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SUB-MARINER, SILVER AGE CATALYST he Fantastic Four was a series that from its outset focused on the discord that could occur within the boundaries of a team. The disparate powers they had attained put a stress on the bonds that held them together. By the end of third issue, the group had already broken up. The Thing’s jealous rages in particular were driving a wedge between the members. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, was literally a hot-headed teenager and he had little patience for the bickering. It had gotten so bad that by issue #4, the boy would retreat to a hideout in a Bowery flophouse. 1 It was unlikely that he would have returned home any time soon, had it not been for a chance encounter with a character whose reappearance would accelerate the process of development of an astounding universe of super-beings. With totally good intentions, Johnny would throw the dazed Atlantean derelict into the waters of New York harbor and thereby restore his memory. Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, emerging from the mists of amnesia, would pose an enormous threat to the Fantastic Four and their world. Instead of gratitude, Namor bore only resentment towards Johnny and humanity in general, because in his eyes, they were guilty of destroying his undersea kingdom. The Torch had no choice but to return home and alert his teammates to the danger Namor posed, thereby reuniting the team against a common foe. Without the Sub-Mariner’s emergence and lively interaction with the Fantastic Four, the series could easily have stagnated, had it continued to dwell on the disharmony built into the group from its inception. The charismatic Sub-Mariner first appeared in 1939, as a prominently featured character in Marvel Comics #1. An anti-hero from the get-go, Prince Namor was the bi-racial son of American Naval Captain Leonard McKenzie and the Atlantean princess Fen. His creator, Bill Everett, conceived him as a proud aristocratic being, harkening back to antiquity. “Namor,” after all, is “Roman” spelled backwards. He debuted as a Total War adversary of all surface dwellers. His natural foe was, of course, the Golden Age version of the Human Torch, who was also introduced in the same issue. As elemental adversaries representing fire and water, the Sub-Mariner and the Torch clashed regularly. In Human Torch #5 [above], published in Fall 1941, Namor, under the spell of a treacherous Atlantean woman, developed a Napoleon complex and tried to conquer the world. After causing a good deal of damage as well as putting much of New York under water and probably drowning thou1 59
