plunderstone” is merely what the Plunderer calls vibranium.
April 1964 – Namor remains unaware that the Hulk is being controlled by the Puppet Master during their clash in Tales to Astonish #100. After meeting Destiny in the next issue, Namor is moved into the one-shot Iron Man & Sub-Mariner #1 before finally receiving his own solo series again with Sub-Mariner #1, as favorable business conditions allowed Marvel to expand their line. Tales to Astonish was converted into the Hulk’s solo book. Since Namor had no way to know what his father looked like but is haunted by his face from this point forward, it stands to reason that an image of Leonard McKenzie was inadvertently implanted in his mind by Destiny during this brief encounter.
May 1964 – The Sub-Mariner meets Captain Marvel in Captain Marvel #4.
August 1964 – Namor and Betty Dean shared their first kiss in Marvel Mystery Comics #78.
September 1964 – Namor’s visit with Ann Raymond is shown in the flashback in Avengers West Coast #50. The Sub-Mariner battles the Hulk again in Hulk #118. Wanting Namor for herself, Fara was actually trying to murder Dorma when the house collapsed on top of them, and she paid the ultimate price for her ruthless ambition. Kormok secretly leads a “pagan” mystery cult that worships “elder gods”—likely Set and his demonic children. Since Set is the power behind the Serpent Crown, this would explain why Kormok was not killed during the purging of the priesthood. Set bears a longstanding grudge against Neptune and is always happy to victimize the Atlanteans.
October 1964 – The Sub-Mariner discovers the wounded Magneto in the Savage Land in Fantastic Four #102. The scene takes place shortly after the events of Uncanny X-Men #63. About a thousand years ago, the Undying Ones were chased off Earth by the Third Host of the Celestials, after bedeviling humanity for countless generations. The “cosmic horror” story in Sub-Mariner #22 is part of a loose trilogy that starts in Doctor Strange #183 and concludes in Hulk #126, serving as a precursor to the heroes’ later team, the Defenders.
November 1964 – Namor encounters Iron Man on Meridian Island in Iron Man #25. In Sub-Mariner #29, Namor is waylaid by the Huntsman of Zeus, who takes control of his mind and sends him to ambush Hercules on a Mediterranean island. As they fight, Namor realizes he’s dealing with the actual, mythological Hercules, which causes a dramatic change in his attitude. He shakes off his mental conditioning, and they team up against the Huntsman, depriving him of his magical staff. Finally, Zeus intervenes and erases Namor’s memory of the whole affair as he transports Hercules and the Huntsman back to Olympus. In the following issue, Namor apparently doesn’t recognize Rick Jones from their brief encounter two years ago.
December 1964 – The Sub-Mariner and the Fantastic Four battle Magneto in Fantastic Four #102–104. Byrrah is often referred to as Namor’s cousin, but Sub-Mariner #33 clarifies that he’s technically more of a step-uncle. Byrrah is Emperor Thakorr’s stepson, presumably from Thakorr’s second marriage. Fen was the product of Thakorr’s first marriage, giving Namor primacy in the royal line of succession. Being of a generation preceding Namor’s, Byrrah styles himself as Thakorr’s heir apparent, but Vashti points out that, as a stepchild, he has no legitimate claim to the throne under Atlantean law. However, he could apparently stake a claim were he married to Dorma, who Sub-Mariner #36 implies is the granddaughter of Thakorr’s younger brother. Both Krang and Tiger Shark have also attempted to use this legal loophole to usurp the throne, and Namor is pretty open about the fact that preventing it from happening again is his main motivation for finally marrying her.
January 1965 – Namor stumbles upon the gang of Atlantean mutants in the second story in Sub-Mariner #54.
February 1965 – The prison on Belmont Island, seen in Sub-Mariner #39, was shut down in the 1930s when the Ryker’s Island correctional facility was opened upriver. Namor’s battle with Daredevil and Spider-Man occurs in Daredevil #77 before the story crosses back over to Sub-Mariner #40. Daredevil is left with no memory of the incident. During one of his periods of unconsciousness in Sub-Mariner #42, Namor is studied by two time-traveling robots on the trail of Mister Kline, another time-traveling robot who will soon encounter Daredevil and the Black Widow. Namor teams up with the Hulk and Doctor Strange to foil Yandroth’s posthumous scheme in Marvel Feature #1. Following the death of Leonard McKenzie in Sub-Mariner #46, Stingray takes his body back to the surface. The novice hero leaves Lymondo behind, unaware of his presence aboard the sunken ship. Stingray and Diane then arrange a funeral for McKenzie, as seen in the following issue. It seems they may have been able to keep the fact that he was the Sub-Mariner’s father out of the newspapers. Diane and Walter Newell have been dating for a few months at this point. Diane evidently gets over her infatuation with the Sub-Mariner, as she and Newell get married sometime in the next couple of years. At the conclusion of Sub-Mariner #49, the Cosmic Cube has not actually been destroyed; it will eventually be found by Thanos.
March 1965 – Byrrah’s extraterrestrial allies, seen in Sub-Mariner #51, are the Badoon, making one of their rare present-day appearances. Namor’s discovery of Namorita’s true nature is revealed much later in Namor #20. The slaughter of the clones was ordered by Namor’s great-great-great-grandfather, King Thallo. Towards the end of the month, the Sub-Mariner and Namorita find themselves dealing with the end of the world—along with everyone else on the disintegrating planet—during Thor #185–188, but luckily Odin erases those events from the timestream, so they never happened.
August 1965 – The Sub-Mariner rescues the astronauts and meets Jim Wilson early in Marvel Feature #3. General Thaddeus E. “Thunderbolt” Ross is also present, but he’s just an anonymous soldier as far as Namor is concerned.
October 1965 – Namor’s fight with Thor brings us up to Sub-Mariner #59. He then teams up with the Hulk to rescue Doctor Strange from Dormammu in Marvel Feature #2. Namor doesn’t realize the Hulk arrives fresh from fighting Tiger Shark at Niagara Falls earlier that day, as seen in Hulk #160. He is doubtless unaware of all the other weirdness going on in Rutland on that particular night as well.
November 1965 – The Sub-Mariner helps Doctor Strange and the Hulk defeat Xemnu in the latter portion of Marvel Feature #3. They then battle Necrodamus, encounter the Silver Surfer, retrieve Barbara Norriss from the Undying Ones, and see her transformed into the Valkyrie by the Enchantress in Defenders #1–4. Namor’s subsequent visit to the Sanctum Sanctorum to check up on the Black Knight is shown in a flashback in Avengers #117.
December 1965 – Namor battles Iron Man again in Iron Man #54. Iron Man’s armor is being controlled by Moondragon from within the submarine. She lured the Sub-Mariner there, knowing Iron Man was in the vicinity, presumably to determine if he might be a match for Thanos. Despite what the story says, it’s more likely Namor started out in the Arctic rather than the Antarctic, given the events immediately before and after. The Sub-Mariner’s clashes with the Omegatron and Cyrus Black occur in Defenders #5–6.
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